Service
AI Citation Audit
See which firms AI recommends for your practice area and city, and why.
AI citation audit
Your firm
ENGINES: 4
Entity confidence score
How confidently a model can confirm who you are, where you practice and what you handle.
- LegalService schemaMissing
- Google Business Profile categoryMismatch
- Avvo / Martindale NAPMismatch
- Answer-first practice pages0 of 6
- Review velocity2 / month
- AI crawler accessAllowed
6 FIXES · EST. 4 WEEKS TO FIRST CITATION
Last updated: September 2026
What is an AI citation audit?
An AI citation audit measures how often AI assistants name your law firm when a potential client asks for a lawyer in your practice area and city. It records which competing firms are cited instead, then audits the signals behind those citations: schema, directory consistency, review volume and answer-first content.
Before anything is changed, we need to know what the machines currently believe about your firm. The AI citation audit runs your practice area and city through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, records every firm that gets named, and reverse-engineers the signals that put them there.
What is included
- Query set of 40 to 60 real client questions for your practice area and city, in every language your clients use
- Citation log across four AI assistants, run twice a week apart to control for randomness
- Competitor signal breakdown: schema types, directory consistency, review velocity, content depth
- Your firm's entity confidence score across Google, Avvo, Martindale, Yelp, Justia and the State Bar
- Prioritized fix list with effort and expected impact
- Thirty-minute walkthrough call
How the work runs
- 1
Intake
A twenty-minute call to confirm practice area, cities, languages and the firms you consider competitors.
- 2
Query build
We write the questions a client would actually type, from 'do I need a lawyer for this' to 'who is the best near me'.
- 3
Runs
Each query goes through four engines, twice, a week apart. We log every firm named and every source linked.
- 4
Signal audit
For the cited firms and for you: schema, profiles, reviews, content structure, crawler access.
- 5
Report
Written findings, a ranked fix list, and a call to walk through it.
What exactly does the audit run?
Forty to sixty questions a real client would ask about your practice area in your city, through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, twice, a week apart. Every firm named and every source linked is logged. Your citation rate is the share of answers that include you; the cited firms' signals are what the rest of the report explains.
| Query group | Examples for a Glendale family firm | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Do I need a lawyer | Do I need a lawyer for an uncontested divorce in California? | 6–8 |
| Process and timeline | How long does a custody case take in LA County? What happens at a Request for Order hearing in Burbank? | 10–14 |
| Cost | How much does a divorce cost in Glendale? What is a typical family law retainer in Los Angeles? | 6–8 |
| Who should I hire | Best family lawyer in Glendale; Armenian-speaking divorce attorney near me | 8–10 |
| Courthouse and local | Where are Glendale family cases heard? Parking at the Burbank courthouse | 6–8 |
| Language variants | The same questions in the languages your clients use | as needed |
Each engine is queried in a fresh session so earlier answers do not bias later ones. Answers vary run to run, which is why every question runs at least twice and the report shows a range, not a single number.
What does the report contain?
Six parts: your citation rate by engine and by query group, the firms cited instead of you and how often, the signal breakdown behind those firms, your entity score across the twenty listings engines trust, the ranked fix list with effort and expected impact, and the query set itself so you can rerun it.
AI citation audit
Your firm
ENGINES: 4
Entity confidence score
How confidently a model can confirm who you are, where you practice and what you handle.
- LegalService schemaMissing
- Google Business Profile categoryMismatch
- Avvo / Martindale NAPMismatch
- Answer-first practice pages0 of 6
- Review velocity2 / month
- AI crawler accessAllowed
6 FIXES · EST. 4 WEEKS TO FIRST CITATION
- 1Citation rate. Overall and per engine, with the query groups where you appear and where you do not.
- 2Who is cited. Each competing firm, how many answers named it, which pages or profiles were the source.
- 3Why they win. Schema present or missing, directory consistency, review count and recency, answer position on the cited page, languages.
- 4Your entity score. Name, address, phone, website and practice list compared across the State Bar, Google, Apple, Bing, Avvo, Justia, Martindale, Yelp, LinkedIn and the rest.
- 5Fix list. Six to ten items ranked by impact, each with the effort in hours and the tier it belongs to.
- 6Query set. The spreadsheet, so the numbers are reproducible by you or anyone else.
How long does the audit take?
Five business days from intake to report. Day one is the intake call and query build; days two and three are the first run and the signal audit; day five is the second run, the report and the walkthrough scheduling. Firms that send their competitor list and profile links on day one keep to that schedule.
| Day | What happens | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Twenty-minute intake; query set drafted | Practice areas, cities, languages, three to five competitor names |
| 2 | First run across four engines; citation log started | Nothing |
| 3 | Signal audit of cited firms and of your site and profiles | Access to Google Business Profile insights, if you have it |
| 4 | Second run; ranges computed; fix list drafted | Nothing |
| 5 | Report delivered; thirty-minute walkthrough booked | Thirty minutes on a call |
Why is the audit free, and what is the catch?
It is how we qualify clients and how we show the work before asking for a retainer. If the gap is small, we say so and send the fix list anyway. If the practice area is personal injury, we decline before the intake call. There is no automated follow-up sequence and no obligation.
- The report is yours either way. Several firms have used it to brief their existing agency.
- We limit free audits to Los Angeles County firms in the eight practice areas we serve, because those are the audits we can act on.
- One audit per firm per six months, so the second run is a progress measurement rather than a repeat.
The pricing page shows what happens after the audit if you want us to do the work; the AI search visibility guide explains the signals the report measures.
What happens after the audit?
You get the report and the walkthrough, then decide. Most firms that continue start on Foundation for the entity and schema fixes, which register in two to six weeks, then move to Growth once the content plan is ready. The query set from the audit becomes the tracked set for monthly reporting, so month one is measured against the same baseline.
| If the audit shows | Usual next step | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Entity inconsistencies, missing schema, crawler blocks | Fix the foundation; recheck in six weeks | Foundation |
| Foundation fine, no answer-first pages, few reviews | Content cadence and the review program | Growth |
| Clients search in a language the firm does not publish in | Native-language pages and community placement | Community |
| Already cited on most queries | Quarterly recheck; no retainer needed | None |
Outcome
You leave knowing exactly why you are not cited and what closes the gap. The audit is free for Los Angeles County firms.
FAQ
AI Citation Audit: questions.
Yes. It is how we decide whether we can help. If the gap is too small to justify a retainer, we tell you and send the fix list anyway.
Five business days from the intake call to the written report.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. We add Google AI Mode results where they appear for legal queries.
No. The audit is run from the outside, the way a client would experience it. Access is only needed once we start fixing things.
Then the audit shows how consistently, for which queries, and where you are still missing. Most firms that are cited are cited for a narrow slice of questions.
Still have questions? Talk to us →
Free citation audit
Find out who AI recommends instead of you.
Written report plus a thirty-minute walkthrough. No pitch until you ask for one.