How to Run a Free AI Visibility Audit with Semrush

Author: Luke Harsel

6 min read

March 9, 2026

Contributor: Cecilia Meis

Table of contents

A free AI visibility audit shows how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers when people ask questions about your category.

Whether you're managing your own brand's visibility or auditing a new client, AI systems like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews are now part of how buyers discover and evaluate options.

If your brand isn't showing up in those AI answers that are recommending options, competitors are winning that space instead.

For example, when someone asks AI about the best trail running shoes for someone with wide feet, which brands show up, and how often across similar prompts?

Here's how you can find out, using free Semrush tools, in less than 30 minutes.

What a Free AI Visibility Audit Reveals

A free audit answers three essential questions about your brand's presence in AI-generated answers:

1. Is your brand appearing at all? Domain Overview shows whether AI platforms mention your brand when answering category questions. If you're not appearing, you have a visibility problem.
2. Can AI systems access your content? Site Audit's AI Search Health score reveals technical barriers, such as blocked crawlers or poor content structure, that prevent AI platforms from finding and using your content.
3. How do you compare to competitors? The Free AI Brand Visibility Tool shows whether competitors dominate AI recommendations in your category. If they appear 3-5x more often, they're shaping buyer perceptions before you have an opportunity.

These three checks will confirm whether AI visibility gaps are costing you awareness and consideration.

SEO Audit vs. AI Visibility Audit: What’s the Difference?

SEO audits and AI visibility audits measure different layers of the same goal: being found when people search. SEO audits focus on rankings, keyword gaps, and organic traffic.

AI visibility audits focus on how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers: mentions, citations, sentiment, and brand inclusion across platforms like ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and Gemini.

Both matter. Running them together reveals where strong SEO performance doesn't translate into AI visibility, and where AI systems cite sources that search rankings alone wouldn't predict.

When Should You Run an AI Visibility Audit?

Run a free AI visibility audit alongside your regular SEO audits, to track both layers of visibility.

Common times for an audit include:

• Preparing for a major campaign or product launch, when AI platforms may already frame the category around a small set of competitors.
• Starting work with a new client or pitching a new account, where rankings alone don’t show how the market is summarized in AI-generated answers.
• Reviewing the impact of content or positioning changes, especially comparison pages, guides, or decision-stage content.

How to Run Your Free AI Visibility Audit

With a free Semrush account, you can audit how your brand appears on AI in under 30 minutes.

Step 1: Check Whether You’re Appearing in AI Answers

Start with Domain Overview to see if your brand shows up in AI-generated responses.

1. Sign up for a free Semrush account
2. Enter your domain in Domain Overview
3. Review the "AI Search" section

Look for two key metrics:

1. Mentions: How many times your brand appears in AI-generated answers across all the prompts in the Semrush database (currently over 261M+ prompts). If this number is zero or low compared to your organic search presence, AI platforms aren't recognizing your brand as a relevant answer source.
2. Cited Pages: How many pages from your domain’s AI systems cite in answers. If your strongest SEO pages aren't appearing here, there's a disconnect between your search authority and AI visibility.

These metrics provide a quick way to confirm whether a brand appears in AI-generated answers before moving into deeper analysis.

Step 2: Verify Your Site is Accessible to AI Crawlers

Use Site Audit to check whether technical issues are blocking AI platforms from crawling and citing your content.

Set up a Site Audit for your domain and run a crawl of up to 100 pages (the free plan limit).

Once the crawl completes, review your AI Search Health score in the overview dashboard.

This score is based on technical factors that affect both traditional search and AI visibility:

• Crawler access: Whether your robots.txt file or meta tags block AI crawlers like ChatGPT-User, OAI-Searchbot, or Google-Extended. If you're blocking these crawlers, AI systems can't properly crawl your content.
• Content Structure: Whether your pages use clear headings, semantic HTML, and structured data that help both search engines and AI systems understand and retrieve your content. Poor structure makes pages harder to index and cite.
• Indexability Issues: Technical problems like broken links, redirect chains, or duplicate content that prevent both search engines and AI systems from properly cataloging your site.

What this tells you

A low AI Search Health score means there are technical barriers limiting your AI visibility.

Start with crawler access. If AI platforms can't reach your content, content improvements won't matter. Then address content structure and indexability issues to improve how AI systems retrieve and cite your pages.

Step 3: Compare Your Visibility Against Competitors

Use the Free AI Brand Visibility Tool to see how often your brand appears in AI answers compared to category leaders and direct competitors.

The tool displays AI Visibility scores for each brand on a 0-100 scale, showing you how often each appears in AI-generated answers for category-related prompts.

What this tells you

This free comparison reveals whether you have a category-level visibility problem.

If your competitors dominate AI mentions, they're influencing how buyers discover, compare, and choose solutions—often before your brand enters the conversation.

Step 4: Validate Manually with AI Platforms

Test AI platforms directly to see how your brand appears in real answers. This manual check helps you understand patterns behind your visibility metrics.

Choose 3-5 common questions people ask about your category. Focus on:

• Comparison questions: "What are the best [product category] for [use case]?" or “Create a comparison table of the most recommended [product category] for [use case]."
• Recommendation questions: "Which [product] should I choose for [specific need]?"
• Feature questions:"What [product category] has [specific feature]?"

Enter each question into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google AI Mode.

For each response, save a screenshot of the response, then record your answers to these three questions:

• Are you included? If so, where? Is it prominently or in passing?
• Are competitors mentioned more often or more prominently?
• What features, benefits, or use cases does AI associate with your brand?

What this tells you

Manual testing shows how AI platforms actually position your brand in context.

If competitors consistently appear in comparison tables while you're mentioned only in footnotes (or not at all) you’re losing consideration at the discovery stage.

What Your Results Tell You

The four steps above tell you which problem you actually have, and where to start.

Here's a simple way to interpret your results:

Strong AI Search Health score, but low mentions: Your site is accessible to AI crawlers, but your content isn't earning citations. That's a content gap, not a technical one.

Low mentions and a weak AI Search Health score: Technical barriers are likely limiting your visibility before content even comes into play.

Healthy mentions, but competitors appear more often: You're in the conversation, but not winning it. Review which topics and prompts your competitors dominate, and look for gaps where you can establish stronger coverage.

Next Steps

The free audit shows you where you stand. Turning that into a strategy means understanding which topics your competitors own, tracking how your mentions change over time, and knowing which content changes are actually moving the needle.