A customer who wants a plumber, a dentist or a web host used to type a few words into Google and click one of ten links. More and more of them now ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini instead, and get one answer back. If that answer names three other businesses, or gives your old phone number, you never find out. There is no lost click in your analytics and no bounce to look at. The customer just never arrives.
So we built a check for it. We ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions your customers ask, with web search turned on so the answer is what someone asking today would read, and we score what comes back out of 100. Anyone can run it free on any business website. On every site we host it runs every week, with a timeline of what changed.
Before we put it on our own pricing page, we ran it on topsyde.com, the same way we ran our first focus group on ourselves. The result is below, and it was not flattering.
Why this is a different problem from SEO
Search engine optimisation is about where you rank in a list of links. A reader sees ten results and picks one, and being fifth still gets you some clicks.
An AI assistant does not give ten links. It gives an answer, usually three to five names with a sentence about each, built from what it finds on the web at that moment. Your website is one source. Directories, review sites, "best of" roundups, old listings and forum threads are the others. You can rank well in Google and still be left out of the answer, because the assistant leaned on a roundup you are not in.
The other half of the problem is accuracy. An assistant that knows you can still give a customer the wrong phone number, last year's hours or a service you stopped offering, and say it with total confidence. A wrong answer is worse than no answer, because the customer believes it.
None of this shows up in your analytics. That is why we check it directly.
What the check asks
Three questions, asked of each assistant with web search on.
Recommended. The question a new customer asks. "Who are the best plumbers in Austin?" or, for a business that is not local, "What are the best options for managed WordPress hosting?" We look at whether you are named and where you land on the list.
Reputation. "Have you heard of Smith Plumbing? Are they any good?" This one matters most for a small or new business, because it still gets a reading when you are not on any list yet. It tells you whether the assistants know you exist and what tone they take.
Accuracy. "How do I reach Smith Plumbing and when are they open?" We compare the phone number, address, hours and services in each answer with what your own homepage and contact page say, and flag every detail that does not match.
Those three readings make one score out of 100. The report then lists every answer word for word with the sources each assistant used, every detail that disagrees with your site, the businesses recommended instead of you, and what would help, in plain steps.
What it said about topsyde.com
Our first check ran on November 3. The overall score was 56 out of 100.
The reputation reading went well. All three assistants knew TopSyde by name, described us as a managed WordPress host with security, updates and senior developer support, cited our own site as a source, and were positive about us. That was better than we expected.
The recommendation reading is where we lost. We asked each assistant for the best managed WordPress hosting options. None of the three named us. Every answer listed the same handful of large hosts, mostly pulled from third-party roundups and comparison articles rather than from any host's own site. That is the single number that pulled our score down, and it is the one most businesses will see too, because a "best of" list is where the biggest names have a head start.
The accuracy reading had one real problem. ChatGPT and Gemini got our details right. Claude gave a second, older phone number and said it came from older legal pages. That number is not anywhere on topsyde.com today, so it came from an old copy or another listing the assistant found. A customer who believed that answer would have rung a dead line. This is exactly the kind of thing you would never catch on your own.
The report also shows its own limits. It flagged Claude for saying we also do Shopify development, because that is not on our homepage. We do, it is on our development page, so that flag was ours to dismiss. It also flagged Gemini for saying we are recommended in Reddit communities with no source behind the claim, which is a fair catch. Every flag in the report shows you the answer and what your site says, so you can decide which ones are real.
What the report told us to do
The report ends with fixes, each with the reason behind it. Ours were four.
- A plain summary of our services that a crawler can lift. The recommendation answers drew on roundups, not on our site, so a clear, quotable "what we do and for whom" helps. Our plain list of what the plan includes went live this week, and we will see whether the next check reads it.
- One phone number, everywhere. Our site has one number. The work is finding the old listing the assistant read and getting it corrected.
- More independent reviews. The answers noted we have few reviews outside our own site. This is the slowest fix and the one we control least, because it depends on clients taking the time.
- Business hours, said in a sentence. We answer a site-down call within 15 minutes, 24/7, but our homepage and contact page never state hours, so the assistants had nothing to quote and said they could not find them.
None of these is clever. That is the point. Most of what moves an AI answer is plain, consistent, quotable facts about who you are, repeated wherever the assistants read.
What you get when we host your site
The free check is one snapshot. AI answers change from week to week as the assistants find new sources, so on every site we host the check runs every week on its own.
The score sits on the site's Insights page with its three readings, and a timeline underneath shows each week's score and what changed in plain words. "Gemini now has your phone number right." "ChatGPT started recommending you." When a number drops you can see why.
The check is on by default and has a switch on the site's Dashboard tab if you would rather not run it. When the report suggests fixes, Get help improving this opens a ticket to our developers with the fixes already written in. The technical side, like titles, descriptions and structured data built from your real facts, is already handled every week by Auto SEO, and the score is how you see whether it is working. From December 1 the monthly report carries an AI Visibility page too.
It is included with the plan at $89/site/month, alongside daily malware scans, updates that roll back on their own, a senior developer, a website focus group on each site and the rest of what hosting includes.
What it does not do
It does not promise a ranking. Nobody controls what an AI assistant says, and anyone who promises you a guaranteed place in ChatGPT's answer is selling something they cannot deliver. We promise the watching and, on sites we host, the fixing.
It checks ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Other assistants and Google's AI Overviews are not in the check today.
It does not change anything on your website. The check reads your homepage and contact page for the facts it compares the answers against, and asks the assistants its questions. Your site never knows it happened.
One check is a snapshot. Ask the same assistant the same question tomorrow and the list can change. That is why hosted sites get it every week and the timeline matters more than any single score.
How to run it
Go to topsyde.com/ai-visibility, enter your website's address and your email, and pick what kind of business you are if you like. In about two minutes your score arrives by email. The full report, every answer and every fix, opens in a free private TopSyde account under that email. It works on any public business website, whatever it is built on and wherever it is hosted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which AI assistants do you check?
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, each with web search turned on, so the answer is what a customer asking today would read rather than what the model remembers. For a local business we ask the questions from your town.
Is the free check really free?
Yes. We need your website's address and an email to send the score to. Your report is kept privately in a free TopSyde account under that email, and nothing on your site changes.
Can you get my business into ChatGPT's answers?
We cannot promise it, and nobody can. What usually helps is plain and repeatable. Say clearly what you do and where, fix old details on your site and in the listings the assistants read, collect independent reviews and answer the questions customers ask. Your report lists the fixes for your site, and on sites we host we do them.
How is this different from the free website audit?
The free audit reads your homepage the way a crawler or an assistant would and tells you what to fix on the page. The AI visibility check asks the assistants directly and shows you what they say. Run both, they answer different questions.
How often does it run on hosted sites?
Every week, on by default, with a timeline of the score and what changed. You can turn it off with a switch on the site's Dashboard tab. The rest of the plan's answers are on the FAQ.
Want to know what AI tells your customers? Check your AI visibility, see what hosting includes, or start a 30-day free trial.
Founder & Lead Developer
20+ years full-stack development, WordPress, AI tools & agents
Colton is the founder of TopSyde with 20+ years of full-stack development experience spanning WordPress, cloud infrastructure, and AI-powered tooling. He specializes in performance optimization, server architecture, and building AI agents for automated site management.
