AI Visibility Audit for New Zealand Businesses
More of your customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google a question and read the answer before they visit any website. An AI visibility audit shows what those systems say about your business today, whether the details are right, and which sources they rely on. You receive a clear report and a prioritised plan, written in plain English, so you know what to fix first and why. It is one of our AI search services.
If you would like a quick first look before committing to a full audit, our free check covers the basics of SEO and AI visibility at no cost.
Why an AI visibility audit matters now
A traditional SEO audit tells you whether your pages can rank. It does not tell you what an AI assistant says when a customer asks, “Who is a good accountant in Hamilton?” or “Is this company reliable?” Those answers are assembled from your website, your Google Business Profile, directories, reviews, news and forums. When those sources disagree, the answer can be vague, out of date or simply wrong.
Many business owners have never checked. Some find their old address, a service they stopped offering, or a competitor named in their place. Others find they are not mentioned at all. None of this is visible in your analytics, which is why it often goes unnoticed for months.
An AI search audit turns guesswork into a baseline you can act on. It shows:
- Whether AI systems mention your business for the questions that matter.
- Whether what they say is accurate and current.
- Which sources they draw on, including sources you do not control.
- What to change on your own site and profiles to improve the picture.
What we check across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
We test a set of questions your customers are likely to ask, agreed with you before we start. These cover branded questions about your business and unbranded questions about your services and location. We run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, including AI Overviews where they appear, and record every answer with the date.
For each answer we note:
- Whether your business is mentioned or cited.
- Whether the description is accurate, including services, location, hours and contact details.
- How you are framed: as a recommended option, a passing mention, or not at all.
- Which competitors appear alongside you or instead of you.
- Which websites are cited as sources.
AI answers vary between sessions, users and dates, so we run each question more than once and report what we see as a pattern rather than a single result. We do not claim to know exactly how any of these systems rank sources. We record what they show, compare it with the facts, and trace inaccuracies back to the sources that feed them.
Entity consistency: does the internet agree about you?
AI systems build their picture of a business from many sources at once. If your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook page and directory listings give different names, addresses, phone numbers or descriptions, the systems have to choose, and they may choose badly. This is entity consistency, and it is often the quickest area to improve.
In this part of the LLM visibility check we compare:
- Your business name, address and phone number across your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, social profiles and relevant New Zealand directories.
- Opening hours, service areas and service lists.
- Your one line description and how it is worded in different places.
- Founder or director information where it is relevant to trust.
We list every mismatch we find in a simple table, with the correct version and where it needs to change. Many fixes take minutes once you know where to look. Others, such as old listings you no longer control, need a request to the site owner, and we tell you how to make it. Our local SEO service can take care of these updates for you if you prefer.
Schema, structured data and technical access
Structured data is code on your pages that describes your business in a format machines can read. Using the schema.org vocabulary, it can state your organisation name, address, services, reviews and the profiles that belong to you. Google asks that structured data matches the visible text on the page, and we check that it does.
We review:
- Whether Organization or LocalBusiness markup exists, is valid and is complete.
- Whether sameAs links connect your site to your official profiles.
- Whether FAQ, Service and Article markup match the content people see.
- Whether robots.txt, a CDN or a firewall blocks Googlebot or AI crawlers such as GPTBot, PerplexityBot and Google Extended without you meaning to.
- Whether key information is available as plain text rather than hidden in images or scripts.
Where markup is missing or wrong, we provide corrected code or hand it to our schema and entity service for implementation. We never recommend adding markup that describes content that is not on the page.
The audit gives you a clear starting point, and many businesses want to talk through the findings before deciding what to do next. Talk to Cathy about what the audit would cover for your business and how it fits your goals.
Citations and the sources AI systems trust
When AI tools cite sources, they show which pages shaped the answer. Those citations are some of the most useful evidence in the audit. They show which of your own pages carry weight, and which third party pages, such as directories, review sites, news articles or forum threads, are speaking for you.
We collect the cited sources for each question and group them:
- Your own pages that are cited, and which questions they support.
- Third party pages that describe you accurately.
- Third party pages that are out of date or wrong.
- Pages that cite your competitors but not you, which point to gaps in coverage.
This tells you where effort will count. Sometimes the fix is a clearer service page on your own site. Sometimes it is an updated directory listing or a correction request to a publisher. Sometimes it is a new page that answers a question nobody in your market has answered well. Our LLM SEO and generative engine optimisation services build on these findings.
What you receive at the end of the audit
You receive a written report and a walkthrough call. The report is designed to be read by a business owner, not only a developer, and every finding links to evidence.
The audit includes:
- A summary of how each AI platform describes your business, with dated screenshots.
- A table of accuracy issues and the source of each one.
- An entity consistency table covering your name, address, phone number, hours and descriptions across your listings.
- A structured data and crawler access review with corrected code where needed.
- A list of cited sources, grouped by whether they help or hurt.
- A comparison with up to three competitors you nominate.
- A prioritised action plan split into quick fixes, medium term work and longer term content.
| Area | What the audit shows | Typical next step |
|---|---|---|
| AI answers | What each platform says about you | Correct inaccurate sources |
| Entity consistency | Where your details disagree | Update listings and profiles |
| Schema | Missing or mismatched markup | Add or correct structured data |
| Citations | Which pages speak for you | Improve or create key pages |
The cost is quoted in advance and depends on the number of questions, platforms and competitors in scope. There are no hidden extras, and you are under no obligation to use us for the follow up work. We do not guarantee that any AI system will mention or cite your business after changes are made.
Frequently asked questions about AI visibility audits
How is an AI visibility audit different from an SEO audit? Our SEO audit looks at how your site performs in classic search: crawling, indexing, content and links. An AI visibility audit looks at what AI assistants and Google AI Overviews say about you, how accurate it is, and which sources shape it. The two work well together.
Which AI platforms do you check? ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, including AI Overviews where they appear. We can add other platforms on request.
Do you need access to my website? Not for the core audit. Read only access to Google Search Console and GA4 helps us connect findings to real traffic. We never ask for write access at the audit stage.
Can you guarantee AI tools will recommend my business? No. AI systems decide what to include and those decisions change. The audit shows what to fix, and we report honestly on what changes afterwards.
How often should we repeat the audit? Many businesses repeat it every six or twelve months, or after a rebrand, move or major website change.
Is my information kept private? Yes. We handle your information in line with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 and use it only to carry out the audit.
Once you know what AI systems say about you, the next step is to make sure Google’s own AI features can find and use your best pages. Our Google AI Overviews optimisation service picks up where the audit leaves off.
Net Branding Limited, 165 Orakei Road, Remuera, Auckland, New Zealand. Phone 09 523 0478 or email cathy@seocompanynz.com. Read our Google reviews.