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The Biz Spark
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AI visibility audit

AI Visibility Audit for Niagara Businesses

Find out whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude recommend your business when someone nearby asks who to hire. We're a two-person studio in Thorold, and we run the audit ourselves.

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People now ask an AI who to hire

Someone types "who should I hire to build a website in Thorold?" into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. They get back a short list of names.

Those names come from a small set of pages the assistant finds and reads while it answers. A business that isn't on those pages doesn't get named, however good its work is. Most owners have never checked whether they're on the list.

What we do

We write a fixed set of real buying questions for your business and your town, the way a customer would type them. Then we run every question through three AI models, three times each, and record two things: which businesses get named, and which pages the models cite.

We run each question more than once because the answers change from run to run. One answer tells you very little. Nine answers per question start to show a pattern.

These assistants search the web as they answer. In our own audit, every one of the 90 answers used live web search. That's good news: what the models find in search results is what they recommend, and that's something a business can change.

What you get

  • A PDF report you can keep and share.
  • Your mention rate across the three models: how often you get named, out of every answer we collected.
  • A leaderboard of which local businesses the models name for your queries.
  • The pages the models cite for your queries, so you can see where the answers come from.
  • A per-query breakdown showing how each question came out.

We can show you where you stand. We can't promise an assistant will name you afterwards, and nobody honestly can.

We ran it on ourselves first

In September 2026 we asked ten local buying questions about web design in Niagara, three times each, across three AI models. That's 90 answers. The Biz Spark was named in 1 of them.

That's a real result and a poor one. It's also why we take the audit seriously: we've been on the receiving end of it. The full method and what the models cited instead are in our write-up of the scan.

What we found across Niagara

In our web design audit, the pages the models cited most were city-specific service pages, up to 21 citations for a single page, and pages that published their prices.

In an earlier study we asked ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot 45 questions about roofers in three Niagara cities. In St. Catharines, ChatGPT and Gemini didn't name a single business in common, because they read different sources. Among the businesses whose Google reviews we checked, every one named more than once in its own city had at least 31, and past roughly 30 more reviews stopped predicting anything. Read the full write-up: I asked three AI assistants who the best roofer in Niagara is.

Frequently asked questions

What is AEO or GEO?

Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are two names for the same idea: making it more likely that an AI assistant names your business when someone asks a question you should be the answer to. The audit measures where you stand today. It does not guarantee a result.

How is this different from SEO?

SEO is about where your pages rank in a list of search results. The audit looks at what an AI assistant writes back and whether your business is in it. The two overlap, because these assistants search the web while they answer, but a page can rank well and still never get named. That is why we measure the answers directly.

Which AI models do you test?

Three: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Each question is run through all three, three times each. They read different sources, so a business can be named by one and missing from another. In our Niagara roofing study, two of the assistants named no businesses in common in St. Catharines.

How often should I re-run it?

Model answers change over time, so a result is a snapshot of one moment. Re-run the same questions after you have made changes to see whether anything moved.

Can you fix what you find?

We can fix the parts a website controls, like clear pages for each town and service, published prices, and accurate details. Other sources are outside a website, such as reviews and directory listings, and we will point them out so you know where to look. Nobody can promise an AI will name you, and we will not.

Want to know if an AI recommends you?

Tell us about your business and your town, and we'll send you a quote for the audit.

Get in touch for a quote