What Is the Found-First Visibility Audit?
The Found-First Visibility Audit tests how the major AI answer engines respond when someone in your market asks who to hire, and whether your business gets named. We run 96 questions across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude, score you against the competitors currently being recommended, and send back a prioritized fix list with screenshots. 48 hours, from $297.
Order Your Found-First Audit ($297)
Single location, one service area. More than one location? Get a scoped quote.
Why does it matter whether AI assistants name your business?
Because a growing share of your customers never see a list of ten options. They get one answer with two or three companies in it, and they call one of those. Google searches ended without a click 68% of the time in the US over the first four months of 2026, up from 60% in 2024, according to SparkToro’s analysis of Similarweb clickstream data. For every 1,000 US searches, only 276 clicks now reach the open web.
Page one of Google had ten spots. An answer has one to three. If you are not in it, you lose the job before your phone rings and you never find out it happened. We wrote about the mechanics of this in why customers can’t find your business in AI search. The audit is how you find out where you actually stand.
What exactly does the audit test?
We run a 96-question battery spanning five kinds of customer intent and four answer engines, using the real language customers use in your market, your city, your services, your competitors. The five intent groups:
- Best / near me: “who is the best septic company in Kane County?”
- Emergency: “my basement is flooding, who do I call right now in Naperville?”
- Cost: “how much does a septic tank replacement cost in Illinois?”
- Reputation: “is [your business name] a good company?”
- Service-specific: “who does trenchless sewer repair near Aurora?”
The engines tested are ChatGPT with search enabled, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and Claude. Every result is captured as a screenshot, because these answers change and you need the record of what was said on the day it was said.
How is your business scored?
Four dimensions, scored per question and rolled up into one number. This measures what the engines did on the day we ran it. It is a measurement, not a projection.
| Dimension | What it answers | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Named | Did the engine mention your business at all? | The baseline. If you are never named, nothing else matters yet. |
| Position | Were you first, or fourth in a list of five? | Answers are short. Being named last is close to not being named. |
| Accuracy | Was what it said about you correct? | Wrong hours, a service you dropped, an old address. Being named wrongly costs you the job too. |
| Competitor share | Who got named instead, and how often? | This is your real competition now. It is often not who you thought. |
What do you get?
- The full report: all 96 questions, the answer each engine gave, and a screenshot of every one.
- Your score across the four dimensions above, with the weakest intent group called out.
- A competitor comparison: which companies the engines recommend in your market, and how often each one appears.
- An accuracy error list: every wrong fact the engines are currently repeating about your business, so you can go correct it at the source.
- A prioritized fix list: what to change, in order, with the highest-leverage item first.
How long does it take?
48 hours from order. You do not need to do anything in the meantime. The audit runs entirely on public information, so there is nothing to install and no access to hand over.
How much does it cost?
Pricing starts at $297 for a single-location contractor covering one service area. Businesses with multiple locations, a wider service area, or more competitors to score against are quoted individually. The battery gets bigger, so the work does. One-time either way; there is no subscription attached to the audit.
There is also an optional re-test program at $750/month, for businesses that want the battery re-run on a schedule after they have made changes so they can see whether the fixes moved anything. Answer engines update continuously, and a score from six months ago tells you very little about today. You do not need it to start.
Who is it for?
Home-service contractors doing roughly $500K to $5M a year, in any US market. That includes HVAC, plumbing, septic and private sewage, water damage restoration, tree service, foundation repair, roofing, and funeral homes. It works for any local service business that customers find by asking a question. The vertical matters less than whether people ask “who should I call” before they call.
It is a poor fit if you do not serve a defined geography, or if you are pre-revenue. There needs to be a business for the engines to find.
How is this different from an SEO audit?
An SEO audit measures how you rank in a list of links. This measures whether you get named in an answer. They are different systems with different inputs.
| Traditional SEO audit | Found-First Visibility Audit | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Keyword rankings, backlinks, site speed, crawl errors | Whether AI answer engines name you when customers ask who to hire |
| Where you appear | Position in ten blue links | Inside a one-to-three-business answer |
| What it tests against | Keywords you chose | Questions your customers actually ask, in your market |
| What fixes follow | Meta tags, content length, link building | Identity consistency, machine-readable structure, third-party trail, question-answering content |
Order Your Found-First Audit ($297)
Single location, one service area. More than one location? Get a scoped quote.
How is this different from the AI Revenue Audit?
The Found-First audit is about being found; the AI Revenue Audit is about what happens after someone finds you. Found-First measures discoverability in AI answers. The Revenue Audit is a five-pillar diagnostic of operational leaks: missed calls, slow speed-to-lead, booking friction, reviews, and follow-up automation. They answer different questions and you can buy either one first. If your phone rings and the jobs still are not closing, start with the Revenue Audit. If the phone is quiet, start here.
What happens after the audit?
Most of the fix list is work you can do yourself, and the report is written so you can hand it to whoever runs your website. The first two items are usually free: correcting your business information everywhere it appears, and completing your Google Business Profile properly. Getting more recent, detailed reviews is usually third. If you would rather have it done for you, we do that too. See services. There is no obligation either way, and the audit is not a sales call in disguise.
Common questions about the Found-First Visibility Audit
Do I need to give you access to anything?
No. The audit runs entirely on public information, the same information the answer engines themselves use. No website logins, no Google account, no analytics access.
Can you audit a business anywhere in the US?
Yes. The audit is delivered remotely and the questions are built around your market, whatever market that is. There is no on-site component.
Will the results change if I re-run it?
Yes, and that is expected. Answer engines update continuously and two runs a month apart can differ even with no changes on your end. That is why every result is screenshotted with a date, and why the re-test program exists for businesses that want to track movement over time.
Do you guarantee I’ll be named?
No, and be skeptical of anyone who does. No one controls what these systems output. What the audit gives you is an accurate picture of where you stand today and the specific, ordered list of things known to influence it. The work is yours to do or ours to do, but the outcome is not something anyone can promise.
Is this a one-time purchase?
Yes. One payment buys the audit and the report, with nothing recurring attached. The $750/month re-test program is separate and entirely optional.
Why isn’t there one flat price?
Because the work scales with your market. Auditing a single-location contractor in one county is a smaller job than auditing a company with four locations across a metro, more services, and a longer competitor list. The question battery gets bigger and so does the scoring. $297 is the floor, not a teaser; if that is your situation, that is what you pay.
What if the engines already name me?
Then you will find out how often, in what position, against whom, and whether what they are saying about you is accurate. Businesses that are already named most often have accuracy problems rather than visibility problems (wrong hours, dropped services, a stale address), and those cost jobs just as surely as being invisible.
Who runs the audit?
SurgeTick Digital, founded by Edem Agbley. More about SurgeTick.
Order Your Found-First Audit ($297)
Single location, one service area. More than one location? Get a scoped quote.