Mini project: I wanted to see how often AI assistants actually mention my site vs competitors when people ask buying questions. Threw together a small tool that checks your URL against ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude etc and shows how visible you are. I’m using it to find ‘invisible’ pages to fix first, happy to share a link if anyone wants to test their own domain.
I’ve been working on MyGeoRadar, a tool that checks how AI models answer questions about a business and whether that business actually gets mentioned. The reason I built it is simple: AI answers and Google rankings are not the same thing, and business owners are starting to feel that gap.
The most useful part has honestly been seeing the exact prompts and raw answers, because that exposes where a business is being ignored, misrepresented, or outranked by competitors. I’m still refining it, but I’d love feedback on what metrics would matter most if you owned a local business.
Over the last few days I’ve been testing how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude answer local-intent questions like “best plumber near me” or “top med spa in [city].” In a lot of cases, businesses that rank decently in Google barely show up in AI answers at all.
A few things stood out:
I started building MyGeoRadar to measure this more systematically by showing the prompts, raw answers, and source patterns rather than just giving a vague score. I’m the founder, so not pretending this is neutral, but I thought the findings themselves were worth sharing.
I kept seeing people talk about “AI SEO” and “GEO,” but I couldn’t find a good way to actually measure whether a business shows up inside AI tools.
So I built MyGeoRadar.
The idea is simple:
You enter a business/site, and it checks how visible it is across AI search tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
One thing that surprised me while building it:
Some businesses ranking well on Google barely show up in AI-generated recommendations at all.
Still improving it, but it’s been interesting seeing how different AI visibility is from traditional SEO.
Would genuinely love feedback from people here on:
- the concept
- the UI
- what data/features would actually be useful
I’ve been testing something lately that I think local SEOs are going to care about a lot over the next couple years.
I compared:
businesses ranking well on Google
vs
businesses actually being mentioned/recommended inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity
And the overlap honestly wasn’t as strong as I expected.
A pattern I kept noticing:
Some businesses with solid local rankings barely appeared in AI-generated recommendations at all.
Meanwhile, businesses with:
strong entity signals
consistent citations
schema
lots of third-party mentions
topical authority
…seemed to show up much more consistently in AI answers.
It feels like we’re moving toward a world where:
“ranking on Google”
and
“being recommended by AI”
become two separate optimization problems.
I started building a small tool called MyGeoRadar to measure this because I wanted actual data instead of guessing.
Curious if anyone else here has started seeing this with clients yet.
Hey everyone, just wanted to share a quick tip that has been coming up a lot lately.
A lot of consumers are starting to use AI apps (like ChatGPT or Perplexity) instead of Google to find local businesses. They type in things like, "Plan a date night in [City] and recommend a good Italian restaurant."
If your business isn't being recommended by the AI, you are missing out on a totally new stream of customers.
How to check this for free:
Open up ChatGPT and Claude, and ask it: "What are the best [your business type] in [your city]?" See if you show up. If you don't, it usually means your website is missing basic "Schema markup" (code that tells AI exactly what you do) or you aren't listed on enough directory sites.
If you want a deep dive, I built a diagnostic tool called MyGeoRadar that scans 4 different AI engines at once and gives you a 7-part gap analysis on exactly what to fix on your website. It's a premium B2B audit ($49.99 one-time fee, no subscriptions), but I set up a 50% off discount for your first scan.
But even if you don't use the tool, please do the manual check! It takes 2 minutes and it's going to become incredibly important for small businesses this year.
>
Hey r/SaaS,
I just launched a new micro-SaaS called MyGeoRadar. It checks how a business ranks inside AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) and gives them an action plan to improve their visibility.
The standard playbook says I should charge $9/month for this. But honestly? Most small business owners just want to run a diagnostic once, fix their website, and move on.
So I decided to do a flat $1 one-time fee per scan. No accounts, no subscriptions, no hidden fees. Just pay a buck, get your report in 60 seconds.
My thesis is that the friction is so low, volume will make up for the lack of MRR. Plus, it builds immense trust.
Has anyone else tried a micro-transaction model like this instead of MRR? Did it work, or did you end up pivoting to a subscription later?
(If you want to see how the flow works, it's at https://mygeoradar.com)
Spent a while digging into the MERIC/C2ER Cost of Living Data Series because I was tired of seeing the generic “budget $200/month for personal expenses” advice that clearly wasn’t written by anyone who’s been to college in Hawaii or California.
