Do this first. It takes ten minutes and you cannot get it back later.
Once you start changing things, you lose the ability to prove anything moved.
Write down five numbers
Open a note and record today’s date, then:
- How many reviews you have, and your rating, on each platform
- How many bookings came through your own site last month
- Your website visits last month
- What you see when you search your own business name
- What you see when you search the thing you sell, in your town
Take screenshots of your Google listing and your main booking platform page. Two minutes.
Then ask the machines
Open ChatGPT. Ask it five questions a guest would ask before booking near you. Real ones:
- Where should I stay in [your town] with young kids?
- Best place near [your town] for a long weekend for two?
- Somewhere in [your town] that takes dogs?
Write down whether you get mentioned, and who does. Do the same in Google, where an AI summary now sits above the results.
That list of who gets named instead of you is the most useful thing on the page. You will come back to it.
Turn on the two free tools
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Both free, both take about fifteen minutes, both show you what search systems see about your site.
Bing matters more than its size suggests, because it feeds several AI assistants. Set up Google first and Bing will import most of the work.
Neither one fills in history. They start collecting the day you connect them, which is a good reason to do it now even if you do nothing else this week.
That is the baseline
Everything after this is measured against what you just wrote down. Keep the note.
Next module: getting your facts straight.
