How to check if ChatGPT mentions your website (on a tiny budget)

A while ago we sat down and listed everything we "needed" to get our little product off the ground. Domain, hosting, email, analytics, a design tool, an SEO tool... the usual.

Then we added up the monthly bills. Ouch.

The SEO tools were the worst part. Great tools, honestly, but they all wanted a monthly plan, and we'd only open them a couple of times a month. When you don't have a single paying customer yet, paying every month for something you barely use just feels wrong. If you're a new startup, a freelancer or you run a small shop, you probably know that feeling.

And lately there's one more thing to worry about: does ChatGPT even know we exist?

Picture this: you run a small online store, and you ask ChatGPT for "a good place to buy handmade soap online". It names three shops. Yours isn't one of them, even though you rank fine on Google. That's a bit scary when you think about how many people now ask an AI first.

The good news: you can check this yourself, for free, in about 15 minutes. Here's how.

1. Write down what your customers would actually ask

Don't start with your brand name. Nobody searches for a brand they've never heard of. Start with their problem.

Grab a notepad and write 5 to 10 questions a real customer might type. For an SEO tool that could be:

• "What's an affordable way to check backlinks?"
• "How do I do keyword research on a small budget?"
• "How can I tell if a website is spammy?"

Try to mix it up a little: a few "how do I..." questions, one or two "what's a good alternative to..." questions, and one with your actual name ("What is SeoShip?").

2. Ask the AIs (in a clean chat)

Now paste each question into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Use a fresh chat, and if you can, log out or turn off memory. Otherwise the AI might remember you and be nicer to you than it is to everyone else.

For each answer, jot down four things:

• Are you mentioned at all?
• If yes, where? First? Buried at the end?
• Which websites does it link to or cite? (Perplexity and ChatGPT with search usually show them.)
• Is what it says about you actually correct?

That third one is the most useful bit, by the way. The sources it cites are the websites the AI trusts for your topic. Remember them, we'll come back to them.

3. Put it in a quick table

Nothing fancy. A spreadsheet like this is enough:

For most young products the pattern is pretty clear after a few rows. The AI may know your name when you ask about it directly, but for the problem questions (the ones that actually bring in new customers) you're often nowhere. That's normal early on, so don't panic if you see the same.

4. Do it again next month

AI answers change all the time. New models, new articles, new search results. Run the same questions once a month and compare with last time. That's your AI visibility in a nutshell: are you showing up more often or not?

So why doesn't the AI mention you yet?

Mostly because nobody's talking about you yet. These assistants largely repeat what trusted websites say. If there's nothing out there, there's nothing to repeat.

A few things that help:

Say clearly what you do. Simple pages that explain what you offer, who it's for and what it costs. A short FAQ helps a lot, since AIs love quoting a clean question and answer.

Add an llms.txt file. It's just a plain text file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that sums up your site for AI assistants: what you do, the key facts, the important links. It took us an afternoon.

Show up where your customers hang out. Remember the sources from step 2? Those are the places to be: directories, review sites, Reddit threads, Q&A sites, helpful articles (hi 👋).

Make sure search engines know you. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. AI assistants that search the web lean on those indexes.

Keep your story the same everywhere. Same name, same description, same prices on every site. If the details don't match, the AI gets unsure, and an unsure AI usually just leaves you out.

The honest downside of doing it by hand

It works, but it gets tedious. Ten questions times four assistants, every month, is a lot of copy and paste. And you only ever see the questions you thought of yourself.

That's actually the reason we added two tools for this to SeoShip, the pay-as-you-go SEO toolkit we built for the exact "small team, small budget" situation from the start of this post. You buy a small credit pack and only pay for the lookups you run. No monthly plan sitting there in the background.

• AI mentions shows how often Google's AI answers and ChatGPT mention a website, for which questions, and which pages they cite. You can put a competitor next to it too.
• Ask the AIs lets you type one question and see what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity answer, side by side, with their sources. Basically steps 2 and 3 of this post in one click.

If you're curious, just try it once. $3 is plenty to get a feel for it, and new accounts get 100 free credits anyway. The backlink, spam score and domain authority checkers are free and don't even need an account.

The short version

1. Write down 5 to 10 questions your customers would ask.
2. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity in a clean chat.
3. Note whether you're mentioned, where, and which sites get cited.
4. Check again every month.
5. Help the AI out: clear pages, a FAQ, an llms.txt, mentions on sites people trust, and the same facts everywhere.

You really don't need a big budget for this. It's mostly about being clear and getting people to talk about you. Do the 15-minute check today and you'll already know more than most of your competitors.

Have you tried asking ChatGPT about your own product? We'd love to hear what it said 😄