Here’s the short version of what the data actually shows:
The national baseline (per College Board) is roughly $2,400–$2,600/year in “other expenses”, that’s everything outside tuition, room, and board.
The problem: that number gets scaled wildly depending on your state. Oklahoma sits around a cost index of 85. Hawaii is at 184. That’s more than double. The same “frugal student” lifestyle genuinely costs $300–$400/month more in a high-COL state than a low-COL one, and nobody’s financial aid letter accounts for that.
What actually moves the needle most:
1. Meal plan usage — students with full meal plans who still order DoorDash regularly are burning money twice
2. Transportation — the gap between “I walk/bike” and “I own a car” is roughly $200/month before you factor in insurance
3. Subscriptions — most students are paying for 3–5 they forgot about
If anyone wants to know what your specific state + lifestyle combo looks like broken down, drop your state and I can give you a rough estimate based on the data. Happy to share the breakdown methodology too if anyone’s curious.
I spent a while digging into the MERIC/C2ER Cost of Living Data Series because I was tired of seeing the generic “budget $200/month for personal expenses” advice that clearly wasn’t written by anyone who’s been to college in Hawaii or California.
Here’s the short version of what the data actually shows:
The national baseline (per College Board) is roughly $2,400–$2,600/year in “other expenses” — that’s everything outside tuition, room, and board.
The problem: that number gets scaled wildly depending on your state. Oklahoma sits around a cost index of 85. Hawaii is at 184. That’s more than double. The same “frugal student” lifestyle genuinely costs $300–$400/month more in a high-COL state than a low-COL one, and nobody’s financial aid letter accounts for that.
What actually moves the needle most:
1. Meal plan usage — students with full meal plans who still order DoorDash regularly are burning money twice
2. Transportation — the gap between “I walk/bike” and “I own a car” is roughly $200/month before you factor in insurance
3. Subscriptions — most students are paying for 3–5 they forgot about
If anyone wants to know what your specific state + lifestyle combo looks like broken down, drop your state and I can give you a rough estimate based on the data. Happy to share the breakdown methodology too if anyone’s curious.
I feel like nobody talks about how vague official college "Cost of Attendance" numbers are when it comes to day-to-day spending. They just slap a random "$2,500/year for miscellaneous" on the financial aid letter and call it a day.
But $2,500 goes way further in Ohio than it does in New York or California. Plus, it completely depends on if you have a full dining hall meal plan, if you're commuting, or if you're the type of person who needs a $6 coffee every morning to survive 8 AMs.
I was trying to figure out a realistic monthly budget for things like:
I ended up putting together a calculator that takes the national average and adjusts it based on your specific state's cost-of-living index, your housing/meal plan situation, and your lifestyle habits. For my situation (on-campus, meal plan, average spender), it spit out about $221 a month for day-to-day cash.
I'm curious—for those of you already in college, how much are you actually spending a month on non-rent/non-tuition stuff? Does $200-$250 sound accurate, or are you spending way more?
(Also, if anyone is trying to figure out their own budget for the fall, let me know and I can send you the calculator I made!)
Hey everyone,
I know budgeting for the semester can be tough, especially with how much it costs to eat downtown or just exist in State College sometimes.
I recently built a free calculator that helps you figure out exactly how much day-to-day spending money you actually need. It factors in PA's cost of living, whether you're in a dorm vs. an off-campus apartment, your meal plan situation, and your general lifestyle.
I'd love to get some feedback from PSU students to see if the numbers feel accurate for living in Happy Valley.
I don't want to break any self-promo rules by dropping the link directly in the post, so if you want to try it out and see your number, just drop a comment or shoot me a DM and I'll send it your way!
Figuring out a budget for college is super confusing. Every university gives a generic "personal expenses" estimate (usually around $2,600/year), but that makes no sense because going to school in New York or California is way more expensive than going to school in Ohio or Alabama.
I wanted to see what a realistic monthly budget looks like, so I took the national average for student day-to-day expenses (coffee, eating out, toiletries, entertainment—NOT rent or tuition) and scaled it using each state's cost-of-living index.
Here are a few interesting things I found:
Because there are so many variables (state, dorm vs. apartment, meal plan vs. cooking, frugal vs. going out), I built a free calculator that lets you plug in your exact situation and gives you a custom "Monthly Budget Receipt."
You can try it out here: https://spending.college
I'm trying to make this as accurate as possible for incoming freshmen. If you are already in college, plug in your state and lifestyle—does the monthly estimate feel accurate to what you actually spend? Let me know what I should tweak!