For SEO agencies

Client's ChatGPT check vs your AI visibility report: what to say (2026)

Your client asked ChatGPT once and the brand was not there, while your report counts it. Both can be true, and how you answer decides the next call.

Drafted by our AI research agents. Reviewed and approved by Jordan, founder. Published November 4, 2026. 8 min read.

On the call: agree with what the client saw, show their assistant's count, send the question list, state the limits. Call this week? Sillage Data's free sample returns that client's count on each assistant in 48 hours, under your logo. Present it as a first look, not a verdict: it is one run, and answers move between runs (ChatGPT held at 2 of 10 for Moz, Gemini went from 2 to 4, Claude from 7 to 9). The full report asks each question 3 times.

Why do the report and the client disagree?

Four reasons stack: one answer versus many, one assistant versus four, API versus app, and a client question that is not a tracked one. The first is the one we measured.

Agencies run into this: an r/seogrowth thread advised reporting a trend, not a fixed position. One thread is not a survey, so we ran the test. (See which brands ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini each recommend.)

How much do AI answers change between runs?

In our test the first tracked brand changed in 7 of 40 question-assistant pairs (about 1 in 6) between two passes a few hours apart; we cannot say how much answers vary in general. We ran the same 10 buyer questions about SEO tools twice on October 29, 2026, on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity: 40 answers per pass, a few hours apart.

Three readings. Answers move: Moz went from 14 to 18 answers, and Gemini's first-named brand changed most (4 of 10). Much holds: in 146 of 160 yes/no checks ("is this brand named in this answer?", 4 brands, 40 answers) both passes agreed (102 times the brand was named in both, 44 times in neither), and "best tool to check domain authority" had Moz first on all 4 assistants both times. And the gap between assistants held: ChatGPT 2 against Claude 7, then 2 against Claude 9.

The limits. Two passes, the same day, one answer per question per pass, official APIs with web search on. "On top" means named first among the four brands we tracked (Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking). Moz is a well-known brand; a smaller one may behave differently. This shows that answers move, not by how much.

What do you say on the call?

Agree with what the client saw, explain that the report is a count over many questions, hand over the question list, and say the limits.

1. Get their exact question first. Run it yourself on the same assistant two or three times and note what changes. It shows whether the gap is the question or the brand.
2. Agree with what they saw. "Yes, on that question ChatGPT does not name you."
3. Explain what the report counts. "It asks the same buyer questions on four assistants and counts how often you are named, in which place, and which pages are cited."
4. Give them the questions. Send the list, and add theirs if missing.
5. Say the limits out loud. "Our checks use the official APIs, so the app can differ, and answers shift between runs. That is why we count across many questions, every month, not one answer."
6. Move to the lost questions. "These are the questions where a competitor is named first. That is what we work on."

What does the gap look like on a real brand?

In pass 1 (the one in our Moz sample report), Moz was named in 14 of 40 answers, and ChatGPT left it out of 8 of its 10 (through the API; the app may differ).

The majority rule: a brand is shown as named first only when a strict majority of the assistants agree (3 of 4); otherwise the report says "Varies". A blended 14 of 40 hides the spread, so the report splits the count by assistant and you open on theirs: ChatGPT, 2 of 10.

Moz came first on 1 question; on 6, another brand came first on at least 3 assistants (on "Semrush alternatives", the question names Semrush); on 3, the assistants split.

In pass 2 the same brands held the majority on the 7 questions with a clear leader (3 of 4 instead of 4 of 4 on backlinks, rank tracking and local), and the 3 split questions stayed split.

What should you avoid saying?

Do not call the client's check wrong, and do not promise a place in an AI answer.

• "Your screenshot is wrong." It is one sample, and a real one: in our run ChatGPT left Moz out of 8 of 10 answers in both passes.
• "We will get you named by ChatGPT." No one can promise that. Google does not promise it even for its own Search (its guide: "Indexing and serving aren't guaranteed.")

What do you do after the call?

Add the client's own question to the tracked list, re-run the same questions next month and show the client the change. If their check came back empty, see what the question-by-question view looks like in the Moz sample report.

If the client's question names their brand, mark it: the question already hands the brand to the assistant, so it is not a fair test.

Sillage Data builds the full report white-label, under your logo: 30 buyer questions on 4 assistants, the count split by assistant, the question list and the pages cited. $349, paid after you have it, and nothing to pay if it is not delivered within 3 business days after we have the brand, its website and 3 competitors (Refund Policy). Start free on the client who called.

Questions agencies ask

Why does ChatGPT not mention my client when my AI visibility tool says it does?

Because a tool counts many answers and a person sees one, and answers move between runs: in our two Moz passes the first tracked brand changed (or none was named) in 7 of 40 question-assistant pairs. Show the count and the question list.

Does the API give the same answer as the ChatGPT app?

Not necessarily, and we have not measured the gap. One practitioner thread on r/seogrowth says the web app can behave differently. State in the report that it uses the official APIs.

How often do AI answers change between runs?

In our Moz test, the first tracked brand changed (or none was named) in 7 of 40 question-assistant pairs across two passes a few hours apart, about 1 in 6 in this one test of one brand. It shows that answers move, not how much they move in general.

Can I promise a client that ChatGPT will name their brand?

No. No one controls what an assistant writes. Promise the work: study the cited pages and re-run monthly.

How many questions should a report track?

Our full report uses 30 buyer questions, each asked 3 times on 4 assistants (360 answers per report). The 10-question Moz example is a first look.

How we tested and sourced this article

The Moz example is a real run of our report on October 29, 2026: 10 questions on ChatGPT (gpt-6-luna), Claude (claude-sonnet-5), Gemini (gemini-3.6-flash) and Perplexity (perplexity/sonar), through their official APIs with web search on, US market requested (Gemini's API does not take a country). Pass 1 ran between 16:41 and 17:03 UTC; the question table comes from it, as does the sample report. Pass 2 repeated the same questions and models at 21:24 UTC. All 80 answers were read by code: whole-word brand matching, order of first mention; brand order counts only the four tracked brands (Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking). Moz is a public brand used as an example, not a client. Our report is not Google data; for AI Overviews, use the Generative AI performance report in Search Console.

Check it yourself. The raw answers are public: pass 1 (JSON), one record per answer, and pass 2 (JSON), with the full text of each answer. Run the test yourself: our tool is public on Apify.

Practitioner discussion: the r/seogrowth thread "Why do AI SEO tools show me great results, but my client sees nothing in ChatGPT?" (we read a snapshot of it and its replies). Google: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. We are not affiliated with Moz, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Perplexity.