Even if you personally aren't a fan of AI Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok - you WANT your small business to get recommended in their search results because that can lead to more sales. But how do you even start to measure your AI "visibility"? In this episode, we share a four-lens framework for figuring out whether your business is showing up in AI chatbots like Google AI Overview, ChatGPT, Claude, and more.
If you're a small business owner who wants to stay visible, stay informed, and stay ahead of what your customers are doing - listen to this episode. You'll get a clear, practical starting point for understanding how AI might already be affecting your business.
Chelsea (00:13) Best place to start first, I think, would be..
Chelsea (00:17) Hey everyone, welcome to the SOB Marketing Podcast, where we celebrate the SOB that you are and if you haven't figured it out yet, we mean small owned business, we don't mean SOB.
Vivian (00:29) Listen, we know that as a small business owner, you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other, I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea (00:48) Our commitment here at the SOB Marketing Podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, promoting your business, and then what doesn't really work.
Vivian (00:59) And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
Chelsea (01:03) Vivian, I want you to take a wild guess as to what the theme or the topic is for this week's episode.
Vivian (01:12) how you're Satan's paramour apparently.
Chelsea (01:14) Ha ha ha.
Vivian (01:17) if you don't know what I'm talking about, go back and listen to the last episode.
Chelsea (01:21) No, but it kinda feels like Satan is involved. Ooh, that's kinda strong. Let me not go there. Anyways, this week we're talking about AI once again.
Vivian (01:31) Ohh, your favorite topic. I'm gonna get you for Christmas a shirt that says I love AI.
Chelsea (01:38) No.
Vivian (01:40) Okay, you guys, can we we we are talking about AI today in what sense though?
Chelsea (01:45) We are talking about how to see if you are showing up on AI chatbots. And here's the thing, y'all. I don't like talking about AI. I don't like AI. However, it is also a huge part of business nowadays. It is huge in the terms of being found online. And as small business owners, this is something that you need to think about and you need to be checking up on. So
We will have this conversation.
Vivian (02:15) Yes, because we are big girls and we can do things we don't like doing for the sake of our business because we have to. And I love that you did bring this up because you know, the truth of the matter is we have to somewhat accommodate the way people are shifting their buying patterns and the truth is that they are turning to
when we say AI chat bots, we're actually talking about like the AI overview in Google, the Claude or Chat GPT.
Chelsea (02:51) Learning language system.
Vivian (02:53) Yes, so any of these things where people are now turning to to say like give me, you know, give me a list of you know, top ten plumbers in Somerville, South Carolina
You want to be your you want your business listed on there, okay? And so that's where the conversation today is gonna really help you guys because shocker, I just wanna tell you, there is no hard and fast rule for AI visibility these days. No. There's not one metric that's gonna be like, Hey, small business owner, this is where this is how many times your small business got included in AI this week.
Chelsea (03:29) That does not exist. But we're gonna give you multiple different ways and a framework when it comes to measuring your AI visibility. So, yes, big girls, we're gonna have an AI conversation once again. Before we get started though, Vivian, I just wanna say if you're listening to this and you're not following
Vivian (03:51) I thought you were gonna do pew pew pew, so I had my guns out. Okay. No. sorry.
Chelsea (03:56) I'm sorry, the Pewee Pew is next. I just wanted to remind everyone to follow us. Pretty pretty please. It helps us get in front of more people so more people can listen to this AI conversation.
Vivian (04:08) Yes, and we we want to build a strong small business community, you guys. it's owning a small business is such a weird and quirky and fun and I wanna say graying hair experience
Chelsea (04:27) Let's all talk about our taxes, right? Yeah, yeah.
Vivian (04:30) So, you know, we just we wanna make it a little easier for everybody. And so sharing this podcast episode with a small business owner that you love, is wonderful. And also hitting that subscribe button so that we can start to accumulate our little army of small business owners that will take over AI one day.
Chelsea (04:49) Mm-hmm.
Vivian (04:51) Yeah.
