Step 1: set your questions and keep them
Write 10 to 30 questions in your buyers' words, without your company name. Mix broad questions ("best accountant in Toronto") with specific ones ("accountant for Ontario dental practices"). Keep them fixed from month to month, or the numbers cannot be compared.
Step 2: turn web search on
The answers that matter to a buyer are the ones built from today's web. In our test of 28 buyer questions on 20 October 2026, Gemini answered 4 of them without running a search at all, so its answer came from what Gemini already knew. Use each engine with search on, and record whether a search actually ran.
Step 3: save every answer
Keep the full answer text, the links cited and the date. Without the saved answer, a result cannot be checked later, and AI answers change from run to run.
Step 4: count mentions and citations separately
A citation is a link to your site that the engine used as a source. Count the answers that name you, the answers that cite your site, and the firms named instead. Read each answer rather than relying on a keyword match, because a match on a common word can count a different business as yours.
Step 5: read the cited pages
The pages an engine cites tell you why it named who it named. In our audit run of 20 October 2026, the ChatGPT and Claude answers to "Best AI agency Toronto?" were built from Clutch's Toronto rankings. If the cited pages are lists you are not on, that is the work to do.
Our baseline case study shows what this method found when we ran it on Kin-etiq.ai.
Should you do it yourself or have it done?
The method above works by hand for a handful of questions. Kin-etiq.ai's Monitor plan runs it for you every month on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, with Google alongside, for $1,000 a month in Canadian dollars. The free assessment is a Level 1 check of your website.