From Mode’s research series. We audit AI visibility for a living, and our own testing this month found even top agencies failing these checks, so no embarrassment if your business does too.
First, confirm the problem is real
Open ChatGPT and ask it plainly: “What do you know about [your business] in [your town]?” One of three things happens: it knows you (good, check the details), it confuses you with someone else, or it draws a blank. In our own early testing, an AI assistant confused Mode with a dissolved company of a similar name, so we have personally lived reason three below.
Reason one: there is nothing to read
AI assistants answer from what exists: your website, your register record, directories, reviews, mentions. A business that lives on Instagram and a phone number has given the machines almost nothing. The fix is unglamorous: a real website with your services, area, story and proof as actual text.
Reason two: machines cannot read what you built
This is the one that surprises people. AI crawlers generally do not execute JavaScript, so sites that render everything client-side can appear nearly blank to them. In our July 2026 study of the UK’s top 50 digital agencies, three of the fifty rendered fewer than 200 readable words, one served just 8. Test yours: disable JavaScript and reload. If the page empties, the machines see the empty version.
Reason three: the AI cannot pin down who you are
Generic business names collide. Without structured data (machine-readable facts: legal name, company number, location, services) an AI cannot confidently distinguish you from every namesake, so it hedges or picks wrong. The fix is entity work: consistent name-address-company-number everywhere, Organization schema on the site, and a profile the machines can verify against the public register.
What moves and what doesn’t
Honesty, because this field is filling with smoke: AI citation is probabilistic, changes take weeks to surface, and nobody controls what a model says. What genuinely moves the signals: readable structure, resolvable identity, published facts worth citing, and independent corroboration. What doesn’t: hidden text, keyword stuffing, or anyone’s guarantee.
Where Mode fits, stated plainly
Mode measures exactly this, at a fixed published price: the AI Visibility Audit (£495) checks what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s AI can see and say about you, benchmarked, with a ranked fix list. Diagnosis only, honestly scoped, no guarantees sold.
