Introducing AI Visibility

Your customers have started asking a different question. Instead of typing a search and scrolling a list, they ask ChatGPT or Gemini where to eat, shop or book, and act on the answer they get back. If your brand is not in that answer, you are not on the shortlist. You are invisible, and you would never see it happen. The bar is punishing: a 2026 industry analysis of 350,000 business locations, reported by Search Engine Land, found ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of locations, Perplexity 7.4% and Gemini 11%, against a 35.9% appearance rate for the same brands in Google’s local 3-pack.

For multi-location brands, this is a visibility problem hiding as a data problem. You can measure your Google rank, your reviews and your social reach, but until now you could not see whether the assistants writing the answers were naming you, naming a competitor, or leaving your category to chance. AI Visibility closes that gap, at brand, location and product level.

“Search is becoming a conversation, and instead of ten blue links, assistants recommend a shortlist. The brands that make that shortlist are the ones with accurate, structured data behind every location. AI Visibility makes that measurable, so you can manage it like any other channel.”

— Ryan Haworth, CEO, Social Places

What’s new

• A score weighted to your goals: a weighting slider lets you decide what success means, balancing Mention against Position, so the score reflects what matters to your brand.
• Share of Visibility: for the searches that matter in your category, see what share of the AI answer belongs to you, benchmarked against the named competitors you choose to track.
• ChatGPT and Gemini coverage: the two assistants driving the most recommendation queries, tracked side by side, so you know which channel to optimise for first.
• Contextual, location-level tracking: track the search terms you define for each area, for example “best burgers in Durbanville” rather than a generic “near me”, and see how each performs per location.
• Regular audits: your locations are audited twice weekly, on Monday and Thursday, with ad-hoc audits on demand for short campaigns.

Who is this for?

AI Visibility Tracker is built for any multi-location brand that needs to stay discoverable as search shifts from results pages to AI answers. If customers in your category are already asking assistants for recommendations, and 800 million people a week now do, your visibility in those answers is worth foot traffic you cannot afford to leave to chance.

It works at every level of your organisation: a brand team sees total visibility and Share of Visibility, a regional manager sees how each area ranks, and a store manager sees how the brand ranks for their own location and community.

How AI Visibility Tracker works

1. We track the queries that matter. For your category and locations, we monitor how ChatGPT and Gemini answer the contextual recommendation questions your customers actually ask, like “best burgers in Durbanville”, not a generic “near me”.
2. We score your visibility. Every answer is scored per platform and per location, weighted the way you choose, and rolled up to brand level with the trend over time.
3. We benchmark your Share of Visibility. Your slice of the answer is set against the competitors you choose.
4. We audit on a regular cadence. Your locations are checked twice weekly, on Monday and Thursday, with ad-hoc audits available for short campaigns.
5. We turn it into action. The rest of the Social Places platform holds the building blocks that move your score, so insight becomes improvement.

We don’t just report on AI. We build the visibility.

This is the difference. Most tools can tell you how you are doing in AI search. AI Visibility is part of a platform that holds the tools and strategies that actually move your ranking, run by a team that manages them for you.

• Accurate information: hours, products and details kept correct everywhere, the structured data assistants trust and cite.
• Listings across multiple platforms: synced on Google, Apple, Bing and every major directory.
• Reputation strategies: the reviews and responses the models weigh up when they decide who to recommend.
• Social content: the fresh local content that tells assistants each location is active and relevant.
• AI Local Pages & Store Locator: a hyper-local page per outlet and a locator optimised for AI, built to be read and cited.

Every location, visible in its community

One score for your whole brand hides what matters most: AI often gives a different answer in each town, so a store can be the top recommendation in one suburb and invisible in the next. AI Visibility Tracker measures every location against its own local rivals, so you can drive foot traffic to every door, in every neighbourhood.

Built by the leaders in being found

For the past 10 years, Social Places has led the industry in making sure multi-location brands are found online. We keep over 30,000 locations accurate and visible across Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing, TripAdvisor, GPS and in-car navigation devices, social platforms and directories in 89 countries. Global brands like Pep, McDonald’s, Capitec, Massmart, Standard Bank, BMW and more trust us with their online presence every day.

AI assistants are simply the newest place customers look, and they draw on the same structured location data we have spent a decade perfecting. AI Visibility Tracker extends that expertise to the next generation of search, so the brands we make findable on every map and every platform are the ones AI recommends too.

How to access it

AI Visibility Tracker is a new capability inside the AI Insights Hub, and rolls out alongside your existing reports. It is an optional add-on to your plan. If you are an existing customer, your account manager can walk you through it and get it enabled on your Hub. If you are new to Social Places, book a demo and we will show you where your brand stands today.

Win the answer, not just the search

We’ll check how often assistants recommend your locations today, and show you exactly where you’re missing from the answer. Check your AI visibility or contact us to see AI Visibility Tracker in action.