Marketers track rankings, traffic and share of voice. Few track the thing buyers increasingly see first: the short list an AI assistant gives when someone asks for a recommendation.
You can measure it in about 20 minutes a month. Here's the method we use, and what it showed when we ran it in our own category in October 2026.
Step 1: Write five real buyer questions (5 minutes)
Pick one of each:
- A broad question ("What's the best [category] for [audience]?")
- An industry question ("Best [category] for fintech companies")
- A hyper-specific question (a named outcome, publication or integration)
- A comparison ("[You] vs [competitor]")
- A name check ("What is [your company] and is it any good?")
Step 2: Ask in a clean session (10 minutes)
Use a temporary chat with personalisation off and web search on, so past conversations don't skew the answer. After each answer, ask:
List the full URL of every page you used as a source.
Step 3: Log the sources by type (5 minutes)
One row per source: list article, vendor page, review site, news article, forum or docs. Note whether you appear in each.
| Question | Source URL | Type | Are you in it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best X for Y | example.com/best-x | List article | No |
What we found when we ran it
In October we ran this for B2B tech PR. For "best tech PR agency for enterprise software companies", ChatGPT used 15 sources, and 11 of them were third-party list articles. Broad questions were answered almost entirely from round-ups. Specific questions pulled in vendors' own pages that answered them directly. The name-check answer leaned on review counts and verifiable results.
It's a small, directional test (one run, one tool), which is exactly why the monthly log matters: the pattern only becomes trustworthy when you repeat it.
How to act on it
- Lists in your sources: pitch the authors with something useful, such as data, a case study or an expert quote.
- Competitors' pages cited for specific questions: publish a clearer, more specific page of your own.
- A weak name-check: prioritise reviews and independent coverage.
Repeat monthly
AI answers shift as new content is published. A monthly log shows whether your work is moving the answer, which is the metric that increasingly matters.
Full method and the original results: https://www.jamcopr.com/ai-pr-agency-study
I'm Joseph Tannous, founder of Jamco PR.
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