Chelsea (04:52) Okay, time for the pew pee pew. Pee pee pee pee pew. Let's do the marketing hot take. Vivian, my marketing hot take is something that I've definitely said before, but I want to say it again, and I'm gonna say the phrase and then I'm gonna explain why I said it. It's not about you, it's about your target audience. Mm-hmm. Okay. She
Vivian (05:15) She does
say that quite a bit.
Chelsea (05:17) I do say that quite a bit. It's not about you. It's about your target audience. I'm saying this because as we just explained, I hate AI. You gotta get over it. We just had this conversation. It is how people are now searching for things. So this is something that you're going to have to check up on whether you want to or not, because it's not about what you want, but it's about the fact that you probably have a lot of customers or consumers.
That are finding you, hopefully, through these chatbots when they're asking these search queries.
Vivian (05:50) Yeah, and even if they're not currently, it would be irresponsible of us to not or to look the other way and pretend or assume that we are not heading in the direction where people are gonna turn more and more to these chat bots to gather information. And so that's where you you want to be included in that.
Chelsea (06:13) Mm-hmm. We are not telling you to use We're
Vivian (06:15) AI. No. Mm-mm.
Chelsea (06:17) not telling you anything like that. We're just saying you need to know what your AI chatbot visibility is.
Vivian (06:24) Yeah. Well and and customers, consumers change over time. We just know this. This is you know, the way of the world, you guys. I sometimes I just saw the other day, where was I? I was going into a store. Maybe it was a gas station, I can't remember, but it literally said, No, we we are not taking cash. No cash. Like just across the board. And so think about that.
I wanna use that as an example. Fifteen years ago, the idea that you could walk into a store and the store would tell you we don't accept cash like dollar bills and coins, it would blow your mind. Like I I'd be like, You're you're dumb, like that's not reality because this is this is money. Yeah. Okay. But now because everyone has debit cards and credit cards and Apple Pay and all these other avenues, we live in a in a place now where
literally you could walk into a store and they're like, We do not accept cash, even though it's hard earned money. They they can just say like that's not our preferred method of payment. So no. Mm-hmm. So my point being things change over time and we are at the very beginning stages of something that is gonna morph into a different buying experience or customer experience for people. And so we just want to be sure that you're not even if you're not on board with it and you're like, I could give
Two shits. Yeah.
Chelsea (07:55) You were trying so hard to think of different word and you couldn't come up with a
Vivian (08:01) But I think that's because I'm in proximity to you. Just so you guys know, anytime I do something bad, it's always when Chelsea is here. And so otherwise I'm an angel and you know I fully blame her.
Chelsea (08:14) Really petitioning to Santo right now.
Vivian (08:17) I mean I
Chelsea (08:17) It's fine, I get all of my presents from Satan.
Vivian (08:22) All right. So
Chelsea (08:23) Vivian, do you have a point that you're still making up
Vivian (08:28) Are still rambling though?
Chelsea (08:30) My bad. I wanted to start this conversation by saying
Vivian (08:33) People
are not getting a Christmas present from me. Except for that shirt that says I love AI. It's gonna have a robot on it. No, and I'm actually gonna make an ugly AI flyer out of it. Don't you know?
Chelsea (08:45) Dare Just leave it alone. She's gonna send me coal this year, guys. Okay. I wanted to start this conversation by saying let's answer the question, can you track AI visibility? kind of is the answer.
Vivian (09:02) Yeah.
You yeah, you can in some it's a little I don't want to say it's a little convoluted. It does require a little creativity on your part. and so like this is Mm-hmm.
Chelsea (09:16) All still very new.
Vivian (09:18) And we like we mentioned earlier, there is no point where you could just
pull up a report or a metric and say, this is how many times I got mentioned. For one, there are a couple factors that we want you to think about it as to why this is the case, why it's so hard to track this. One, we have all these different AI chat bots. Yes. the Google AI Overview, the Claude, the Chat GPT, all this stuff. And none of them are talking to each other. Okay. Because they're all these separate businesses that want to take your money.
Chelsea (09:49) Fighting against each other. Yeah.
Vivian (09:51) So none of them are like
Hey, let's create this coalition where we we put all of the no, that's probably not gonna happen. So you have multiple different places that are peppered, that you could be brought up in conversation in these AI chatbots. And then also on top of it, what like what metric, you know, there is no like hard and fast metric for like this is how many times you got mentioned. This is how many times you actually got clicked.
on this is how my like it it would just require a lot of it would new stuff.
