Is it working? Five checks for every layer of AI visibility

Most monthly marketing reports are full of activity: posts published, keywords tracked, pages added. And I get why, because activity is easy to count. But none of it answers the question a managing partner actually has, which is whether any of it brought in a client. So this post is about the other kind of number, the kind that tells you whether each layer of visibility is working.

Activity is not progress

Pull last month's marketing report and circle every number that connects to a real inquiry. If you cannot circle anything, that is your first finding. The fix is not a bigger dashboard. It is one honest check for each layer of visibility, most of them free, run the same way every month. If the layers themselves are new to you, start with SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO, SXO: Five Acronyms, One Test.

Crawled: are your pages actually in the index?

A page for every service does nothing if search engines never kept it. Open Google Search Console, the free tool Google gives every site owner, and look at the Pages report. It shows how many of your pages are indexed and lists the ones Google found but chose not to keep, with the reason. Compare that number with the pages you think you have.

A missing page is usually something simple: a page blocked by mistake, two pages that look alike, or a page nothing else links to. Every one of those is fixable, and fixing them helps every layer above. If no one at the firm has the Search Console login, that is the finding.

Answered: do you show up for the questions clients ask?

Rankings for a phrase like "estate planning attorney" tell you less than they used to, because clients increasingly type a full question and read the answer at the top. So track the questions. Write down the five you hear most on intake calls. Once a month, search each one and note whether a summary appears at the top, and whether your firm or your page is in it. Use the same five every month.

You can also look in Search Console for searches that start with how, what, can, or do. Those are question searches, and how often your pages appear for them is a cleaner signal than any single ranking.

Cited: does AI name you?

This is the newest layer and the hardest to measure, so it is worth being honest about how. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity the same set of real client questions every month. Record whether your firm is named, which other firms are named, and which sources each answer points to.

Here is the candid part: the answers change from one run to the next, so a single check proves very little. A pattern over three or four months is what tells you something. Anyone who shows you one screenshot and calls it a result is showing you activity, not progress. And watch the sources as closely as the mentions. If the AI keeps citing a directory with your old address, that is where the work is.

Understood: does AI describe you correctly?

Being named is one thing. Being described correctly is another, and for a regulated practice the second can matter more. Ask an AI assistant to describe your firm in a few sentences, then count the mistakes: a wrong practice area, an attorney who left two years ago, an old address, a service you do not offer.

The goal is zero, and every error points to a source that disagrees with your own site. The fix is almost never to argue with the AI. It is to state the facts clearly on your site, mark them up so machines can read them, and correct the outside profiles that say something different.

Converted: did any of it turn into a client?

Every layer below this one exists to produce a phone call, a form, or a booked consultation. Count those each month, by source. Your analytics can usually show visits that arrive from AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity as their own sources. And the simplest tracking tool still works: ask every new client how they found you, and add "ChatGPT or another AI tool" to the answer choices.

Those numbers will be small at first, and that is fine. A firm that knows two clients came through AI answers this quarter knows more than a firm with a thousand untracked visits.

Measure it inside the rules

Measurement has its own compliance layer, and generic advice tends to skip it. For a medical practice, tracking tools on pages patients use can expose health information, so check with your compliance lead before adding analytics or ad pixels to appointment, condition, or patient portal pages. For a law firm, a testimonial or result you collect while measuring outcomes still has to meet your state bar's advertising rules before it appears anywhere. For an advisor, performance figures that end up in marketing fall under the SEC Marketing Rule.

None of this means measuring less. It means deciding what you track, and where, on purpose, and keeping the sensitive pages clean. That is how Aday Interactive, Inc. sets it up.

One page, once a month

Put the five checks on one page and you have a report that tells a managing partner something real:

• Pages indexed versus pages you have
• Your five intake questions, and whether you appeared
• Your AI question set, whether you were named, and by which source
• The number of errors in how AI describes you
• Inquiries and consultations that came in, by source

It takes about an hour. After three months the trend is clear: which layer is improving, which is stuck, and where the next dollar should go. For a starting point, the free AI Visibility Scorecard shows which layer is weakest for your firm today.