GEO courseModule 2 of 10: Your Prompts and BaselineLesson 2.1
Your Free Toolkit, and Using AI Safely
The free tools every later lesson uses to test your agency: a prompt log, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, your crawler logs and the AI assistants themselves. Set them up once, now.
01What it is
Before you fix a car, you want the right spanners laid out. This is laying out the spanners.
Setting everything up takes about 90 minutes and makes every later lesson faster. Search Console, Analytics and Business Profile basics are covered step by step in the SEO course's toolkit lesson. Here are the AI-specific parts.
1Your prompt log
FreeA spreadsheet recording what AI says about you, so you compare over time instead of trusting memory. Lesson 2.3 gives the columns.
How to set it up
- 1Create a Google Sheet or Excel file called "AI prompt log".
- 2Add the columns from lesson 2.3.
- 3Save a dated screenshot of any answer that's wrong, flattering or surprising.
2Google Search Console
FreeWhich pages Google has indexed, plus two new AI tools: the Generative AI performance report (how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode) and the switch that controls whether your site can appear in them at all.
How to set it up
- 1Set it up as in the SEO course: a Domain property, verified, with your sitemap submitted.
- 2Open the Generative AI performance report. It shows impressions by page, country, device and date. It has no clicks and no searches, and sites with very few AI appearances may not see it.
- 3Open Settings, then Search generative AI, and check your site is set to be included (lesson 3.3).
3Bing Webmaster Tools
FreeBing's version of Search Console, now with an AI Performance report: how often Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI answers cite your pages, which pages, and a sample of the searches the AI ran to find them.
How to set it up
- 1Sign in with a Microsoft account and import your site from Search Console (one click).
- 2Submit your sitemap.
- 3Open AI Performance. It counts citations, not clicks and not recommendations of your agency by name. It was a public preview in 2026, so it may not show in every account yet.
4Google Analytics 4
FreeVisits that came from AI assistants. GA4 added an "AI Assistant" channel to its standard reports in 2026, covering ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude among others.
How to set it up
- 1Open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition.
- 2Look for the AI Assistant row. If it isn't there, set the dimension to Session source / medium and look for chatgpt.com, perplexity, gemini, copilot and claude.
- 3Expect a small number. Lesson 9.1 explains why it undercounts and how to catch more.
5Your crawler logs
Free (ask your host)Whether AI crawlers can actually fetch your pages (response 200 is good; 403 means refused). Most agency sites are hosted, so ask your provider.
How to set it up
- 1Send your web provider the request in the box below.
- 2Any 403 or 429 response against a search crawler you want is a problem (lesson 3.1).
6The AI assistants
FreeChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Claude, plus AI Mode inside Google Search. The free versions are enough to start. Always log which one you used.
Open The AI assistants (opens in a new tab)7BrightLocal's free AI visibility checker
Free (needs an email address)A one-off snapshot for one location on ChatGPT or Google AI Mode, with up to five prompts, emailed as a PDF. A second opinion, not the truth: BrightLocal sells tracking tools.
Open BrightLocal's free AI visibility checker (opens in a new tab)Paid tools, when you outgrow the free ones
Paid trackers run your prompts automatically, many times, and report how often you're named. For a small agency they're optional: get a manual baseline first (lesson 2.3) and only pay if it saves you real time. Options include BrightLocal's Local AI Visibility Tracker (per branch, built for local businesses), Otterly.ai and Peec AI (small prompt counts), Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit and Ahrefs Brand Radar (if you already pay for those suites). Prices and trials change often, so check each one. Before you pay anyone, ask how many repeat runs sit behind each number, how locations are set, whether the UK is supported, and whether you can export your raw data.
Using AI as your co-pilot
- Give it the data, don't describe it: paste the robots.txt, the page text or the exported list.
- Tell it your platform: "my site is WordPress with Yoast" or "my site is built by [property software provider]".
- Ask for steps, then ask it to explain anything you don't follow.
- Check its work. AI is often confidently wrong about legal rules, tool menus and anything that changed recently, including GEO advice itself.
- Never paste passwords, client names or personal details into a public AI tool (lesson 8.5).
02Keep it up
See also
That's lesson 2.1
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