Answermend

HOW IT WORKS

How we check whether AI answers name your business.

When one of your customers asks ChatGPT or Gemini something like “who’s the best accountant near me for a small business”, the reply names a handful of businesses. Either you are one of them, or you are not. This page walks through exactly how we find that out — and is honest about which parts are running today and which are still being built.

Written for the person who owns the business, not the person who built the website. Nothing here assumes you know anything technical, and any word that needs explaining is explained where it appears.

What we actually do

Three things. That is the whole idea.

  1. 01

    We write down the questions your customers would ask

    Whole sentences, the way people really type them — “best family solicitor in Bristol”, “is [your business] any good” — not single words.

  2. 02

    We ask those questions and read the answers

    We put each question to the AI assistants your customers use, and read what comes back, the same way you would if you typed it in yourself.

  3. 03

    We write down one thing per question

    Were you named — and if you were, did the assistant actually open your website, or was it going from memory, the way a person half-remembers a shop?

That last distinction is the one that matters, and most of this page comes back to it. An assistant naming you from memory and an assistant opening your website and quoting it are two different events with two different causes. Only one of them is something your website can be credited or blamed for — so we never add the two together.

What happens when you run a check

Some of this runs today. Some is still being built. Each step says which.

  1. 01

    You type in your website address

    nothing to install

    yourbusiness.co.ukThe address people type to find you. That is all we need to start.

    No account, no plugin, nothing added to your site. Nothing on your website changes at any point unless you decide to change it yourself.

  2. 02

    We ask the questions your customers ask

    still being built

    “best crm for small law firms?”

    When it runs, the free check will ask 10 questions, in ChatGPT and in Gemini, once each. Paid plans will ask more questions, in more assistants, and ask each one several times over.

    This is the part that is not running yet. The page for it exists and says so; it will not print a result about your business until the check behind it is genuinely working.

  3. 03

    We look at your own website the way an assistant does

    still being built

    Are AI companies allowed in?Sites can accidentally tell them to stay out. It is one line, in one small file.

    Can they read what is on the page?A page that has to load extra code before its words appear can look blank to them.

    This half never asks an assistant anything. It only opens your own pages, to check two plain facts: whether AI companies are permitted to read them, and whether the words a visitor sees are really there in the page.

  4. 04

    You get the results, and the files that fix what we found

    4 file makers run today
    faq-schema.json open ↗ robots.txt open ↗

    Results come back as a plain list — question by question, what happened. Fixes come back as files. The four that make files are free and open right now; the list of questions arrives when step 02 does.

solid line — this part runs today dashed line — still being built, so nothing is printed

We would rather show you an empty box than a made-up number. Where a step is not built, the page says so and prints nothing about your business — no sample dressed up as your result.

What the four results mean

Every question in your report lands on one of these four. There is no fifth.

  • cited

    Your page was used as a source

    The assistant opened your website while writing the answer, and pointed at it. This is the strongest of the four: your own page did the work, and there is a link back to you.

  • mentioned

    You were named from memory

    Your name came up, but nothing of yours was opened and nothing was linked. Worth knowing — but no page of yours caused it, so no page of yours can be credited for it either.

  • missing

    You were not in the answer

    Your business did not appear at all. Somebody else has the slot, and the report tells you who. This is the one worth acting on first.

  • not measured

    We could not check this one

    The question never actually got asked — a check failed, or there is no honest way for us to reach that assistant. Nothing came back, so nothing is recorded against you.

Why “we could not check” is never shown as a zero

A zero means we asked and you were not there. Not measured means we never asked. Those are two completely different facts, and printing them the same way is the easiest way to mislead you.

Picture the harm. Something breaks on our side one morning, so eight of your ten questions never get asked. If we wrote those down as zeros, your report would show you falling off a cliff — and you would go and pay somebody to fix a website that was working perfectly the whole time.

So the report prints the words instead, and leaves the count alone. A number you see on your report is a number that was actually earned, or it is not there at all.

What the report prints

not measuredwe did not ask

What it never prints

0 of 5 — struck through: never printeda count nobody earned

Why we ask the same question more than once

Illustrative example. Not a real scan.

