How to Measure Your Destination’s Visibility in AI Search
Christopher Penn, Chief Data Scientist, TrustInsights.ai
TIAA Tourism Advocacy Summit Speaker
Want to measure how well your destination is doing in AI search?
There are two completely free tools that are also completely credible for doing so. Anyone charging you money to measure your AI search visibility is charging you too much until you've exhausted what these tools can tell you.
What are these two tools? Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console) Bing Webmaster Tools (https://www.bing.com/webmasters/aiperformance).
Here's how they work. Once you sign up with them (free!) and authenticate that your site really is yours, you'll get reports in each tool about your AI presence.
What do you get? In Google Search Console, you'll see what pages have shown up in AI search, under the Generative AI section. It won't and never will tell you what people were searching for, but this report tells you what pages from your destination website were referred:
In Bing Webmaster Tools, you not only get the pages that were referenced, but you also get the grounding queries - what Microsoft Copilot searched for - that resulted in your site showing up. Bing Webmaster Tools also tells you whether the intent was informational, comparison, research, or commercial - and commercial intent is what you're after most.
What do you do with this information? At a glance it tells you what content on your destination's site is working for you in AI search. Look for what trends you can spot - and what's absent. You know your site better than anyone else - what should be there that isn't?
Each tool tells you something about the audience as well. Google Search Console is broad - for destination marketers, this is your B2C crowd, since 90+% of all search is still Google. Bing Webmaster Tools is B2B, searches and conversations done in Microsoft Copilot, which tends to be businesses and enterprises. If your destination serves companies as well as individuals, this is valuable information.
From there, take the data exports (both tools allow you to download spreadsheets) and drop the data files into your favorite AI tool. Give it a sample prompt like this (be sure to add the missing information and if you attended the TIAA AI Workshops, use your knowledge blocks):
> You're a destination marketing data analyst. Using your built-in Python interpreter and your data science libraries, examine these CSV files about {your destination}. Our priority is {marketing goals} and these reports show Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools data about our website's appearance in AI search tools. Consider approaches like subject and topic modeling based on the URLs as well as looking at what's common among the data sets. I've included more information about our destination here {add it} and our destination website is {your domain name/URL}. After you evaluate data analysis techniques based on the installed Python packages in this environment, write the appropriate Python code to do the data analysis and then build your analysis writeup from the data helping me to know what to do more of, what to do less of, and what I might be missing in our marketing. Use your web search tools for supplementary information (today is {yyyy-mm-dd}) and ask me up to 20 clarifying questions so you have enough information to complete the task. My level of technical and statistical skill is {none/novice/intermediate/advanced/expert}.
This will take your favorite AI tool - Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, or any of the many others - a few minutes to ask you questions, do some research, and then do the analysis, but when you're done, you'll have taken your real AI visibility data and turned it into a thorough analysis, from which you can build a real plan of action.
None of this will cost you any additional money, and beware vendors that are promising AI visibility measurement claims for exorbitant fees.
Google and Bing are two of the most authoritative sources about what’s really happening in AI search, representing 95% of the market, and their information is free for you to use.
Enjoyed this article? Get more great information about how to use AI to grow your destination with Trust Insights, a trusted partner of the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta!
Christopher S. Penn is an internationally renowned keynote speaker who energizes audiences with his expertise on artificial intelligence in marketing. A recognized thought leader, he demystifies complex AI concepts, providing practical strategies that empower marketers to achieve breakthrough results. Christopher’s insights on leveraging AI for data analysis, content creation, and strategic decision-making have shaped five key trends in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing and PR, modern email marketing, marketing data science, and AI/machine learning in marketing. His journey in AI began in 2013, a decade before tools like ChatGPT brought the technology into the mainstream, giving him a deep understanding of its potential and practical applications. His engaging and informative presentations leave attendees with actionable takeaways they can implement immediately.
As co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights, Christopher leads a team of experts dedicated to helping businesses unlock the full potential of their data using cutting-edge AI solutions. His proven track record of success includes building AI-powered systems that have delivered double-digit ROI for prominent brands such as Cisco Systems, T-Mobile, Citrix Systems, GoDaddy, AAA, McDonald’s, Twitter, and many others. He is a 2025, eight-time IBM Champion in IBM Data and AI and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. He is a published author in the Journal of Applied Marketing Analytics, and his work is also reflected in over two dozen marketing books, including the bestselling “Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI“.
