Case study zero · our own audit

We scored ourselves: 4 named, 0 cited, out of 100

4 named · 0 cited · out of 100 — 82% named a competitor · 1,508 sources, none ours

AI VISIBILITY SCORECARD Never Behind · self-audit · 2026-07-28
4/100 named answers that named us · 0 linked to us
82% named a competitor instead
1,508 sources cited — none ours

20 buyer-intent questions × 5 AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok) = 100 answers. We ran our own audit on ourselves first. Four answers named us. Zero linked to us.

Who the AI named instead of us

The whole grid — every cell

THE MATRIX · 20 PROMPTS × 5 ENGINES · 100 CELLS ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini · Perplexity · Grok
Never Behind's presence in AI answers, by prompt and engine. ● = cited · ◐ = mentioned · ⚪ = absent.
Buyer question Stage ChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexityGrok
Never Behind reviews — are they any good brand Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
is Never Behind a legitimate AI visibility audit service brand Absent Absent Mentioned Mentioned Absent
best AI visibility audit service for small businesses shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
best GEO audit service for local businesses shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
best service to improve AI search presence for SMBs shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
top AI visibility consultants for small business shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
best AEO audit service for niche businesses shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
who should I hire to improve my business visibility in AI assistants shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
best AI citation audit for professional services firms shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
top rated generative engine optimization services shopping Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
Never Behind free AI scan what is it offering Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
Never Behind full AI visibility audit review offering Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
Never Behind GEO audit what is included offering Absent Mentioned Mentioned Absent Absent
AI visibility audit for local service businesses offering Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
generative engine optimization audit for small business offering Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
AEO audit service who provides it offering Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
my business doesn't show up in ChatGPT recommendations who can help pain point Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
why isn't my business mentioned in AI search results pain point Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
competitors showing up in AI assistant answers but not my business what do I do pain point Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
how do I get my business cited by Perplexity and Claude pain point Absent Absent Absent Absent Absent
Cited (named + linked) Mentioned (named, no link) Absent — didn't show up

Full method + raw capture data: run neverbehind-matrix-20260728T172102Z · see docs/audit/site-proof-datapack-2026-07-28.md

We sell an AI visibility service. So the first business we ran the audit on was our own.

On 2026-07-28 we ran 20 buyer-intent questions through five AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok. That is 100 answers total.

Four of those 100 answers named Never Behind. Zero of them linked to us.

Being named without a link is not the same as being cited. A buyer who is told “there is a company called Never Behind” without being handed a way to get to us has to stop, open a new tab, and remember what they were looking for. Most people do not do that. The 100 answers that count are the ones that carry a source. Zero of those were ours.

Where the four mentions actually are

All four are brand-name lookups — someone typing “Never Behind” into an engine on purpose. Not one discovery question surfaced the company.

  • “Is Never Behind a legitimate AI visibility audit service” — Gemini and Perplexity named us. ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok returned nothing.
  • “Never Behind GEO audit — what is included” — Claude and Gemini named us. The other three, nothing.
  • “Never Behind reviews — are they any good” — all five engines returned nothing. Someone reviewing us by name across every major AI assistant we track finds no signal at all.
  • The eight vendor-shopping questions (“best AI visibility audit service for small businesses”, “top AI visibility consultants for small business”, and six more) — zero of 40 answers. The 40 highest-commercial-intent cells on the board are all empty for us.

Being invisible to strangers who do not know your name is ordinary. Being invisible to people who already typed your name is different. That is the finding that made us write this page.

What the engines did cite

Across all 100 answers, the five engines cited 1,508 sources drawn from 700 different domains.

  • semrush.com — cited 13 times across 11 answers. The only domain cited by all five engines.
  • blog.hubspot.com and clutch.co — each cited 17 times.
  • youtube.com — cited 27 times.
  • reddit.com — surfaced in 6 answers with 9 citations.
  • searchengineland.com — cited 5 times across 4 answers.

Not one of those citations pointed at neverbehind.com.

What this is, and is not

This is a first-party demo. We ran our own audit on ourselves and are publishing the result. It is not an independent review of Never Behind, and we are not claiming it is one. We built the instrument, we picked the questions, we ran the capture, we scored the cells. Every raw and scored answer lives in the run archive neverbehind-matrix-20260728T172102Z.

These are dated observations, not standing facts. The 100 answers are what those five engines returned on 2026-07-28. Engine answers drift. Re-running the same 20 questions tomorrow would produce a different capture. We are not claiming this is what any engine returns today.

We are not comparing this to an earlier run. We published an “0/80” finding in July 2026 from a four-engine capture that used a different set of 20 questions. The two runs do not have a row-for-row before/after because the questions changed. Any number here comes from the 2026-07-28 run only.

The instrument changed too. In the 2026-07-09 capture, Claude web-searched on 9 of 20 cells; in this one it web-searches on every cell. Part of any difference between the two runs is a better instrument, not real-world movement. We would rather say that plainly than let it get read as progress.

Why we published this

Because a company that sells “get found in AI” ought to be able to show you exactly where it stands in AI. Four named. Zero cited. Out of 100.

If your business is somewhere on the same board, the audit finds it, names the cells, and hands you the receipts.

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