Ask an AI assistant the same question five times and you can get five slightly different answers. That is not a fault, it is simply how they work.

Which makes a single check close to a coin toss. Run it on a good morning and you look fine. Run the same question an hour later and you can be gone. Neither one is the truth about your business, and either one printed on its own is a number we would have to defend and could not.

So we ask each question several times and report the spread — named in three runs out of five — rather than one lucky answer written up as a fact.

The free check asks each question once, and labels it as one run rather than calling it an average. Asking repeatedly, and watching the number move month to month, is what the paid plans are for.

one question, asked five times

3 of 5 runs named this business. Two did not. The honest way to write that down is a spread, not a yes and not a no.

named not named

What you get afterwards

Files, not homework.

  • faq-schema.json open ↗

    Your common questions, in a form assistants can quote

    You paste one block of text into your site. It sets out your questions and your answers in the tidy, labelled form these systems read best.

  • organization-schema.json open ↗

    Who you are, stated plainly

    Another block of text to paste in: your real name, where you are, your official profiles. It stops assistants mixing you up with a similarly named business somewhere else.

  • robots.txt open ↗

    Who is allowed to read your site

    A small file you upload to your site, listing which AI companies may read it and which may not. Written correctly, so you do not lock out the ones you wanted in.

  • llms.txt open ↗

    A short summary of your site

    One more small file to upload — a plain summary of what your site holds. Worth the hour it takes, though no AI company has confirmed it reads this file, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Those four you can make right now, free, with no account and no email. They run inside your own browser using only what you type in, so nothing about your business is sent to us.

What you will not get is a list of jobs to go and do. If a thing can be written for you, we write it and hand it over. Paste it in yourself if you are comfortable doing that — or forward the file to whoever built your site, where it is a few minutes of work.

What we do not do

Three things we will not sell you

If anyone offers you any of these, ask how they intend to keep it.

  • No guaranteed mentions

    Nobody controls what an AI assistant says about anybody — not us, not the assistant’s owner, and certainly not a monthly subscription. Anyone promising you a mention is selling something they cannot deliver.

    What we promise

    • The checks run, and you see every result, including the ones that went badly
    • The files arrive, ready to paste or upload

    What we never promise

    • That you will be named in any answer
    • That your page will be used as a source in any answer

  • No ranking claims

    An AI answer is not a numbered list you can climb. It is a paragraph, written fresh each time, that either names you or does not. So there is no position to buy, and we do not describe our work as moving you up one.

    What a result says

    citedyour page was opened and used

    What it never says

    position 3 — struck through: never printeda rank that does not exist

  • No score out of 100

    A single tidy number feels good and tells you nothing. It hides which questions you lost, which assistant lost them, and how many checks ran at all. We report what happened instead, even when that is less comfortable to read.

    What the report prints

    named in 3 of 5 runswith the two that failed shown

    What it never prints

    82 / 100 — struck through: never printedone number hiding all of it

Fair questions.

Do I need to be technical to use this?

No. The results are written in plain sentences, and the fixes are files you can forward to whoever built your site. Nothing is installed, and nothing on your website changes unless you choose to paste something in yourself.

What is the difference between being mentioned and being cited?

Mentioned means an assistant named you from memory, with nothing of yours opened and nothing linked. Cited means it actually opened your page and pointed at it as a source. Different causes, different fixes — so we never add them together.

Why does it say “not measured” instead of zero?

Because those are two different facts. Zero means we asked and you were not in the answer. Not measured means the question never got asked, so there is nothing to count and we will not invent one.

Which parts are working today?

The four tools that make files for you are open and free right now. The check that asks AI assistants about your business, and the checks that look at your own site, are still being built — their pages are live and say so rather than printing a made-up result.

Can you guarantee my business gets mentioned?

No, and nobody can. What we can do is show you where you are missing, tell you who is there instead, and hand you the files that fix what those systems actually read on your site.

Start with the parts that run today.

Four free tools, open on the shelf — no account, no email.

Open the free tools →