Most brands have no idea where they stand in AI search. They have no metric, no baseline, no benchmark. They feel that something has changed in the buyer journey but they can't quite point to it.
You can fix that in sixty seconds. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. For each, type the buying-intent question your best customer would type when looking for what you sell. Not your brand name. Not your category — the actual question. "Best accountant for UK startups." "Top boutique security in central London." "Clean skincare for sensitive skin."
Read the answer carefully. Three things tell you everything.
Are you mentioned at all? If yes, the rest is optimisation. If no, you have a foundational visibility problem to solve before anything else matters.
If you are mentioned, in what position and with what framing? Being named first, with detailed and accurate description, is meaningfully different from being mentioned in passing as one of several options.
Who is named instead of you, or alongside you? These are your real competitors in AI search — and they may be different from your competitive set in traditional SEO or paid media. The brands AI engines treat as peers are the ones whose share you can actually take.
Repeat the exercise across four or five of your highest-value queries. The pattern that emerges is your starting position. If it looks worse than you expected, you are not alone — most brands look worse than they expected. The ones that act on that finding move first.