The Porch Score
Don’t hire
anybody yet.
There’s a lot of AI-search panic being sold this year and a good half of it doesn’t survive contact with the data. Before you buy anything from anyone — me included — spend ten minutes finding out what AI actually says about your business.
Nothing here is gated. One website is enough to start. If it comes back clean, you’re fine and you can stop thinking about this.
Step one. Fill these in once and all eight questions fill themselves in.
Step two · where to ask
Start with one.
ChatGPT is fine.
You don’t need all five tonight. One is enough to find out whether you have a problem — and if the first one gets you wrong, you already have your answer and can stop there.
Start here ChatGPT chatgpt.comThe one everyone’s heard of, and the one most of your customers have actually used. Free, and you don’t need an account to ask a question. If you only do one, do this one.
Then, when you want the whole picture — four more.
They disagree with each other, and the disagreement is the finding. Save these for another night.
- Google AI Modegoogle.com Google's own answer, sitting on the search page your customers already use. Click the AI Mode tab above the results.
- Geminigemini.google.com Google's assistant. It reads your Google Business Profile, so it's usually the most accurate about you — which makes what it still gets wrong worth knowing.
- Perplexityperplexity.ai Shows its sources under every answer. The fastest way to find out where a wrong fact about you came from.
- Copilotcopilot.microsoft.com Built into Windows and Bing. Plenty of customers end up here without ever choosing it.
One rule, and it matters Log out first, or use a private window. Signed in, the assistant already knows who you are and hands you a flattering answer no customer will ever see. Incognito on your phone works fine.
Step three · the eight questions
Ask these about
your own business.
Copy them one at a time and paste them in. Screenshot anything that comes back wrong, and date the screenshot — in ninety days you’ll want to compare.
-
01
Do they even know you exist?
-
02
Do they get you right?
-
03
The one that catches made-up answers.
-
04
Where the shortlist actually gets built.
-
05
The other one customers ask first.
-
06
The head-to-head.
-
07
Trust and reputation.
-
08
The one that decides the call.
Step four · what you’re looking for
Three ways this
goes wrong.
You’re not grading the writing. You’re looking for exactly three things, and any one of them is worth an evening of your time.
It states a false fact
Wrong hours, wrong service area, a service you dropped two years ago, a price you don’t charge. Delivered with total confidence, which is what makes it expensive.
You never come up
You ask who to hire in your own town and your name isn’t in the answer. Not a ranking problem — a described-well-enough-to-be-recommended problem.
It names somebody else
The model answers about you using a competitor’s facts, or merges two companies with similar names. Rarer, and the worst one to leave sitting.
Step five · put a number on it
Now score it.
Zero to a hundred.
Twenty questions, one at a time. Tap Yes, No, or Not sure. Every question tells you exactly where to look. About four minutes.
“Not sure” is a real answer and most people tap it a lot. At the end you get a number and one thing to fix first — not a list of twenty.
Where should I
send it?
Your score, your weakest section, and the one thing to fix first — on screen the second you finish, and in your inbox so you still have it next week.
Three questions, no phone number, and I don’t sell lists. Unsubscribe is one click and it works.
How to check
Your Porch Score
Start here. Just this one.
The one offer on this page
Or I do all of it
for you.
The Front Porch Sweep is this list, done properly and done by me. The eight questions run across all five engines with dated screenshots, your score written down as a baseline, the fixes actually made instead of listed, everything re-tested, and the same eight questions run again at ninety days against your original number.
$1,500 on its own. Also included in Shadow Mode, and Shadow Mode is included in the build — so you never pay for it twice.
Scored 80 or better? Don’t buy this. Run the eight questions again in ninety days and spend the fifteen hundred on something that’s actually broken.