Cognitive Authority is an AI visibility checkup for US local businesses. We answer one practical question: when a customer asks an AI assistant for a recommendation in your city and category, does your business come up, and how does the AI describe you?
You can run a free check at cognitive-authority.com/#free-check. It takes about a minute and needs no account or credit card.
Why does this exist?
More and more people ask AI tools for local recommendations. In BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults, 45% said they had used an AI tool to find a local business in the past 12 months, up from 6% the year before (BrightLocal, March 2026).
An AI answer isn’t a page of ten blue links. It names a few businesses, describes them, and moves on. If you aren’t named, the customer may never see you, and your search rankings won’t tell you that’s happening. Most owners have no simple way to see what these assistants say about them. We built a mirror: real customer-style questions, the AI’s answers word for word, the sources it relied on, and a plain-English score.
What do we actually do?
We run customer-intent questions about your business category and city through Google Gemini with live web search. Then we score what comes back on four dimensions:
- Visibility (30%): how often you’re mentioned or recommended.
- Position (30%): how prominently you appear when you are mentioned.
- Sentiment (20%): the tone of the description and whether the facts are right.
- Sources (20%): how strong and consistent the web sources about you are.
Together these make one AI Visibility Score from 0 to 100, with a letter grade. The full scoring rules are on our methodology page.
We offer two things:
- A free visibility check. You get your score, your grade, all four dimension scores, and the top competitors AI recommended instead.
- A full AI Visibility Report (one-time purchase, no subscription). It covers up to 16 customer questions across 7 intent clusters, each with the AI’s verbatim answer, a comparison against 2–3 same-city competitors on the same questions, a prioritized 90-day action plan, an evidence appendix with cited sources, ready-to-use sample content, and a plan for measuring again later. See pricing.
Which AI engine do we test?
Today our checks run on one engine: Google Gemini with live web search. Your customers may use ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, or several of these. Each one has its own model and data sources, so their answers can differ. Our score is one consistent, evidence-backed snapshot taken through Gemini. It isn’t a reading of every assistant, and we don’t present it as one.
What don’t we do?
We’d rather be clear about this up front:
- We don’t guarantee rankings, recommendations, or results. No one can promise that ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google will recommend a business. We measure, explain, and suggest actions. What happens next depends on many things outside anyone’s control.
- We don’t sell subscriptions or retainers. The report is a single purchase. There are no renewals and no upsells.
- We aren’t an agency. We don’t edit your website, manage your listings, or write reviews. The report gives you a plan that you, your staff, or your current marketing partner can carry out.
- We don’t claim our snapshot equals what you see in an AI app. Results are a snapshot of model API responses at the time of the test. They can differ from consumer AI products because of model versions, personalization, location, and timing.
- We don’t use or ask for customer or patient data. The check only needs public business details: name, city, category, and optionally your website.
Why one-time pricing?
Most AI-visibility tools are monthly software built for marketing teams and agencies. A local dentist, plumber, or law firm usually needs something simpler: a clear picture of where they stand now, a list of what to fix first, and a way to check again later. A single report fits that. If you later want ongoing tracking, monitoring tools exist for that, and we compare some of them honestly in our guide to AI visibility tools.
How do we keep our results honest?
- Evidence over opinion. A paid report covers up to 16 questions, each with the AI’s verbatim answer and the source URLs the model cited, so you can trace the scores yourself.
- Two-stage collection. First the model researches with live search. Then a separate scoring step uses only that collected evidence, so the AI can’t invent sources while grading.
- Plain limits. Every result and report carries the snapshot disclaimer.
Who runs Cognitive Authority?
Cognitive Authority is run by a small team with years of experience in local search optimization (SEO), now focused on AI search visibility (GEO). We are based in Los Angeles, California.
Payments for the full report are processed by Paddle, our Merchant of Record. Paddle handles checkout, sales tax, and receipts, and we never see your card details. Cognitive Authority is the brand name for this product; we don’t publish a separate registered company name on this site.
How can you contact us?
- Email: hello@cognitive-authority.com. A human reads every message.
- Policies: Pricing · Refund policy · Terms · Privacy
Ready to see what AI says about you?
Run your free AI visibility check →
Results are a snapshot of model API responses at the time of testing and may differ from what you see in consumer AI products due to model versions, personalization, location, and timing. We don’t guarantee rankings, recommendations, or business outcomes.
Last updated: October 10, 2026