Originally published at getvisus.com
Six months ago I started building Visus — a free tool that scores websites on how easily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI can find and recommend them.
The idea came from a problem I saw firsthand. My wife owns Fozias, a Kashmiri restaurant in Liverpool. Despite great food, loyal customers and positive reviews, the restaurant was completely invisible when anyone asked an AI engine for restaurant recommendations in Liverpool. ChatGPT didn't mention it. Perplexity didn't mention it. It simply didn't exist in the AI world.
So I built Visus to diagnose exactly why — and fix it.
The Fozias experiment
Before any optimisation, Fozias scored 23 out of 100 on the Visus AI visibility audit. The problems were clear:
No schema markup telling AI engines what the business was
No FAQ content matching the questions people ask AI
Inconsistent business listings across directories
No llms.txt file allowing AI crawlers access
Weak entity definition — AI engines couldn't confidently identify what Fozias was
We fixed every one of those issues. Ninety days later Fozias scored 80 out of 100. They became the number one Perplexity result for Kashmiri restaurants in Liverpool. ChatGPT now includes them in dining recommendations for Liverpool.
That's a real restaurant. Real customers. Real results.
Then we audited ourselves
Last week I ran getvisus.com through its own audit. We scored 35 out of 100.
That was humbling. We had built a tool to help businesses become visible to AI — and our own product was largely invisible.
The problems Visus found on our own site:
Canonical URL inconsistency between two domains
No llms.txt file
Missing FAQ schema markup
Thin crawlable content — React apps are hard for AI crawlers to read
No external citations from trusted sources
We fixed everything in one session. Added comprehensive schema markup including SoftwareApplication, Organization, WebSite and FAQPage schemas. Created a detailed llms.txt file. Fixed all canonical URLs. Added eight FAQ entries covering every question someone might ask an AI about Visus.
The new score: 76 out of 100.
A 41 point improvement in one session.
What we learned
AI visibility is not the same as Google SEO. You can rank on Google and be completely invisible to ChatGPT and Perplexity simultaneously. They have different signals, different trust mechanisms, and different ways of deciding who to recommend.
The businesses that act now — while most of their competitors are still ignoring AI search — will own those recommendations for years. The ones that wait will spend significantly more trying to catch up.
The five things that matter most for AI visibility:
Schema markup — tell AI engines exactly what your business is in machine-readable format
FAQ content — answer the specific questions people ask AI engines about your category
Entity consistency — your business name, address and description must be identical everywhere
External citations — trusted third-party sources mentioning your business build AI confidence
llms.txt — a simple file that tells AI crawlers everything they need to know about you
Try it on your own site
Visus is free. No signup. No credit card. Enter your URL and get your score in under 60 seconds.
If you score below 50 — and most businesses do — you are largely invisible to AI search right now. Your competitors who fix this first will take the recommendations you should be getting.
getvisus.com
Built in Liverpool. Helping local businesses get found by AI.
Try it free at getvisus.com —
no signup, no credit card, results in 60 seconds.
Top comments (0)