Chelsea (10:29) It would require a lot on the back end that these platforms are not focusing on. No. They don't
Vivian (10:35) No. They are focusing
on trying to sell y'all ads soon, so mm-mm.
Chelsea (10:42) So, this conversation we're gonna talk about ways, you know, how to view your AI visibility. It is important to remember that we are talking about this in September twenty twenty six. Yes. This could very easily change in a year. This could change in a couple of months. We will absolutely try to keep you guys as updated as possible.
But this is where we are as of September 2026. That's right. We've had this discussion briefly in our SKOOL community. Mm-hmm. and it it was such a good discussion that we decided to create a podcast episode out of it. But what happened was you found an article, correct? Or a video from two Octobers where they shared their they shared their own four lens.
framework when it comes to measuring AI visibility.
Vivian (11:42) Yeah, Two Octobers is a really great marketing agency and the reason I like to go read their blogs is they dive into some of the very technical aspects of stuff that other people shy away from. And for somebody like me, I feel like I need to understand the technical part of it to some extent so that I can start to connect the dots. Because if I don't, I feel like I just never really grasp like what's actually happening with like whether it's search results or any of the analytics stuff. So they do a very great job of explaining all this stuff in depth. And I did think when I read it that the framework made sense because what they were basically saying is you just have to pull from other resources or tools right now, right? Until we do come up with some type of a way to measure this AI stuff, you can you can piece it together on your own by
Pulling in some separate resources.
Chelsea (12:42) We gotta get creative with this is what it is. I just wanted to give them credit, you know, this is where we got a lot of that information of that's where we got a lot of this information from. Go check out the original article, but we're gonna talk about it in depth today. Okay, so like I said, this is you know four different lenses this framework. So we're gonna talk about prompt monitoring, AI bought traffic, AI traffic to your website.
And manual brand checking. So let's go ahead, let's start with prompt monitoring. Vivian, what is prompt monitoring?
Vivian (13:18) Alright,
so prompt monitoring is the one that I think still probably I I don't know how confident I would be to say that yeah.
Chelsea (13:28) I put prompt monitoring first just because I I wanna get it out of the way.
Vivian (13:33) Yeah. So these are gonna be the tools, as you guys know, with any opportunity there are gonna be companies out there that jump on there and they're like, Hey, by the way, we can track some of this stuff or monitor this stuff for you. prompt monitoring tool- platforms that you could pay a monthly fee to quote unquote monitor and kind of look to see where you're showing up on there. And the thing is they're still kind of testing this. So I don't know that then again I've shared with you guys and I've always been completely honest. I am a lagger. Okay. When you see that bell curve of people that are what are they, explorers or not explorers, they're innovators.
Chelsea (14:09) Explorers, innovators.
Innovators. Yeah.
Vivian (14:11) Innovators, I'm at the tail end of all these graphs because I'm a lagger. I will wait till everyone else tries it and then I'm like, okay, maybe I'll I'll dabble in it. So for me, I don't think I would throw money at actually doing a prompt monitoring tool, but that is one way and one lens that you can kind of look to your AI visibility for.
Chelsea (14:37) Yeah. The way that if you want to understand how these prompt monitoring platforms work, the original video from Two Octobers does an amazing job explaining this. The biggest issue that I have with this is that it is them as a platform generating searches and then giving you the number
or giving you a number based off of how many times you appear in those searches. But those aren't actual searches. That's them on their end creating a search. So think of it this way. These platforms want to give you a visibility score. Sure. So they are just firing searches that will relate to your business.
Vivian (15:35) But they're skewing the
Chelsea (15:36) But
they're skewing the numbers in that process because those are not actual human, you know, consumer searches. Sure. They're they're not pulling the actual search result data. They're creating their own search results. That's what I'm trying to say.
