Check 1 — Which question did you ask?
Split the question first. Ask the engine "What is <your brand>?". If it describes you correctly, it knows you exist, and the problem is being chosen, not being known. If it does not, or describes someone else, you have an identity problem, and nothing further down this list will fix it until that is settled.
Then look at the question you were disappointed by. "Best X" and "X alternatives" are the hardest questions in any category: the answer is built from sources that have discussed the category for years. A brand that is a few months old scoring zero there is the expected result, not a finding. Questions about a specific problem you solve, in your buyers' own words, move first.
Check 2 — Can AI crawlers read your site?
An engine cannot quote a page it cannot fetch. Check three things: a robots.txt rule that blocks AI user agents, which a site can inherit from a template; bot protection at the CDN that answers crawlers with a challenge page; and pages whose text only appears after JavaScript runs. Each one is invisible in a browser and obvious to a crawler. The robots.txt guide lists the user agents and what each one is for.
Check 3 — Does the engine's search find your page?
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI answers search the web while they answer. If that search does not return your page for the question's wording, the page cannot be cited, however good it is. Page one of Google is not required — in our own measurement, only 23.6% of the domains Google's AI cited were on page one for the same question — but the page has to be findable at all.
We do not claim the ranking causes the silence; one site cannot show that. It is the check that is left when the first two pass, and the one most guides skip.
Check 4 — Is there a sentence worth quoting?
Engines lift sentences, not pages. A page that answers the question in its first two sentences, with a number and where the number comes from, gives the engine something it can repeat. A page that opens with a story, or answers only in a table image, gives it nothing. The guide to writing a quotable page goes through the shape.
Check 5 — Are you on the pages that do get cited?
For buying questions, the sources engines cite are mostly pages that discuss the category: roundups, comparisons, forum threads and directories. If those pages do not name you, an answer built from them has no source that names you. Find the pages cited for your questions, and ask for a place on them the legitimate way — most roundup authors take submissions. The off-site authority guide covers what moves this, and which sources AI cites by question type shows which kinds of pages dominate which questions.
Check 6 — Did you check one engine, or all of them?
Being absent from ChatGPT says little about Perplexity or Google. The engines search differently and cite different sources: across ten weekly runs of 40 buyer questions, 79.5% of the cited domains were cited by one engine only. Check each one before concluding you are invisible — the data is in do AI engines cite the same sources.
Check 7 — Did you ask once, or many times?
The same question asked twice can get a different answer with different sources. One test in a chat window is an anecdote. A fixed set of questions asked on a schedule, counted over weeks, is a measurement — and the only way to tell whether a change you made worked. How many prompts to track sets out the sample sizes.
| Check | What it rules out | How to test it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The question | A question a new brand cannot win yet | Ask "What is <brand>?", then a problem-shaped question |
| 2. Crawler access | Blocked or unreadable pages | robots.txt, CDN bot settings, the page without JavaScript |
| 3. Search | Pages the engine's search never returns | Search the question's wording; find where your page ranks |
| 4. Quotable sentence | Pages with nothing to lift | Read your first two sentences as the answer |
| 5. Cited pages | Roundups and threads that leave you out | List the domains the answers cite |
| 6. Engines | Concluding from one engine | Ask every engine the same question |
| 7. Repetition | Reading one answer as a result | A fixed question set, asked weekly |
Frequently asked questions
Why does ChatGPT mention my competitors but not me?
Look at which sources the answer cites. Either the pages its search read for that question — roundups, comparisons, forum threads — name them and not you, or its search did not return your pages for that wording. That source list is where the competitor is and you are not.
How long does it take for a new brand to show up in ChatGPT?
Nobody can give an honest date. Our own site went live in August 2026 and in November was named for 1 of the 24 unbranded questions we track. Questions about your brand by name and about narrow problems you solve move first; "best X" questions move last.
Does ranking on Google's first page get me into AI answers?
It is neither required nor enough. In our measurement only 23.6% of the domains Google's AI answers cited were on page one for the same question. What matters is that the engine's search can find the page and that the page has a sentence worth quoting.