The Diagnostic
The diagnostic is what tells a brand what to fix, and in what order. It comes as a ladder: a free short read of where you stand, a deep Website Diagnostic, and a Cross-Channel Diagnostic that adds YouTube and your entity across the web. Each one maps how visible you are in AI answer engines, and hands you a prioritised roadmap you can execute.
The diagnostic ladder
Discovery has moved. People ask ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode the questions they used to type into a search box, and the answer engines decide which brands to name and which to leave out. The diagnostic finds out whether they name you, why they do or do not, and what would change that. It comes at three depths, so you can start with a free read and go deeper only when the case is clear.
Short Brand Visibility Audit (free)
The entry. A short-form report with three composite scores: SEO Health, GEO Readiness, and YouTube Visibility, each from 0 to 100, plus a short observation on each. A headline read of where your brand stands across organic and AI search. No cost, no commitment.
Website Diagnostic (paid, one-time)
The website channel, deep. Up to 45 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode. You get where you and your competitors appear per prompt, inaccurate or outdated AI claims flagged, a technical and schema audit, a light information architecture audit, a 90-day roadmap of 20 to 30 prioritised fixes, a baseline metrics dashboard setup, and a 90-minute team readout. Ten working days.
Cross-Channel Diagnostic (paid, one-time)
Everything in the Website Diagnostic, carried across more of the surfaces AI models actually read. It adds a YouTube growth channel diagnostic, an entity audit across third-party sources, a 90-day roadmap per channel, and a baseline metrics dashboard setup with YouTube included. Ten working days.
Each rung is useful on its own. The free audit tells you whether there is a problem worth chasing. The Website Diagnostic tells you exactly what is costing you visibility on your own site, and the Cross-Channel Diagnostic widens that lens to the places off your site where the models look before they decide whether to cite you. See full pricing for what each tier costs.
What you walk out with
A paid diagnostic is built to be acted on the moment it lands. Four things sit at the centre of every deliverable.
Where you appear, prompt by prompt
For each tracked prompt, whether you are cited, mentioned, or absent across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode, alongside which competitors the engines name instead. The underlying prompts and citations sit behind every read, so the picture is interpretable, not a single opaque number.
A real-estate map
What your brand owns (your site, product pages, structured data), what it rents (marketplaces, social, platforms you do not control), and what it borrows (press, reviews, Reddit, creator coverage). The map shows where you are strong, where you are absent, and where the answer engines are looking when they decide whether to cite you.
Inaccurate claims flagged
Where the models state something about your brand that is wrong or out of date, pulled out and listed. These are often the fastest wins: a stale fact repeated across answer engines is fixable once you know which source is feeding it.
A 90-day roadmap
20 to 30 prioritised fixes, sequenced and scoped against the specific gaps the diagnostic found. The Cross-Channel Diagnostic gives you a roadmap per channel. No generic "do SEO better": actual interventions for your actual brand, ordered so the highest-leverage work comes first.
Why the score alone isn't enough
The free scores tell you where you stand. They do not tell you which lever to pull to move them. The paid diagnostic exists because a score on its own cannot be executed against: the map, the flagged claims, and the prioritised roadmap are where the work actually starts. Founders and business leaders ask for the number, so the diagnostic includes it, but the number is the smallest thing in the deliverable.
How the diagnostic works
A paid diagnostic runs over ten working days. The shape is the same for both paid tiers; the Cross-Channel Diagnostic simply carries each step across YouTube and your wider entity as well as the website.
Setup and baseline
You give me access to the data layer: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, your CMS, and your YouTube channel for the Cross-Channel Diagnostic. I lock the prompt set (the real questions your customers ask the answer engines), run the initial visibility scans across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode, and map your current real-estate footprint.
The map and the diagnosis
I walk every surface your brand sits on: your owned site, the platforms you rent, and the borrowed third-party sources the models actually cite. I look at the structural signals (entity schema, citation sources, content depth, technical accessibility, information architecture) and find the gaps that are costing you visibility. Inaccurate and outdated claims get flagged as I go.
The competitive and entity layer
I pull the brands the answer engines name instead of you and reverse-engineer why: which sources the models cite for them, which signals they carry that you do not. On the Cross-Channel Diagnostic this extends into an entity audit across third-party sources, so the picture covers how you are represented off your own site.
The roadmap and the readout
I package everything into a single deliverable: where you appear per prompt, the real-estate map, the flagged claims, the technical and schema findings, and the 90-day roadmap of prioritised fixes (per channel on the Cross-Channel Diagnostic). I set up your baseline metrics dashboard so progress is measurable from day one, and we walk through it together in a 90-minute team readout.
Who this is for
It is for founders and marketing leaders alike, who can already see that something is structurally off with their organic acquisition: CAC climbing, AI search returning competitors' names instead of theirs, or a sense that the marketing team is busy without the work compounding. Most clients come in around Series A or Series B, with enough traffic and brand history that the diagnosis can be grounded in real data, not assumptions.
If you're pre-launch or pre-traffic, start with the free Short Brand Visibility Audit and send me a note. I'm usually happy to point you to the right starting point even if a paid diagnostic isn't it yet.
What comes after
A completed diagnostic is what the ongoing work is built on. Most brands move from a paid diagnostic into the Organic Growth Program, the continuous cadence that operates the roadmap channel by channel and tracks the inputs that compound. Some run the diagnostic standalone, take the deliverable in-house, and re-engage later. Both are valid. The diagnostic is designed to be useful on its own, even if no further engagement follows.