Five prompts that show whether AI describes you accurately, vaguely, or not at all.
Somewhere right now, a potential customer is asking an AI tool about your company. They won’t visit your website first. They’ll read a three-sentence answer, maybe a short list of alternatives, and decide who gets a closer look.
Have you read that answer?
To see how AI describes your brand, ask the same five questions in a few AI tools, save the answers, and score them for accuracy, clarity, and distinctiveness. Vague or wrong answers usually mean the brand is unclear or inconsistent across the places AI reads. It’s the machine version of a question every brand should ask: what do people decide we are?
Why check what AI says about your brand?
Brand recognizability is what people take a brand to be, and more and more, some of those people are software. AI tools summarize brands from what they can find and repeat across sources: your site, your profiles, press, reviews, lists, and community chatter. They can only repeat what is clear and consistent. A vague brand gets a vague summary, and a brand that says different things in different places gets a muddled one.
That makes an AI answer a useful mirror. It isn’t the truth about your brand, and it changes by tool, date, and wording. But it shows what a fast reader would take away from everything you’ve put out.
How to run the audit
Keep it simple and repeatable:
- Use three different AI tools, each in a fresh session.
- Use identical wording for each prompt, with your brand name and a real competitor swapped in.
- Run each prompt twice, since answers shift.
- Save the answers with the date, and note any sources the tool shows.
The five prompts
01. What is [Brand]?
This reveals basic recognition. A good answer is a correct one- or two-sentence definition in your own terms. A red flag is “I don’t have information,” or a mix-up with another company.
02. Who is [Brand] for, and who is it not for?
This reveals audience clarity. A good answer names a specific audience. A red flag is “businesses of all sizes.”
03. How is [Brand] different from [competitor]?
This reveals distinctiveness. A good answer names a real, specific difference. A red flag is two brands that sound interchangeable.
04. What do people say about [Brand]?
This reveals perception and sources. A good answer shows themes you recognize. A red flag is old reviews, or complaints you thought were resolved.
05. What would you recommend for [the problem you solve]?
This reveals whether you’re named unprompted. A good answer includes you. A red flag is a list of only competitors.
How to score what you get
Score each answer from 0 to 2 on five things: accuracy, clarity, distinctiveness, sentiment, and presence. That gives you a total out of 10 per tool. It’s a rough rubric, not a standard, so the pattern across tools is more useful than the number.
What the results usually mean
- You’re missing. There aren’t enough clear, repeated mentions for the tool to work with.
- It’s wrong or out of date. Sources disagree, or the old ones are the loudest.
- It’s generic. Your signals aren’t distinctive, so you sound like your category.
- It differs from what you say. There’s a gap between what you put out and what people take you to be. The retell test, asking five customers to describe you to a friend, shows the human side of the same gap.
- The tools disagree. Your description varies across the places they read.
How to fix what you find
- Write one sentence that defines what you are and who it’s for, and use it everywhere.
- Put an answer-first paragraph near the top of your homepage and about page that says what you do.
- Align your profiles, directories, and listings so they say the same thing.
- Earn descriptions from other people: articles, lists, and communities. What others say about you tends to carry weight.
- Publish specific, original work with a named author instead of generic content.
How often to repeat it
Quarterly, and after any rebrand or major launch. Keep a dated log so you can see what moved.
Frequently asked questions
Can you control what AI says about your brand?
Not directly. You can make your brand easier to describe correctly by being clear, specific, and consistent across the places AI tools read.
How often do AI answers change?
They can change between tools, sessions, and dates, which is why the audit repeats each prompt and logs the date.
Does this replace SEO?
No. It complements it. The audit checks the description people may meet before they ever reach a search result or your site.
What if AI gets my brand wrong?
Find where the wrong version comes from, such as an old profile, a mismatched listing, or an outdated article. Fix it at the source, and re-run the audit later.
The short version
AI will describe your brand whether you check or not. Run the five prompts, read the answers twice, and treat what you find as a mirror. If a machine can’t say what you are in a sentence, it’s worth asking whether your customers can.
Not sure what AI is picking up about you? Send us your results and we’ll tell you what we’d fix first.
