How to measure AI visibility: free tracking template

Are you checking whether an assistant names your brand, cites your page or sends a visitor? Decide what counts before recording results. A name without a link is a mention. A clickable reference to your page is a citation. Visits and registrations require separate website measurement. Do not combine these events into a single visibility percentage. A free manual review can provide a useful baseline without pretending to cover every AI system or every customer question.

Start with genuine customer questions about a problem, product comparison or service. Keep unbranded questions separate from questions that already name your business. Record the language and intended market. An English question with no location is different from a French question about a local service in Belgium. Use keyword research to inform the question list, but do not equate search volume with the number of questions people ask an assistant.

Download the blank AI visibility CSV tracking template. For each observation, record the date and time, market, language, platform, model or mode, question, brand mention, cited URL and a reference to your saved evidence. The template contains column headings only, not invented results. Record only information you are allowed to retain. Avoid client details, passwords and private sessions. Keep the same questions and settings for the next comparison.

Answers can change with time, model, search mode, location and personalisation. Record these differences instead of attributing every change to your website. Keep the denominator visible: how many observations did you actually make? A percentage based on a small sample is unstable. A missing citation does not prove that your site is never mentioned. Our audit methodology explains why unknown outcomes should remain separate from measured zeroes.

Review available referring sources in your website analytics and verify meaningful actions, such as confirmed registrations. Some visits do not carry a recognisable referrer. Do not assign every unknown visit to AI. Google reports traffic from its AI features within overall Search Console search traffic. An increase in your Search Console reports therefore does not establish a separate increase from AI Overviews. Compare equivalent periods, countries and devices where that information is available.

Open the page intended to answer the customer question. Add a clear answer, a specific example and verifiable sources where they help readers. Check access and useful internal links. Google says its AI features need no special AI files or special Schema.org markup. Record the edit and repeat the question set using the same method. Save your site and actions in a Marketing Scan account and follow the weekly monitoring checklist. A public website audit is not a complete tracker of every AI mention.