Vivian (15:49) And I guess the the reason for that is until like the way I see it, until let's say Chat GPT offers a business account that allows me to go in there and they show me the data from their platform. Yes. Which then creates a whole other thing because you guys are gonna have to go in and ping every single one of these like AI chatbots if you wanna get a a really clear perspective of how well you're doing on there. But
Until that information is coming directly from the platform, you're always gonna have a little bit of these these skewed numbers because the the business is having to figure out a different way to be able to get the information because they're not on the back end connected.
Chelsea (16:34) Yes, that's exactly what it is. These results are not like the actual chat GPT. The actual Claude results.
Vivian (16:43) Yeah. Now, listen, we we talked last episode about Google Search Console, you guys. That is a legit they are pulling the data from the actual platform and can give you information. So if you want an example of, you know, a resource that actually can provide data and information from a platform directly, go listen to that episode because that it's very different than what we're talking about here, which is,
Chelsea (17:10) Creative ways for the business to try to figure out if they're showing up on AI checkbots. But that's what this conversation is. Okay, so prompt monitoring, expensive. You gotta pay for it. And it's still kinda iffy out there. But
Vivian (17:26) If you're an innovator and you love this kind of techie stuff and you wanna be the first to try it, do it. Yeah. I mean you you could be ahead of the game. Absolutely. All
Chelsea (17:35) Okay, Vivian, let's do two.
Vivian (17:36) Alright. This next one is probably the most technical one. So we're getting it out of the way too because I don't know how I feel about this. I don't know how many small business owners are actually gonna do this. Sure. If you really wanted to know how
you're showing up or how many times you're showing up in these AI chat bots, you could go in and actually analyze your server logs to look at the AI bot traffic that's pinging your website. Okay. Yeah. If that if you're like what what the heck does that even mean? Don't touch this then. Don't touch it.
Chelsea (18:14) Well no, I'm just I don't y'all, as someone who has broken a website before while it was still live, yeah, I don't like touching things when I don't know very well what they are.
Vivian (18:26) Okay, so Chelsea let's let's do an example really quick.
Chelsea (18:30) Of something I'm asking like Chat G P T. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. how do I make jewelry out of my teeth?
Vivian (18:36) Right, so
Chelsea (18:39) She just rolled with that. She didn't question it or not.
Vivian (18:41) I'm not even gonna ask. Okay. But let's say that in the response, chat GPT or whatever is going to give you like an actual step by step of how you can do it, right? And where maybe you could resort get some of the tools
Chelsea (18:57) Where to get teeth?
Vivian (18:58) where to get teen. no. but also what it may do is at the bottom it may say, if you're looking for jewelry that's already made and made out of this, I'm not even gonna say it.
out this material, here are a couple of custom jewelers And maybe it will then list them. If your business gets listed on there because you make jewelry out of teeth, then technically what's going on in the back end is for or in order for you to show up, the chat bot is having to ping your website. That ping actually gets logged on your website
in your control panel. Okay. So your C panel. And if you're like, I don't know what the heck my control panel is, I don't have anything to do with this. You may be able, if someone handles your website and they have access to the control panel, you may be able to ask them and say, Hey, by the way, do you have any reports that you could pull me that would show the pings that I'm getting, the traffic I'm getting to my website? And so what that would show up is literally as a line
line and a timestamp of when this AI chatbot pinged your website. And so if you really wanted to know how many times maybe you were referenced in an AI overview, you could technically go in and look at this log and see how many times you were pinged.
Chelsea (20:27) Yes, there's one issue with this. Just because an AI chatbot pinged your website does not mean they actually used your information in the answer. Because they're pulling the information and they're trying to find the information that's the best fit. Okay. So just because they pinged you doesn't mean that you were actually the best fit.
Vivian (20:54) And also it doesn't mean that the person clicked on it, right? So even if you were included in the response, there is no data to really show you to correlate, right? That the person actually clicked on it and landed on your website. Okay. So I mean, take it we said you're gonna have to be super creative to kind of get a look at like, hey, am I showing up on these AI chat bots? This is just another way. So
As of right now, we have two ways that you can look at it. You can actually pay a service, have them look at it for you. Chelsea Asterix gave us, you know, the one thing we have to consider with that. And then also now we're saying you can actually go into your logs and look at your C panel and see how many times you were pinged. That's another way. Doesn't give you exactly a perfect overview, but you're starting to piece this together. Yes. All right. So what's the third way, Chelsea?
