Getting your website to rank in Google is one thing. Getting ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to recommend your business is another problem, and there's a growing number of tools trying to sell businesses a way to deal with it.
The latest is Beacon, a new AI visibility platform from Change Agents Corporation, which is scheduled to launch on October 28. The company says it will monitor how a business appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and Claude, then provide recommendations for improving its visibility.
What does Beacon actually do?
The idea is pretty simple. You enter your business details and Beacon checks how AI assistants respond to questions that potential customers might ask. That includes whether your business gets recommended, how it compares with competitors and what information might be missing from your online presence.
The company says its free audit should take five minutes or less and will look at things such as your online profile, customer reviews and reputation. The paid plan is advertised at $20 per month and includes more detailed visibility reports covering roughly 100 common customer queries, along with recommendations for improving your results.
This is the sort of thing that could be useful if people are starting to use AI assistants to find local services. If someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a plumber, accountant or marketing agency in their area, you probably want your business to appear in that answer.
The trouble is that knowing whether you're being recommended is only part of the job. You still need to work out why you're missing, make changes to your website or other listings, and see whether those changes actually make a difference.
Is $20 a month worth paying?
Maybe, but I'd want to see the reports before handing over money every month.
There are already plenty of tools entering the AI search visibility market, and some established SEO platforms are adding features to track brand mentions and citations in AI-generated answers. Beacon will need to offer more than a dashboard showing whether ChatGPT knows your business exists.
The useful part would be getting clear recommendations you can actually act on. If it spots missing information, weak pages or competitors being mentioned more often, that could give a small business somewhere to start. If all you get is a monthly report telling you that your visibility is poor, $20 a month could become another software subscription that's easy to forget about.
I'd also be careful about treating AI visibility scores as a direct measure of sales. AI answers can change depending on the wording of a question, the location being searched and the information available to the model. Appearing in more answers sounds good, but it doesn't automatically mean more enquiries or customers.
There's one thing I'd check before signing up
Beacon is being launched by Change Agents Corporation, a company that is also involved in other AI software and defense-related technology. That doesn't tell us whether Beacon is good or bad, but it does mean I'd judge the product on what it actually delivers rather than getting carried away by the company's claims about the size of the market.
The company says the service is aimed at small businesses that want to understand how they appear across AI assistants without paying for expensive marketing services. That's a reasonable problem to tackle. Whether Beacon can solve it well is another question, and the product hasn't built up a public track record yet.
I'd start with the free audit, see what it reports about your business and competitors, and only consider the $20 subscription if the recommendations are useful. There's no point adding another monthly bill just because AI search is the latest thing everyone is talking about.
The launch of the app is scheduled for October 28.
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