AEO is not a one-off project. Models update, search indexes refresh, and the pages AI reads about you change. An answer that names you today can drop you next month.
You don't need a team to keep up. You need the same hour, every week, run the same way.
The routine
| Block | Time | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Test | 20 min | Ask the same five questions on ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Log the answers. |
| 2. Compare | 10 min | Check against last week. Are you still mentioned? Did your position move? Any new errors or new competitors? |
| 3. Fix | 20 min | Pick one thing and fix it. |
| 4. Record | 10 min | Write down the date, what you changed, and what to check next week. |
1. Test
Use the five-question set from Five questions to test your brand in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Keep the wording identical every week, or you can't tell what moved. Use a fresh chat for each question and run each one more than once.
2. Compare
Keep the log in a simple spreadsheet. One row per question per engine, with columns for the date, whether you were mentioned, your position, what was said, anything wrong, and the competitors named. A change you can see in two consecutive weeks is worth acting on. A single odd answer is not.
3. Fix
Choose one fix only. When you change five things at once, you never learn which one worked. Good first picks:
- A wrong fact: What to do when AI gets your brand wrong
- A weak page: Write pages AI can quote
- A competitor that keeps showing up in your place: read the page the engine cites for them and ask what it says that yours doesn't
4. Record
Note what you changed and the date. Next week's comparison depends on it.
Once a month
Re-run the crawl checks from Can AI crawlers read your site?. A firewall rule or a site redesign can block the bots without anyone noticing.
What to expect
Don't expect overnight movement. Some engines search the live web and may reflect page changes sooner. Others change more slowly. Nobody can promise a date, which is exactly why a log matters: it shows you the trend even when a single week looks flat.
If you want a scored starting point before you begin, the free AI Visibility Score rates your brand out of 100 across all three engines.