Decision guide · Updated July 2026

How to choose an AI visibility audit.

A real audit shows whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity mention your brand, why, and what it costs you, with evidence. Plenty sold under that name are a screenshot and a scare. 5 criteria, 4 red flags.

Book the £999 audit →How the Index works →

The 5 criteria that matter

  1. Empirical probing, not screenshots. One person asking ChatGPT once is an anecdote. A real audit runs a repeatable question set across all 4 major assistants and records every response. Ask the provider how many probes, which providers, and whether you can see the raw results.
  2. Dimension coverage, not a single score. Visibility has causes. We score five: citation (do the assistants name you), schema (structured data a machine can read), knowledge graph (does it know who you are), crawlability (can AI crawlers reach you) and social (the wider signal trail). An audit that returns one number without decomposing it can’t tell you what to fix. The distinction between ranking and being cited is covered in SEO versus GEO.
  3. A benchmark cohort. A score of 44 means nothing on its own. Against a scored cohort of comparable employers it becomes a position, a gap and a priority. Ask what you’re being measured against and how often that cohort is rescored.
  4. An evidence trail. Every finding should cite the specific probe, page or record it came from, with a date. If the report can’t show its working, you’re buying confidence, not measurement.
  5. Repeatability. Models and indexes shift weekly. A methodology that can’t be rerun on the same terms can’t show progress. One-off audits age like fruit.

Red flags

  • A guaranteed ranking or citation outcome. Nobody controls the models; anyone promising placement is guessing on your invoice.
  • No named methodology and no version. If the scoring basis is a secret, so is the value.
  • A price that only becomes clear after a sales call.
  • Generic SEO deliverables relabelled. Keyword rankings are not AI citations.

The test of any audit is simple: could a second person, running the same method a week later, check it? If not, it’s not an audit. It’s an impression.

How ours works

The SetpointHQ Recruitment Marketing Audit is £999, fixed, stated here because we think audit pricing should survive being written down. It scores your employer brand on the five dimensions named in criterion 2, benchmarked against The SetpointHQ Index, the monthly-scored cohort of 100 UK employer brands we publish openly. Every finding carries its evidence and every score its date, and it is delivered in seven working days with a prioritised action plan and a 60-minute debrief. The assistant-visibility half of it is set out on its own page, the AI Visibility Audit, scorecard and method included, so you can hold it against criteria 2 and 5 before you talk to anyone.

If you’d rather understand the mechanics before buying anything, start with how to make your recruitment brand show up in AI answers: the method is not a secret, only the labour. And if you want the crawler-access and structured-data checks run on your careers site at no cost first, the free careers site audit comes back in three working days.

Choose whichever audit you like. Choose one with evidence.

Ours is £999, benchmarked against 100 UK employer brands, delivered in seven working days, and shows its working.

Book the audit Or start free →

Source: The SetpointHQ Index, 100 UK employer brands, scored monthly across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. Median composite 52.8 at 13 July 2026, rubric 2026.06.5.