Chelsea (21:49) Okay, next is going to be AI traffic to your website. So that's how many website visits you're actually getting from chatbots. This is yeah, I feel like a better indicator because that means that you showed up in the AI response and then they clicked and went to your web.
Vivian (22:09) And specifically what you're wanting to look for here is referral traffic. So if you're looking at the analytics of your website in Google Analytics, you want to look for the referral sources, okay? And traffic. That's what's called referral traffic. So when you look at that, you should see these chatbots listed on there.
Chelsea (22:30) Yes, and this is great in terms of you know, comparing this against your other traffic data. You know, where are people coming from the most? Are they coming from Google search? Are they coming from Instagram? Or are they coming from Claude? Hmm. This is great information to know. It also is a great help in terms of, you know, we look at analytics to see what's working and what's not. So
This is your chance to look at trends over time. Maybe you started taking SEO seriously. Search everywhere optimization seriously. And you're focusing on your AEO and your GEO. Y'all, if you don't know what I'm saying, go listen to that episode.
Vivian (23:14) What these E I E I O's? Like can you stop?
Chelsea (23:18) Please. Yeah. But basically it's it's terms used in AI a optimization and tracking your search information when it comes to AI specifically. So this actually looking at your AI traffic from like to your website is gonna help you look at trends over time. It's gonna help you see if you're actually making a difference in all these new strategies you're working. But just remember
This is not a complete picture because this is only giving you when someone actually converts. You're not seeing how many times you're actually being mentioned in the chat bot. You're only seeing the times that people are actually following through.
Vivian (24:04) Sure. Yeah, I think that's a very good distinction and
Chelsea (24:11) It's kind of the opposite as looking at your server logs, you know? Because the server log is the AI taking a peek at your website. This, your referral traffic, is actually the consumer going to your website.
we're kind of filling in the blanks. We're kinda this is why this is a four-lens kind of formula because you're looking at everything to try to get the larger picture.
Vivian (24:36) it's only gonna be as good as you know, it's not gonna give you a legit number of like fifteen times you showed up fifteen times and but it it's gonna give you a good sentiment not sentiment, a good indicator of whether or not you're actually even showing up or if these AI bots are not even considering you.
Or, you know, if if you're starting to see an increase, right, because you're creating different types of content, sharing different types of videos on Instagram, on TikTok, all that stuff, you'll be able to start to kind of piece those things together over time. This episode of the SOB Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the SOB community. If you're a small business owner that is neglecting your marketing and you feel like you've wasted money and time on marketing help that didn't deliver.
Or if you're just craving support from people who actually get what it's like to run and promote a small business, then our membership community is for you. Visit skool.com/sob to sign up today to get instant access and weekly support. That's skool.com/sob. The last one, Chels, and it's probably the one that most people are gonna do.
Chelsea (25:54) Well I honestly, you know what? It's my favorite one. Okay,
Vivian (25:57) Okay, what is it?
Chelsea (25:58) it's manual brand checking.
Vivian (26:00) Do it your damn self. That's where Be the Customers.
Chelsea (26:32) Yo she's got this hat on and the braids, I dunno.
Vivian (26:11) I'm just missing my hoop earrings. I think I should put my hoop earrings on today. I do have hoop earrings. they're not mom and dad got them for me so they're sensible, but I mean get me unsensible ones this year. Well sensible ones. Do it.
Chelsea (26:25) I pinky promise they will not be made with teeth.
Vivian (26:29) Please do not. All right. So the manual checks. This is yes, you going in there and actually looking for yourself to the customer.
Chelsea (26:39) Go be the customer.
Vivian (26:41) Go be the customer. Yeah. Some of the things that you want to think about is if you're looking at, depending on what service you offer, what product you sell, think about questions that customers may have when they're looking for.
