12 ChatGPT SEO prompts to audit your AI visibility

A ChatGPT visibility audit is a small set of prompts you run to see how the assistant describes, recommends and sources your brand. In 2026 most brands find they are described but not recommended: across 1,796 non-branded answers Asva AI classified on 16 September 2026, the AI-visibility category was cited as a source 142 times and recommended as a vendor zero times. ChatGPT alone drew 26.64% of citations in the 30 days to 18 September 2026, so what it says about you is worth reading directly. The twelve prompts below are copy-paste ready — swap in your brand, category and competitors, then read the replies like an auditor rather than a fan. Asva AI's tracker measures how often a brand is cited and recommended across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, Meta AI and Google AI Mode, on a rolling window built from classified citation data.

How to run a ChatGPT visibility audit

Run every prompt in a fresh chat with memory off, so your own history does not colour the answer.

Personalization, saved memory and past chats all bias what ChatGPT tells you, so a logged-in reply is a poor mirror of what a stranger sees. Use a temporary chat, and run each prompt twice — web search on, then off — because a browsing answer leans on live citations while an offline answer reflects the model's trained impression of you. Repeat the set from the regions you sell in, since replies shift by country, and save the outputs so you can compare them month over month.

Prompts 1–3: how ChatGPT describes your brand

Start with description, because an engine that gets your basics wrong will get your recommendation wrong too.

1. The plain-definition prompt

What is [your brand], and what does it do? Answer in three sentences.

This is your accuracy baseline. Definitions travel further than any other span — 22.7% of the quoted spans in Asva AI's 16 September 2026 corpus were definitional — so a wrong or vague definition is the most expensive error to leave uncorrected.

2. The positioning prompt

Describe [your brand] for someone who has never heard of it. Who is it for and what problem does it solve?

Read this for the category and audience ChatGPT files you under. If it places you in the wrong category or names the wrong buyer, your on-site and off-site copy has not made your positioning legible.

3. The strengths-and-weaknesses prompt

What are [your brand]'s main strengths and weaknesses?

This surfaces the framing an engine repeats when a buyer asks whether to trust you. Note any "weakness" that is really a stale fact or a competitor talking point you can correct at the source.

Prompts 4–6: whether ChatGPT recommends you

A description you can live with means little if the recommendation prompts never name you at all.

4. The unprompted-recommendation prompt

What are the best [category] tools right now?

Do not mention your brand. Whether you appear here, unasked, is the single clearest read on your recommendability — and for most brands the honest answer in 2026 is that they do not appear yet.

5. The buyer-context prompt

I'm a [role] at a [company type] looking for [category] software. What do you recommend and why?

This tests recommendation inside a real buying scenario, where persona and use case shape the shortlist. A brand that shows up for the generic query but vanishes for a specific buyer has a coverage gap to close.

6. The head-to-head prompt

Compare [your brand] and [top competitor]. Which should I choose, and for whom?

Read which of you ChatGPT frames as the default and which as the alternative. The reasons it gives are the exact claims you need corroborated on third-party sites to shift the verdict.

Prompts 7–8: the competitive set ChatGPT holds

The competitors an engine names for you are the ones you are actually measured against in its answers.

7. The competitor-set prompt

Who are the main competitors to [your brand]?

If ChatGPT lists rivals you would not have named — or omits your real ones — its model of your market is out of date. That gap is a brief for the comparison and alternatives content you are missing.

8. The ranked-list prompt

List the top five [category] companies, ranked, with one line on each.

This is your share-of-voice snapshot in miniature. Note who leads by mentions — in the 16 September 2026 category baseline that was Semrush at 416, Profound at 310 and Ahrefs at 278 — and whether you appear on the list at all.

Prompts 9–10: the sources behind the answer

Every recommendation rests on sources, and the sources are the part of the answer you can actually influence.

9. The show-your-sources prompt

What sources are you basing that on? List the URLs.

Run this with web search on, right after a recommendation prompt. The domains it returns show which pages are feeding the answer, and third-party media carried 51.86% of citations in the 30 days to 18 September 2026 — so most of what decides your visibility sits off your own site.

10. The community-sentiment prompt

What do people on Reddit and other forums say about [your brand]?

User-generated content shapes AI answers out of proportion to its size, and Reddit was the single most-cited domain in that same 30-day window at 439 citations. This prompt shows whether the community view engines lean on is one you are monitoring — the work behind AI search monitoring.

Prompts 11–12: errors, gaps and sentiment

The cheapest wins are the confident errors an engine repeats until someone corrects the source.

11. The criticism prompt

What are common complaints or criticisms about [your brand]?

Separate fair criticism from invented ones. A hallucinated complaint that keeps recurring points to a thin or contradictory source an engine is filling in around, and that source is usually fixable.

12. The fact-check prompt

Who founded [your brand], where is it based, and when did it launch?

This is a pure hallucination test on facts that are easy to verify. Wrong founder, location or launch date means your entity data is unclear to the model — the ground floor of any ChatGPT search optimization work.

What these prompts can't tell you

A handful of manual chats is a spot check, not a measurement, and it cannot see across engines or over time.

One session shows a single reply, from one account, on one day — the same prompt tomorrow, or in another country, can name a different set of brands. ChatGPT is also one surface: it drew 26.64% of citations in the 30 days to 18 September 2026, so nearly three-quarters of your visibility lives on engines these prompts never touch. To move from a snapshot to a trend you need continuous tracking — citation intelligence that records where you are cited and recommended across engines on a fixed cadence. Start with a free AI visibility check, or a neutral roundup of the best AI visibility tools.

Frequently asked questions

What are ChatGPT SEO prompts? ChatGPT SEO prompts are questions you ask the assistant to see how it describes, recommends and sources your brand. They are an audit tool, not a ranking tactic — the goal is to read your current visibility, then fix the sources behind it.

Should I turn off memory before running these prompts? Yes. Memory, chat history and personalization bias ChatGPT toward what you have told it before, so a logged-in answer is a poor mirror of what a first-time buyer sees. Use a temporary chat or turn memory off for a clean read.

Why does ChatGPT recommend competitors but not my brand? Usually because the third-party sources an engine trusts describe your competitors more clearly and more often. In the 30 days to 18 September 2026, 51.86% of citations pointed to third-party media, so recommendability is earned mostly off your own site.

How often should I re-run a ChatGPT visibility audit? Treat the manual prompts as a monthly spot check paired with continuous tracking, since answers shift by day, region and browsing mode.

Do these prompts work on other AI engines? Yes — the wording carries over to Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot with light edits, and you should run them there too. ChatGPT was 26.64% of citations in the 30 days to 18 September 2026, so auditing it alone leaves most of your visibility unchecked.

Key takeaways

• A ChatGPT visibility audit reads how the assistant describes, recommends and sources your brand — it is measurement, not a ranking trick.
• Run every prompt in a fresh chat with memory off, twice (web search on and off), across the regions you sell in.
• Whether you appear unprompted in a "best [category] tools" answer is the clearest single read on recommendability.
• Sources decide most of it: third-party media carried 51.86% of citations in the 30 days to 18 September 2026.
• ChatGPT was 26.64% of citations in that window, so pair the manual spot check with continuous, cross-engine tracking.