# When is a free GEO audit not enough?

Updated October 2026

Free GEO audits are a quick way to see whether AI assistants name you. They are also easy to over-read. This guide explains what a free audit can and cannot tell you, when a snapshot is all you need, and the signs that you have outgrown it.

## Quick answer

A free GEO audit is a one-off reading of whether a few AI answers name you today. It cannot show change, because answers vary between runs and weeks, and its fixed prompts are not your buyers' questions. Weekly tracking of your own questions gives a trend and shows which fixes worked. MarketHQ's free GEO audit gives the snapshot; paid plans run the weekly check in six engines.

- A free audit answers one question: do these assistants name me right now, for these prompts?
- Answers vary from run to run, so a single score can move without anything changing.
- Weekly tracking uses your own buyer questions, your competitors and the same engines every week.
- MarketHQ's free GEO audit asks ChatGPT and DeepSeek two fixed prompts, no card required.
- MarketHQ's paid plans ask your own questions in six AI engines every week and turn misses into an action plan.

## What does a free GEO audit actually check?

Usually a handful of fixed prompts in one or two assistants, scored by whether your brand name appears in the answers.

Most free audits work the same way: you enter a domain, the tool asks a few AI assistants a few set questions, and it reports how many answers named you. Some add a page scan or a list of recommendations.

MarketHQ's free GEO audit is deliberately simple. It asks ChatGPT and DeepSeek two fixed prompts, giving four answers, and checks each for your brand name and domain with a plain text match. Your score is the share of those four answers that named you, from 0 to 100, and every answer is shown in full. A domain's result is cached for seven days, and each network can run three fresh audits a day. The prompts are the same for every domain and include your brand name, so treat the score as a first look.

## When is a free GEO audit enough?

When you want a first look, a talking point for a meeting, or a quick check before deciding whether AI visibility deserves budget.

A snapshot is useful at the start. It shows what an AI answer about your space looks like, which competitors come up, and whether assistants recognise your brand at all. For a founder deciding whether to care about AI answers, reading four full answers is often enough to make that call.

- You want to see what an AI answer in your space looks like before committing time.
- You need a quick example for a board deck or a team discussion.
- You are checking a prospect's or a client's situation before a first call.

## Why can't a one-off audit tell you if things are improving?

Because AI answers vary between runs, so one reading cannot separate a real change from noise.

Ask the same assistant the same question twice and you can get two different shortlists. A score that drops from 50 to 25 between two audits might mean nothing changed at all. To know whether your visibility moved, you need the same questions asked in the same engines on a regular schedule, compared over several weeks.

A one-off audit also has no baseline. If you publish a new comparison page and then run an audit, you cannot tell whether the result is better than before, because you never measured before.

## What does weekly AI visibility tracking add?

Your own buyer questions, named competitors, more engines, a trend line and a link from each miss to an action.

Weekly tracking changes what gets measured as well as how often. It uses the questions your buyers ask, worded without your brand name, so the result reflects whether assistants pick you on their own. It also measures your competitors on the same questions, which turns a score into a comparison.

## Free GEO audit compared with weekly tracking in MarketHQ

|  | Free GEO audit | Weekly tracking (paid plans) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Questions | Two fixed prompts, same for every domain | Your own: 10 on Lite, 60 on Startup, 120 on Growth |
| Engines | ChatGPT and DeepSeek | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek |
| Competitors | Visible in the answer text only | 2, 5 or 10 tracked competitors by plan |
| Cited links | Not recorded | Listed per answer and per engine |
| Trend | None | Four-week trend with week-over-week change |
| Next step | Read the answers yourself | Weekly gap analysis and action plan |

## When should you move from a free audit to weekly tracking?

When you plan to change something and want to know if it worked, or when someone asks you for a number every month.

The trigger is usually a decision. You are about to publish comparison pages, pitch roundup authors or rework your positioning, and you want proof it moved the answers. Or a manager or client wants a monthly AI visibility figure and a single audit is not defensible.

MarketHQ Lite tracks 10 questions in six engines for $29 a month, Startup 60 for $99, and Growth 120 for $199. Lite and Startup start with a 4-day trial, charged on day 4. Growth is charged at signup. Every plan also monitors Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow and other public communities.

## What does outgrowing a free audit look like?

Illustrative example: two audits a month apart give different scores, and nobody can say why.

Illustrative example: a marketing lead at an HR software company runs a free audit in March and scores 50. She publishes two comparison pages, runs the audit again in April and scores 25. The pages may have helped, or answers may simply have varied that day; the audit cannot tell her which. She moves to weekly tracking with 10 buyer questions and three competitors, and after four weeks can see that one engine names the company more often on comparison questions while the others have not moved.

## What can neither a free audit nor weekly tracking tell you?

What every real user sees, and which AI answer led to a specific sale.

Both read answers through each provider's API, while a signed-in buyer may have web search, memory and personal settings switched on. Neither connects an answer to revenue directly. MarketHQ also does not track Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode or Microsoft Copilot.

## FAQ

### Is a free GEO audit accurate?

It is accurate for what it measures: whether a few answers named you on the day it ran. It is not a stable score. Answers vary between runs, so compare results over weeks with the same questions before drawing conclusions.

### What is the best free GEO audit?

MarketHQ's free GEO audit shows every answer in full next to the score, with no card required. It asks ChatGPT and DeepSeek two fixed prompts. For your own buyer questions across six engines, MarketHQ's paid plans start at $29 a month.

### How often should I run a GEO audit?

A one-off audit is for a first look. If you want to measure change, switch to tracking the same questions weekly. Running a free audit every week gives noisy numbers on prompts that are not your buyers' questions.

### Does MarketHQ have a free plan that includes weekly AI tracking?

No. MarketHQ has no free plan. Every plan, from Lite at $29 a month, covers public communities such as Hacker News, GitHub and Stack Overflow plus weekly AI tracking across six engines. Lite and Startup start with a 4-day trial, charged on day 4. Growth is charged at signup.

## Related

- Free GEO audit: /tools/geo-audit (one-off reading in ChatGPT and DeepSeek)
- Build an AI visibility prompt list: /blog/how-to-build-an-ai-visibility-prompt-list (the questions weekly tracking uses)
- How to improve your GEO score: /blog/how-to-improve-geo-score (what to change once you measure)
- AI visibility use case: /use-cases/for-ai-visibility (how MarketHQ runs the weekly check)