Products similar to yours or services similar to yours, okay? So like I'm thinking we had used in a previous episode the example of like a head spa. Okay. These head spas have come up, they're a little different, they're not like a regular massage, you know, it's it's specifically for the scalp. If I'm someone that's looking for information on head spa, what type of information would I ask? Okay. What is head spa yes, what is a head spa? What services does a head spa offer?
offer what price range is you know is a head spa service I don't know so these are all questions that you could if you're thinking from the customer's perspective you could actually either answer the question on a FAQ on your website create a TikTok video
Chelsea (27:46) Vivian, I have specific like categories you can think of when you're asking these questions. So the first one is gonna be like problem, problem questions. So where can I get fake plants in downtown Somerville?
Vivian (27:59) Okay.
Chelsea (28:00) Or maybe you're like a sewing business. So someone asks, How do you fix pockets on shorts? Tim ripped both of the pockets in a pair of shorts.
So I mean I have to sew up all I have to sew all of the shorts.
Vivian (28:21) First of all, is your sewing better than your cooking?
Chelsea (28:26) Yes, I I am actually like a decent sewer. You
Vivian (28:29) You
are? that's new. I never I never knew that about you. Yeah, how did I not know?
Chelsea (28:35) I can sew. Okay. I can't I don't know how to use a sewing machine, so I do everything by hand. Gotcha. Which is why I'm very annoyed about this. Because I keep on having to sew up all of his shorts.
Vivian (28:48) Uhhuh. So I'm adding to the Christmas list to buy you a sewing machine.
Chelsea (28:52) Okay, and then I'll go to well actually I won't because I don't like AI, but I could go to ChatGPT and be like, how do I sew up? Yeah. Okay, moving on. So problem questions. We also have comparison questions. So I recently bought a new pair of glasses off of Xenny. So example would be is Xenny or Zelu the best place to buy glasses online?
We also have questions involved in your category.
So who's the best potion maker in Somerville?
Vivian (29:22) Interesting. Do they give awards for that?
Chelsea (29:26) They probably do. we also have branding questions, so that's gonna be the last one, but that's when people are very specifically looking for information about your brand. So who is the seasoned marketer? Or what are the pros and cons of using an Etsy Witch?
Vivian (29:43) An Etsy what which?
Chelsea (29:48) You
haven't heard of an Etsy wish? A witch
Vivian (29:50) No, please tell me though.
Chelsea (29:53) It's literally a witch that you can get their services off of Etsy.
Vivian (29:57) And so What do you ask her to do?
Chelsea (29:59) don't well what do you need her to do?
Vivian (30:01) Sew my pockets. I mean, in the the internet space that you're in is not the same as mine, okay?
Chelsea (30:13) I can't believe you've never heard of an etsy witch
Vivian (30:15) I'm over here looking at like reels of chickens and
Chelsea (30:20) We're in two different worlds. I've never used an etsy witch
Vivian (30:25) I swear if something happens to me, you guys.
This please I want you to use this episode as evidence, okay? has That Chelsea has hired a Etsy witch to get her big sister, okay. So the the one thing I want to reiterate here though is in those categories, rattle them off really quick.
Chelsea (30:50) We got problem comparison your category and branding.
Vivian (30:54) Okay. when you're looking at questions to be asking yourself to prompt the the Chat GPT or Grok or whatever that are related to these specific categories, remember that what ultimately you're trying to get to is that eventually your business, your product or your service would be listed in there. Okay. So you're kind of like working backwards to think.
Right now you may not show up on any of these. Yeah. Okay. If if you have a competitor in the area, let's say you're a donut shop and you're one of two donut shops in Philadelphia, I'm just throwing this out there. If you go and you prompt the chat bot and you're like, What what is the best donut shop, right? Because you want a comparison in Philadelphia and you don't even show up but someone else shows up That's information you can use to say what type of content or let me go back and look at my Google business profiles, be sure that it's like, you know, I have all the information in there. Do I maybe not have enough reviews that it's even logging my business as being in this area? am I, you know, so you're having to work backwards and even if you're not showing up, that's good.
That you can see it for yourself because then you can actually develop a game plan to try to change that in the future.
Chelsea (32:19) yea, you can see who's being mentioned, what sources are being used in the responses. great to look if the information is actually correct. Since you're
Vivian (32:30) Yes.
