An AI visibility checker is useful only when it tells you exactly what it checked and what it did not. The biggest category mistake is presenting website readiness as proof that ChatGPT or another assistant currently recommends the business.
The minimum useful checks
- Machine readability: are the important facts in the document a crawler receives?
- Entity definition: is the business clearly defined as one organization rather than inferred from scattered prose?
- Name consistency: do schema, Open Graph, headings and external profiles agree?
- Crawler access: are relevant crawlers allowed through robots.txt and infrastructure controls?
- Corroboration readiness: does the site connect to credible external profiles and named people?
- Answerability: are there clear, direct answers to the questions buyers ask?
What the checker cannot prove by reading your website
It cannot prove that an assistant will mention you. It cannot prove you outrank a competitor. It cannot guarantee a citation. Those outcomes require actual assistant testing, and because AI responses vary between runs, a defensible test must be repeated.
Five questions to ask the vendor
- Can I see every check, including the passes?
- Does the tool identify the exact page or source behind each finding?
- Does it distinguish technical readiness from observed AI visibility?
- Can I force a fresh scan after making a change?
- Does the report recommend only fixes supported by the findings, or does it print the same generic schema and checklist for everyone?
Why free can still be useful
A free checker does not need to hide half the report to create value. The technical layer is diagnostic. If the result shows the site is already well defined and crawlable, the honest next step may be to stop changing it and measure actual buyer-question visibility instead.
Visible2’s free AI Visibility Scan shows the complete readiness result, including passed checks, and explicitly states that it does not ask an AI assistant about you.