An owner whose bookkeeper walked out in June does not open ten tabs. They ask an assistant who handles this in their city, then call whichever name comes back. This checker asks Google's Gemini, with live web search, the three questions that come before that call, and shows whether your firm is named.
Run the free tool ↓Enter the firm name the way your Google listing spells it, the city clients associate with you, and the service in a client's words: accountant, CPA, bookkeeper, tax preparer. The website field sharpens the match, the answer takes a moment to come back, there is no email wall, and no client information belongs in those fields.
Prefer a full page? Open the AI Visibility Checker tool here.
It asks three questions, the ones an owner works through before calling anybody: who are the best accountants here, which one should I call, and who is top rated on reviews. That last one sits awkwardly on this profession. A roofer photographs the roof. You cannot post the return, or the notice that got withdrawn, so the public record an answer engine reads gets built out of everything except your actual work.
Back comes a verdict, one of AI is not recommending you, you are only partly visible, or AI is recommending you, a count of how many answers named your firm, a ranked list of the firms named instead, and per question the answer text with its source domains. Read the domains. If the answer came from directories and two regional firms, your site was never part of the input.
Then rerun it with one word changed. Accountant, CPA, bookkeeper, and tax preparer are four different questions, and often four different lists of names. Method and limits live on the generic AI Visibility Checker page.
There is no industry average to measure against, and anyone who quotes you one is guessing. The comparison that means something is the list of firms named ahead of you in your own city.
A strong read: named in all three answers, your own domain among the sources, and a description matching how you would introduce the firm, down to entity types and industries.
A weak read is blunt. Invisible, zero of three, and a competitor list you did not expect. Sort it before you react. A national tax chain and an online bookkeeping service are not taking the engagements you want. A two-partner firm four miles away is.
Two things to catch. If the badge says you appeared but your name is nowhere in the answer text, the text shown is an excerpt of a longer reply, and the mention can sit past the trim. Your own domain among the sources means your site fed the answer, which is not the same as being recommended. And read how you get described. An answer that files you under seasonal tax prep, when you sell monthly accounting, brings exactly the calls you are trying to stop taking.
Both runs below are made up to show the shape of the report, not case studies.
Say a two-partner firm in a suburb, mostly small business returns with monthly bookkeeping. Entered as accountant plus the city: verdict invisible, zero of three answers naming it, six other names listed, sources made of directories and two larger firms. Open its site and there are no surprises. Three pages titled tax, bookkeeping, and payroll, no credentials or licensed states in text, and a stock boardroom photo where the partners' names should be.
Now imagine a solo CPA who works only with rental property owners. Entered as CPA for real estate investors, the firm lands in all three answers with its own domain among the sources. Entered as plain accountant, it falls to one of three and a regional firm takes the city.
Neither run comes back with a repair plan. What the firm gets is the gap, and the names currently filling it. Closing it is ordinary work: credentials and licensed states written as sentences, entity types and industries named, capacity stated plainly, LocalBusiness and FAQ schema, an llms.txt file, AI crawlers left unblocked, and listings that agree. That is AI search optimization.
The queries that become engagements are rarely a service plus a city. They are a situation: a first year of 1099 income, an LLC owner wanting a second opinion on the S corp election, months of books nobody has reconciled. A site whose whole menu is tax, bookkeeping, and payroll holds no sentence that matches any of it.
An assistant can only repeat what you state plainly and what agrees across your site, your listing, and the directories carrying your name. What makes a firm describable is usually the material nobody bothers to put on a page.
The full argument sits on the accounting page, with specifics on SEO for accountants, accounting websites, and your Google Business Profile.
The checker costs nothing and stays that way, one of more than 50 free tools we publish, none behind an email wall. The gaps it finds are another matter. Those cost your hours or somebody's.
Our published ranges: a custom website build runs $3,500 to $12,000+ one time. Ongoing SEO or local SEO runs $1,500 to $3,500 per month for most businesses, and $3,500 to $7,500 per month in competitive metros or for multi-office firms. Everything is month to month, no long-term contract, and you own the site, the content, and the accounts.
Check that last part here. Firm sites often arrive bundled with the tax software or the client portal, and the domain can end up in the vendor's account. Find out whose name is on it before you spend a dollar improving the site. See also what SEO costs an accounting firm, what an accounting website costs, and two sibling tools, the website report card for accountants and what you should pay.
Both, in separate runs. They often come back with different names. The broad accountant question mixes licensed firms in with bookkeeping services and seasonal storefronts, so a CPA firm often reads weaker there than it deserves to. Add the words your best clients use, such as bookkeeper or CPA for small business. There is a daily limit on checks, so spread a long list across a few days.
It can. Surname firms collide constantly, and it gets worse when a merger or a retirement leaves the name on the door different from the name on the listing. Enter the firm the way your Google listing spells it, and fill in the website field so the check has more than a shared surname to go on. Then read the source chips under each answer: your own domain there means the answer pulled from your site, not just from the firm that shares your name.
Google's Gemini, with live web search, the same engine that powers Google's AI Overviews, so it is the first one worth checking. ChatGPT and Perplexity are not part of this check, so read the result as one major engine's verdict on your firm rather than the whole field. They tend to reward the same things: facts that are easy to find, and facts some other source confirms.
Not the recommendation itself. Google does sell ads in and around AI answers, so paid placement exists on those screens and beside them, and any firm can buy it. The name inside the organic answer is the part money does not decide. That comes down to what the models can find about you and confirm somewhere else, which is why the plain facts on your own pages carry weight.
Off season, and June is the honest answer. Your calendar is public: prospects shop ahead of the deadlines and switch after them, once a filing season that went badly pushes an owner to look around. A check run in February surfaces problems you will not have time to touch until May, and by then the shoppers have already picked somebody.
Not freely. Client confidentiality reaches your marketing, so names and outcomes stay off your pages unless a client consents in writing, which is why this profession builds its public record out of other material: credentials and license records, plainly written expertise on the situations you handle, consistent listings, and whatever reviews clients choose to leave on their own.
AI Visibility Checker: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for accountants and CPA firms · SEO cost for accountants and CPA firms · Website Report Card for Accountants · What Should You Pay? for Accountants · All free tools
Run it above, and if you want a human read on what came back, we will build a free concept mockup of your firm's site and say plainly what we would change. Orlando based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008.
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.