Chelsea (32:31) what's an expert in your field, you should recognize whether the information they're sharing is wrong. It's important to note that answers are not the same every time. So it could be that you are showing up to for some people, but maybe you're not showing up for yourself.
I think the focus here with manual brand checking is it's more learning about what people are learning about your brand or about your brand category. And it's not the focus is not how many times you are appearing. This is qualitative, not quantitative is what it is.
Vivian (33:13) Right, the last episode we did on Google Search Console specifically, we outlined a very big update that they had where you can go in and you can connect some of your social media platforms. Go listen to that episode if you haven't in Google Search Console. And the reason that's such a big deal too, I think, is because to this point, Google now integrates Google AI overview. They have told us they don't have well, I take that back.
They actually did update and say that they now have a metric for a Google AI overview. The thing is we don't know how well it is or how true it is to representing what's actually happening and how many times you show you show up on there.
I say that because as Chelsea said, remembering that the results, the responses can vary.
Google is actually a really good place if they're pulling from Instagram and TikTok and X and all this. So they're able to pull all that stuff that you have floating out there on social media and it's looking at your website and it's got your Google Business profile. And you see what I'm saying? It's got a lot of different like things feeding into that one platform. And if now they're actually gonna have a metric that kind of gives you insight into that, then
That may very well be a really good place to also consider some of this stuff which you're talking about. So I love that it's changing. Chelsea said it earlier in the episode. This is as of September 2026. It may change. No, no, no, girl, it will change. Okay. So hopefully in a couple months, the we'll be able to gauge our visibility for our businesses on these AI chatbots a lot better.
As of now, these four things that we just went through are a really, really good place to start. And if you need us to narrow it down even more, which one of those would you say is the best place to start first?
Chelsea (35:23) Best place to start first, I think, would be manual brand checking. Because it gives you a good like just overview of the consumer's perspective.
Vivian (35:35) I agree. I think that's probably
Chelsea (35:38) Yeah, that's the best way, manual brand checking and then AI traffic to your website, like your referral data.
Vivian (35:43) Yeah. Those two are definitely key. So if anything, start there. And that's a place where at least if you'll better understand how AI is kind of prompt prompting, not prompting but kind of responding to some of these very basic prompts that you're coming up with.
Chelsea (36:03) Y'all, we brought this up. I want you guys to actually go and do this. Yes. Like I don't want this to be a conversation that you listen to, then you said, that's really cool, and then you never touch this conversation again. Please go actually at the bare minimum look at your referral traffic.
Vivian (36:25) I mean, you probably cause I'm curious, I'm gonna go look at ours and even on our our podcast website, I'm gonna go look at it because I'm I'm curious like to see if it's if it's actually sharing our information, you know, if we're getting pinged for it. But the other thing is marketing changes because people change and technology changes and people mixed with technology equals big explosion.
We we just are always gonna our buying patterns and habits, what we read, what we're looking at, it's all fluid. And so, you know, we just want you to feel prepared. Even if you're not ready to fully embrace AI, we need you to understand that other people out there are. And some of these people that are are potentially some of your customers. And so
If that's just one of the ways that they find your small business, great. Why wouldn't you wanna be included in that? It's not like Chelsea said, it's not that we're we're telling you guys to go out and use AI to create your flyers because God knows I'm not telling you to do that, okay? That's why it's a hundred and something degrees in September. but
Chelsea (37:44) She's not wrong.
Vivian (37:46) I'm joking. we do want you to just be aware of things and we want you to be able to have
the best picture of putting stuff together, of understanding where your business stands in relation to this, especially right now when we're still at the forefront and we don't have any specific data that you could pull. take this conversation, do what Chelsea told you to do because otherwise you're gonna get on her poo poo list. You don't want to end up there.
Chelsea (38:13) Yeah, and go build.
Vivian (38:14) And Remember we had this conversation in our SOB community like a month ago. It's true. Yeah. We did. if you want to have in depth conversations about stuff like this and know about this stuff beforehand, like as soon as it comes out. Yeah. Then go join our SOB community for fifty dollars a month. Very affordable. Yes.
Chelsea (38:33) And go be the best SOB you can be.