Does your company exist in AI search? How to verify it with real data and where to start

Does your company appear in ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot responses? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it depends on who’s asking. Knowing whether you actually appear in AI searches is less straightforward than it seems. 

Find out how to get real data on your AI presence using the tools available today, what Google and Microsoft recommend to improve your visibility, why no SEO, GEO or AEO hack can replace consistent and solid work.

First of all: what does AI actually know about your company?

Try this: open any AI tool and ask “do you know X company?”. It will almost certainly say yes, but don’t celebrate just yet.

If you’re logged in, the model may be drawing from your conversation history or documents you’ve shared previously. If you’ve used the chatbot to search for your company in past sessions, that memory is still there.

AI search engines generally work in two ways:

• They draw from a closed database, updated periodically depending on the model;
• They run real-time searches on traditional search engines through a technique called RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), which retrieves the most relevant web pages and uses them to build the response.

On top of this, there’s the “query fan-out” system: instead of interpreting your question literally, the model generates multiple related queries in parallel to gather as much information as possible before responding. The result is that the same question, asked by different people, contexts, languages or moments, can produce very different answers.

The variables at play are numerous: the words used, tone of voice, grammar, location, the user’s estimated age, even the emotional nuances of the text. An AI response is never objective: it’s contextual, reconstructed from scratch every time.

So how do you find out whether your company is inside AI search, and to what extent?

5 tools to measure your company’s presence in AI searches

Google Analytics: AI Assistant channel or custom channel

Traffic from AI tools often ends up under GA4’s Unassigned or Referral channels, mixed in with everything else. To isolate it, you can create a custom channel grouping the main AI domains (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, etc)

In May 2026, Google added a native AI Assistant channel to GA4’s Default Channel Group, which automatically classifies traffic from the main chatbots without configurations. The custom channel remains useful for covering any AI platforms GA4 might not include.

Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance dashboard

Bing Webmaster Tools offers a dedicated AI Performance dashboard with data on clicks, citations, queries, intents, topics, pages linked by Microsoft’s AI tools. It’s currently one of the few direct windows into this kind of data offered by analytics platforms.

Keep in mind that the platform itself warns that the data shown is only a sample of actual activity, subject to further processing. It’s a valid directional indicator, but not a tool for absolute measurements.

3. Third-party SEO tools for keyword and prompt tracking (with caution)

Several third-party SEO tools (such as SEOZoom) have added keyword tracking for Google’s AI Overviews and prompt tracking for all the other AI tools.

They can offer useful signals, but with two important limitations to consider:

1. AI Overviews are notoriously volatile, far more so than standard SERP rankings; 
2. Chatbot responses are heavily personalised, so what you see is not necessarily what another user sees. 

And there’s a third limit worth flagging: a prompt doesn’t work like a keyword. A keyword is a standardised query, repeatable and trackable over time; a prompt is phrased in a specific moment, by a specific person, in a specific context, which makes it unrepeatable. 

4. Microsoft Clarity: AI citations and grounding queries

Microsoft Clarity recently made available a dashboard for AI citations and grounding queries: the search terms Copilot uses internally to retrieve content from the web before generating a response.

When a user asks Copilot a question, the system translates the request into simpler search terms, queries the web index in real time, uses that content as the basis for its answer. With Clarity you can now see which of these queries brought users to your site, which pages were cited and how often. 

Grounding queries may differ from what users actually type, but they reveal how AI systems structure and retrieve information. It’s one of the few tools offering real data on the Microsoft and Bing AI ecosystem, even if currently limited in scope.

5. Google Search Console: generative AI reports (…when?)

In June 2026 Google announced new generative AI performance reports in Search Console: a dedicated section showing visibility data from Google’s AI features, specifically AI Overviews and AI Mode, separate from traditional search data.

For now, a key metric still seems to be missing: clicks. Without them, you can see visibility but not measure its actual traffic value. The report is currently available only to a subset of sites being tested in the UK. Google has indicated it will add further metrics over time, with no confirmed timeline.

Not showing up in AI search? Here’s where to start, according to Google and Bing

As we’ve seen, AI search engines build their responses by drawing from an internal database updated periodically, or by running real-time searches on traditional search engines. Either way, the entry point runs through SEO.

The work involved is essentially the same, with some differences depending on who you follow: Google and Microsoft have published guidelines that point in noticeably different directions.

What does Microsoft say?

Bing and Copilot recommend structuring content with an eye on how machines break it down. AI models parse text into smaller chunks before reassembling them into a response. The key guidelines are:

• Use modular formats with clear headings, bullet points, tables and Q&A sections;
• Add Schema Markup in JSON-LD to help AI systems identify with certainty what each page is about;
• Pay attention to form as well: short, clear sentences, no decorative punctuation, no text hidden in expandable tabs.

What does Google say?

Google starts from a different position, almost the opposite. Its official guide states explicitly that GEO and AEO are still SEO: no special requirements, no AI-specific markup, no llms.txt file that works miracles.

Its systems are already capable of reading web pages written naturally, without any additional fragmentation. The focus should be on substance: original content (non-commodity), first-hand experience, analysis that can’t be found elsewhere.

It’s the E-E-A-T principle applied to the AI era, with a clear line drawn between generic content and content that genuinely adds value and satisfies search intent.

Who’s right: Microsoft or Google?

Probably both, on different fronts:

1. Microsoft approaches the problem from a technical angle: how to make it as easy as possible for an algorithm to extract and reuse your content. 
2. Google focuses on quality: if the content has real substance, its systems are mature enough to find and surface it without artificial optimisation.

The contradiction is real, but it’s not paralyzing. Structuring content well and writing it with people in mind are not conflicting goals. A clear, well-organised text that answers real questions with original information satisfies both criteria at once.

What doesn’t exist, in either approach, is a shortcut.There’s no SEO, GEO or AEO hack that will put your company into AI responses within a few weeks. 

What there is, is consistent work: a clear and authoritative brand, content that says something others don’t, an online presence that over time becomes a credible reference for people before it becomes one for algorithms.

Want to know more about search engine optimization (AI included)?

If you’re looking for a starting point, the answer is a solid SEO: a brand identity that leaves no doubt about who you are, what you do, what you offer. Everything else follows.

Antartika is a digital marketing agency that works with the Integreation method: SEO, AI search presence, social media and online visibility are not separate activities, but parts of a single system where strategy, content, promotion and data support each other.

In a moment where the boundaries between SEO, GEO and AEO are still fluid and the rules are shifting fast, chasing every new development isn’t the answer. What’s needed is a solid foundation built to last, regardless of how algorithms evolve.

If you want to understand where your company stands today, get in touch: we’ll talk through your project, assess the starting point and define concrete objectives together.