An earlier version of this article displayed a 57.6/100 score for RankingLocal.ai, with four layer numbers. We cannot trace that number to a retained input, tool version, date, or result. We have removed it rather than present it as a current measured result.
What we can check on our own site
The REAL Method is our editorial checklist: Recognize, Evidence, Answer, and Link. It helps us organize work on business identity, factual proof, useful answers, and access to public pages. It is not an official Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic score.
We can inspect public pages for readable service descriptions, visible contact information, internal links, schema that matches the page, and robots.txt rules. We can also check our own sitemap and Search Console data. Those checks say something about the website and conventional search; they do not reveal whether an AI assistant recommended us to a customer.
What a real AI observation would require
Before publishing a claim such as “ChatGPT recommends RankingLocal,” we would need to record the exact query, engine and product mode, date, region, number of repeats, and the raw response. A single answer can change across runs and contexts. We would report the sample count and the observed mentions, not turn a website-readiness score into a probability of recommendation.
Customer results need their own evidence: permission to name the customer, the original baseline, the work actually delivered, an observation window, and a clear explanation of other possible causes. We have not published those items for a RankingLocal case here.
How to use the free checks
The AI Visibility check provides an estimate from public website signals, with a limited live Perplexity query only where available. The Robots Check inspects published robots.txt rules for selected user agents. Neither result proves actual crawling, indexing, or recommendations.
Use a finding as a work item: verify the page, fix a real issue, then observe the relevant search or customer outcome separately. That is how we intend to use the tools on our own site too.