Step 1: Build the question set

Ask what your clients actually ask — not what you wish they asked. Cover three intents, several phrasings each:

SELLER-INTENT
- Who should I hire to sell my home in [city]?
- Best listing agent in [neighborhood]?
- Who gets the best price for homes in [area]?

BUYER-INTENT
- Who's a good buyer's agent in [city]?
- I'm relocating to [city] — which realtor should I use?
- Best agent for first-time buyers in [area]?

AGENT-INTENT / VALIDATION
- Is [Your Name] a good realtor?
- [Your Name] [city] reviews
- Best real estate agents in [city] — list with reasons

Ten to fifteen questions is enough. Write them down — the audit only becomes a trend line if you ask the identical set next month.

Step 2: Run it clean

Ask each question in ChatGPT (with web search enabled), Gemini, Perplexity, and a regular Google search (noting whether an AI Overview appears and what it says). Two hygiene rules: use fresh chats for each question — prior conversation contaminates answers — and don't argue with the AI or feed it your name mid-conversation; you're measuring what a stranger gets, not what you can coax. A logged-out or incognito pass for the Google checks avoids personalization skew.

Step 3: Score it — three columns

For every question × assistant, record: Named? (does your name appear at all), Cited? (does your website or profile appear as a source), and Who instead? (every agent named, every source cited). That third column is the gold. The agents named are your real AI-era competitors — often not who you'd guess. The cited sources (portals, directories, local press, review sites) are the places AI already trusts for your market: your mention target list, ranked by the machine itself.

Step 4: Read the gaps and act

  • Not named anywhere: entity problem — your profiles disagree or barely exist. Fix consistency and schema first (our walkthrough).
  • Named but never cited: AI has heard of you but has nothing of yours worth quoting — you need citable content: direct answers, neighborhood pages, the sources machines lift.
  • Competitors cited via specific sources: get present on those exact sources — that's your shortest path into the answers.
  • Invisible on ChatGPT specifically: check Bing — ChatGPT's search runs on it (here's why), and most agents have never verified there.

Re-run monthly, same questions, and watch the Named column. That loop — run bigger, scored across phrasing variants, with the fixes done for you — is literally our AI citations service. If the DIY version shows you the gap and you'd rather not spend the monthly afternoon, the free audit is us running it on your market.