Here's the pitch you can make that your competitors can't. Roughly 45% of searches now return an AI Overview, and ChatGPT and Perplexity are answering buyer questions before a single blue link is clicked. Yet almost no local agency can put a "here is your AI search visibility, versus your competitors, month over month" chart in front of a client. The AI Visibility page is how you walk into that room as the only provider measuring it.
It has two halves: deterministic AI-readiness checks (is your client's site even eligible to be cited?) and a manual citation tracker (is it actually being cited, and by whom?).
Half one — deterministic AI-readiness checks
These come from coded checks, not opinion. They tell you whether AI engines can reach and extract the client's content:
- AI-bot access in
robots.txt— does the site allow the crawlers that feed AI answers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended? A blanket block here quietly removes the client from AI results, and most site owners don't know it's there. llms.txtpresence — whether the site ships an/llms.txtcontent-map file that points AI engines at the content worth quoting.- Per-page extractability score — how structurally quotable each page is, scored on concrete signals: an answer-first opening, 40–60-word answer blocks, comparison tables, FAQ plus schema, and visible dates and author. The check names the missing signals so the fix is obvious.
- Schema coverage map — where structured data exists across the site and where it's missing.
Because these are deterministic, they behave like every other Crawl Cove finding: stable ids, severities, evidence, and — once you connect GSC — impact ranking. You can turn "your site blocks three of the four major AI crawlers" into a task and prove the fix on the next crawl.
Half two — the manual citation tracker
Readiness is necessary but not sufficient. The other half measures whether the client is actually being cited in AI answers today.
You maintain a tracked query set — around 20 queries per client — crossed against the platforms that matter: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. For each query × platform you record, by hand: was the client cited, and if not, who was cited instead. Over time this rolls up into a month-over-month share-of-AI-voice chart — the exact visual that makes a renewal conversation easy.
Heads up
Citation data is recorded by you — never fabricated, never LLM-guessed. Crawl Cove will not ask a language model "is my client cited?" and write down the answer. AI models hallucinate citations constantly; a chart built on that would be worthless and, worse, dishonest with a client. You record what you actually see, so the chart is something you can defend.
This is the same principle that runs through the whole product: findings are deterministic, ranking is from real traffic, and anything an LLM can't be trusted to do, it isn't asked to do. The citation tracker is manual on purpose — that's what makes it trustworthy.
Why this wins the deal
A backlink count is a vanity metric and competitor backlink data needs a paid index Crawl Cove deliberately doesn't buy. AI visibility is the opposite: it's the metric clients are suddenly anxious about, it's measurable with free, honest data, and almost nobody local is charting it. Pair the readiness checks (the fixable inputs) with the citation tracker (the outcome), and you have a recurring, provable story to tell every month — the kind that justifies a retainer.
See plans and get Crawl Cove →
Next
- The Tasks board & self-verifying workflow — turn readiness findings into tracked, verifiable work.
- White-label reports — put the share-of-AI-voice chart in front of the client under your own brand.