IMS Releases Free AI Visibility Score Showing Business Owners in 60 Seconds Whether ChatGPT Recommends Them

IMS gives business owners three free ways to measure their AI visibility, find the gaps and learn what to fix first

CHICAGO, Nov. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IMS today expanded its answer engine optimization (AEO) work and released three free ways for any business owner to see whether AI assistants recommend them: an AI Visibility Score, an AEO report and a free answer engine optimization training led by IMS founder and CEO Solomon Thimothy. Business owners want to be the name that comes up when a buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire, and the new tools show them in minutes whether they are.

Buyers have changed how they shortlist. Instead of scanning ten links, they ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI who to hire and call the few names it returns. A business missing from those answers loses the buyer before it knows the buyer existed.

Assistants build their answers from what they can verify: a company's own pages, its structured data, its listings and reviews, and what other publications say about it. Many strong businesses are hard to read. Their expertise lives in sales conversations, their listings disagree, and their sites were built for a search engine that ranked links. Where an assistant cannot confirm a fact, it leaves the fact out or repeats an older version of it.

For many businesses, answer engine optimization has meant adding an FAQ page. IMS now runs it as four disciplines that work together. Structured data and entity records tell every assistant who the company is and what it does. Content answers the questions buyers actually ask, in the short, direct passages assistants quote. Outside authority puts the business in the directories, podcasts, newsletters and trade press the assistants already cite. Weekly tracking of citation share, sentiment and answer accuracy shows where the business is named, and wrong or outdated answers are traced to their source so the record can be fixed there.

"Your buyers are asking AI who to hire before they ever pick up the phone," said Thimothy. "Most owners have no idea whether their name comes up. The score answers that, and the training shows what to fix first. No good business should lose a customer because a chatbot couldn't read its website."

Three free ways to start

Get the score. A quick ChatGPT snapshot. At score.ims.net, an owner enters a website and an email address and sees in about 60 seconds whether ChatGPT recommends the business.

Get the report. A broader check across assistants. The free AEO analysis at ims.net checks whether the site shows up across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI results, and returns an instant report with no commitment.

Learn the method. The live training, "How to 10X Your Traffic, Leads & Sales Using AI," runs live on Zoom every month. Founders and CEOs will learn why most sites fail AI engines, how to turn customer conversations into AEO-ready content, how to structure pages for answer engines and how to use AEO, generative engine optimization (GEO) and SEO together. The next date and registration are at scalegrowth.com.

What owners can expect

An owner who takes those steps knows whether AI assistants name the business today and where to start. Once that work starts, structured data and content changes can surface in AI answers within weeks, while outside authority builds over three to six months.

The approach is already moving results for IMS clients, as measured by IMS's AI visibility tracking, where AI visibility is the share of tracked buyer questions in which an assistant names the business. A home builder and remodeler grew its AI visibility 7X in about two months, and a CPA firm nearly doubled its AI visibility in under a month and rose to first in AI share of voice. These are observed results, not guarantees. No one controls what an AI assistant says, so IMS reports progress as a weekly trend.

"The businesses that win here are the ones whose knowledge is written down where an assistant can find it," said Thimothy. "Most owners already have that knowledge. The work is putting it on the page and connecting it to the records the assistants check."

About IMS

IMS helps businesses get found, cited and chosen across traditional search and AI answer engines. Founded in 2006 by Solomon Thimothy, IMS runs AI-driven SEO, content, answer engine optimization, paid media and demand generation for companies from local service businesses to enterprise brands. IMS is headquartered in Chicago with an office in Southwest Florida. Thimothy is a 2X USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who writes for Forbes, Inc. and Fast Company. His latest book is How to Get Buyers to Chase You. Learn more at ims.net.

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