On October 21, 2026, no AI tool named or cited getcobaltbloom.com for any of 15 questions small-business owners ask. We put those questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, and the site appeared in none of the answers. This post records that starting point, explains how we measured it, and sets out the plan and the target for the next 90 days.
Cobalt Bloom is being built to help small businesses get found by the AI tools their customers now ask. A site about that work has to show the method working on itself, starting from nothing.
What did we ask, and how?
We wrote one question for each guide we plan to publish, worded the way an owner would ask it, not the way a marketer would. They fall into three groups.
Getting recommended by AI tools:
- How do I get my small business recommended by ChatGPT?
- How do I get my business to show up in Google's AI answers?
- How does ChatGPT decide which local businesses to recommend?
- How can I check what ChatGPT says about my business?
- How do I get my local business to show up in Google AI Mode and AI Overviews?
- I want to hire someone to help my business show up in AI search. What should I ask them, and what are the red flags?
What AI tools read on a website:
- What parts of my small business website do AI tools like ChatGPT actually read?
- Is my website blocking AI tools like ChatGPT by accident? How do I check?
- Does Squarespace's Block AI crawlers setting stop ChatGPT from finding my business?
- Is Cloudflare blocking AI crawlers on my website? How do I check my settings?
- Does my small business website need structured data, and what is it in plain English?
- Why is my website not showing up on Google?
Websites that were set up once and left alone:
- How do I redesign my small business website without losing my Google rankings?
- What should website maintenance for a small business include?
- How much does a website redesign cost for a small business?
Each question went to four AI tools, set up as close as we could get to what people use. ChatGPT was asked on chatgpt.com itself, which answered with its default model, gpt-6, and decided on its own when to search the web. Claude (claude-sonnet-5-5), Gemini (gemini-3.6-flash) and Perplexity (sonar) were asked through their developer versions with web search switched on, so their answers may differ a little from the apps. We sent everything through DataForSEO, a paid data service that asks the questions in bulk and returns every answer with the sources it cites.
We also searched a short form of each question on Google in the US. For each search we recorded the AI Overview, which is the summary Google writes above the results, and the top 20 results. We counted an answer as naming the site if its text mentioned Cobalt Bloom, and as citing it if one of its sources linked to getcobaltbloom.com. The whole check cost about $1.20.
AI answers change from day to day, so a single check can't say much about any one question. What it gives us is a fixed starting point, measured the same way we'll measure every month.
What came back?
The short version is zero, everywhere:
- 0 of 60 model answers named or cited getcobaltbloom.com. A citation here means the answer links to the site as a source.
- 0 of 13 Google AI Overviews cited it. (Google showed an AI Overview for 13 of the 15 searches.)
- 0 of 15 searches had the site in Google's top 20 results.
That was expected for a domain this new. The answers also showed three other things.
The models often don't look anything up
Every tool could search, but in 13 of the 60 answers the tool answered from what it already knew, without searching the web. When that happens, no website can be cited, however good its page is.
Perplexity searched for all 15 questions and ChatGPT for 14. Claude searched for 10 and Gemini for 8. 8 of the 13 answers given from memory were to the "how do websites work" questions: structured data, a site not showing up on Google, maintenance, redesigns. A new page can only be cited on those questions when a tool decides to search.
Who gets cited instead
ChatGPT pulled up 173 search results across its 14 searches but cited only 18 sites in its answers, 11 of them run by Google, OpenAI or Cloudflare. Perplexity cited 119 different websites, many of them small agencies and tool makers. Claude cited 62.
In this sample, Perplexity looks like the likeliest place for a new site with a useful page to be cited first. ChatGPT's citations lean on the platforms' own pages. To be cited next to them, a page has to add something they don't have, such as step-by-step instructions for each platform and what we've seen on real small-business sites.
On Google, YouTube videos were a source in 10 of the 13 AI Overviews.
Asked by name, only one tool gets it right
We also asked each tool "What is Cobalt Bloom (getcobaltbloom.com)?"
Gemini answered correctly. It described a website service for small businesses, built to be read by AI tools and founded by Eric Levine in Los Angeles. Its sources were this site's home, About and Privacy pages.
ChatGPT found the site and cited the home page, but it called the project Inlay Web. That was this business's working name until October 9, when it became Cobalt Bloom. ChatGPT appears to be working from an older saved copy of the home page, from before the rename.
Claude and Perplexity found nothing about the site and fell back on the mineral that shares the name. On Google, the search "cobalt bloom website" puts this site 14th, behind a fan wiki, Etsy and Zillow.
Before anything else, the tools need to know which Cobalt Bloom this is, under its current name.
Why start from zero in public?
The method has already worked twice, from two very different starting points.
Moss, a coworking space in Venice Beach, was an established business. It went from not being cited by ChatGPT to being cited, and from about fifth to first on Google for "coworking space venice beach." Its manager rebuilt the site herself using the method Eric taught. The details are in the Moss case study.
StratEngine AI, Eric's own company, started on a brand-new domain, registered in May 2025. Between June 13 and October 21, 2026, an automated morning check we run for StratEngine looked at Google's AI Overview for "management consulting agencies vs in-house strategy teams" on 105 mornings. It appeared on 102 of them and cited StratEngine on 96. Over the last 30 days, Google's AI Overviews cited StratEngine for 30 of the 62 questions we track for it.
getcobaltbloom.com is the third test. Its domain was registered on October 10, it has no reviews, it shares its name with a mineral, and ChatGPT still knows it by its old name.
This site also runs on the same setup we plan to offer customers, so it's the first test of the product itself, not only the method. A result here won't prove it works for every business, but it'll show what the setup does on a site that started with nothing. Doing this in public means the results get reported whatever they turn out to be.
What's the plan?
There are five parts. A few are done, and most are just starting.
- Be findable. A page has to be indexed, meaning stored in a search engine's list of pages it can show, before any search tool can use it. Google Search Console, Google's free tool for site owners, is set up, and the home page is indexed. The sitemap, a file listing every page on the site, is in place. New pages are announced to search engines through IndexNow, a free way to tell them a page is new or changed, which we first used on October 20. Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing's version of Search Console, is set up too, since Bing is one of the indexes ChatGPT draws on.
- Say who we are the same way everywhere. Every page carries structured data, the behind-the-scenes code that tells search engines and AI tools which business this is. It links to the profiles that now exist on Medium, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Wikidot and Brownbook, using a property called sameAs. Two podcast and interview pages Eric appeared on now link to the site too. This is the part that should help the tools tell this Cobalt Bloom apart from the mineral and pick up the new name.
- Answer the questions owners ask. A new Guides section will answer the 15 questions above, about one guide a weekday for the next four weeks. The first is how to tell whether your website is blocking AI tools by accident.
- Write the main pages so AI tools can read them easily. The home, About, Contact and Glossary pages each have a plain-text answer page written for AI tools. Anyone can read it from the link at the bottom of the page.
- Measure the same way every month. The same 15 questions, the same four models and the same Google searches, logged with the date, whatever the numbers say.
What counts as success?
The target for the first 90 days is at least one model citing getcobaltbloom.com for at least one of the 15 questions. On this first check, Perplexity looks the likeliest to be first. Every guide should be indexed by Google by then.
Nobody can guarantee what an AI tool will cite, so this is a target to measure against.
A few things we won't do to get there: buy links, post our own links in forums that ban self-promotion, or report results we didn't measure.
Where will the results go?
The monthly results go on TikTok as they come in, with the numbers as they are. The next post here explains the method step by step. The links below this post go to the channels where you can follow along.