How do you measure AI visibility for your business?
- Dane Frederiksen
- May 3
- 3 min read
The gold standard is a free-form "How did you hear about us?" text field on your contact form, analyzed monthly with AI to spot ChatGPT, Claude, Google, and Perplexity as referral sources.
Quick Answer
Add a free-form text field, no drop-downs, on every point of intake (contact form, call center, email).
Use AI to analyze the responses every month and look for ChatGPT, Claude, Google, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and Qwen.
If the count of AI-sourced referrals is zero, your GEO strategy is not working.
Why a free-form text field beats every dashboard
Christopher Penn calls this the gold standard for measuring AI visibility, and he says it for a specific reason. AI visibility tracking software cannot tell you who is actually finding you through AI. Personalization breaks the data. The only place you can see the truth is at the point where a real prospect tells you, in their own words, where they came from.
The setup is simple. Add a question to your contact form, your call center intake script, your email auto-response, and any other place a prospect lands. The question is, "How did you hear about us?" The format is a single line of free-form text. No drop-down. No "select one" multiple choice. People type or voice-dictate whatever they want.
Then once a month, you take all the responses and run them through ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever AI you trust. The prompt is straightforward, "Categorize these responses by source, and count how many mention AI tools by name." You watch for these names showing up:
ChatGPT
Claude
Google (in the AI Mode / AI Overviews sense)
Perplexity
DeepSeek
Alibaba's Qwen
"11% of Trust Insights business comes from AI referrals now. That was in the last six months. It is astonishingly high." — Christopher Penn
If the count is zero, your GEO strategy is not working. If it is climbing month over month, it is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why a free-form field instead of a drop-down?
A drop-down forces people to choose from your list, so you only see the sources you already thought of. A free-form text field captures the unexpected, like a new AI tool or a specific search query, that a drop-down would never surface.
How often should I review the responses?
Once a month is enough for most B2B companies. That cadence gives you a clear trend line without drowning in noise. Christopher Penn measures Trust Insights this way and tracks AI referrals as a percentage of total new business.
What AI should I use to analyze the responses?
Whichever one you already use. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini all handle this kind of categorization fine. The point is consistency over choice, pick one and run the same analysis every month.
Want the full conversation? Watch the full interview with Christopher Penn — or read the full article.
Full Clip Transcript
Christopher: The number one, the gold standard for measuring AI visibility is this. On your points of intake, your contact form, your call center, your email box, or whatever, there's a little box that says, "How did you hear about us?" Let it be a free-form text field. Don't give people a drop-down. Give them a little free-form text field. And then using the AI of your choice, analyze the results every month. And if the number of people who said ChatGPT or Google or whatever the answer is zero, then your GEO strategy is not working. But you should start to see Claude and ChatGPT and Alibaba's Qwen and DeepSeek and Google as referral sources. And if you let people physically type or voice dictate into that, you will get more insight into how they're doing it. 11% of Trust Insights business comes from AI referrals now. That was the last six months. It is astonishingly high.
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