A useful visibility review starts with a specific customer decision. Choose one service or product, the audience you want to reach and the information they need before taking the next step. Then use this checklist to find gaps worth investigating.
The aim is a short, evidence-based action plan. Completing every item does not guarantee a ranking, citation or recommendation. Some checks will need help from the person who manages your website.
1. Define what you are checking
- Choose one important offering and the customer it suits.
- Write down the area served, where location matters.
- List three to five genuine questions a customer might ask while comparing options.
- Identify the page that should help them and the next step it offers.
For example, “improve AI visibility” is difficult to assess. “Help small employers understand our monthly bookkeeping service and request a suitable consultation” gives the review a clear purpose.
2. Check whether useful pages can be reached
- Open the relevant page while signed out. Confirm the intended public content is available.
- Check that visitors can reach it through ordinary links from your main pages.
- Ask your website manager to review indexing instructions, canonical URLs and access restrictions.
- Review the page’s status in the relevant search engine’s webmaster tools.
- Check the mobile page for unreadable text, intrusive overlays and broken navigation.
A working page and an indexed page are different observations. Record which you have confirmed. Keep deliberate security and privacy restrictions in place while investigating access problems.
3. Make the business and offering understandable
- State what the offering includes and who it is intended for.
- Explain important exclusions, eligibility requirements or practical constraints.
- Describe the process and what happens after an enquiry.
- Include pricing or explain how a quote is determined where useful and appropriate.
- Keep contact details, names and service descriptions consistent across your website and relevant profiles.
Ask someone unfamiliar with the business to describe the offering after reading the page. If their understanding differs from what you provide, that is a useful reason to revise the copy.
4. Check the evidence behind your claims
- Identify claims such as “specialist”, “experienced” or “trusted” and ask what supports them.
- Use genuine examples, clearly attributed customer feedback or demonstrable qualifications where available.
- Label fictional examples and hypothetical scenarios clearly.
- Check that external profiles accurately describe the current business.
- Keep an internal record of permissions for customer names, results, quotations and screenshots.
A profile created by your own business is a statement about the business. An independent review or editorial reference is a different kind of evidence. Record them separately.
5. Observe AI answers carefully
- Record the exact question, platform, date, location setting and whether web search was used.
- Separate a brand mention from a clickable citation and from an explicit recommendation.
- Open the cited sources and check what they actually support.
- Record inaccurate descriptions as well as missing mentions.
- Repeat selected questions on another date before treating a result as a pattern.
A single answer is an observation. It cannot establish how often customers see the same result or prove why a particular business appeared.
6. Choose the next action
| Record | What to write |
|---|---|
| Problem | The specific information gap or access issue. |
| Evidence | A page, screenshot, search-engine report or dated observation. |
| Action | The smallest useful correction or improvement. |
| Owner | Who can make and verify the change. |
| Review | When and how you will check whether the problem is resolved. |
A worked example
This is a fictional example, not a client result. A bookkeeping business offers monthly support, but its service page says only “complete accounting solutions”. An enquiry form provides no indication of what information is needed.
The first action is to explain which monthly tasks are included, who the service suits, which work is quoted separately and what a prospective customer should send. The review checks whether the page is accurate and whether enquiries contain more useful information. Any later change in search visibility needs separate measurement; it cannot simply be credited to the rewrite.
Use the checklist as a working record
Mark each check as confirmed, needs investigation or not applicable. Keep the evidence beside it. A short list of verified problems is more useful than a score that conceals what has actually been checked.
For context, read our guide to SEO and AI search priorities, explore VisibleShift’s other guides, or suggest a question for a future guide.
Platform reference: Google’s guidance on generative AI search. This checklist is VisibleShift’s practical review framework; it is not an official platform assessment or certification.