A Worked Example · Airtime Check
Anchor Signal is a fictional podcast, built to show the shape of a real report — not a real show's results.
A four-person sci-fi audio drama, three seasons in, has never run this check before. First month, all four engines:
Podcast Visibility Report · September 2026
Who came up most: three shows, every one with 300+ Podchaser ratings, a Listen Notes profile, and a spot in a "best sci-fi audio drama" genre-blog roundup.
It was named on Q5, its ensemble-cast hook — in Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, but not Gemini. That split is itself useful: the hook is landing with three engines' research paths, and the gap in the fourth points at a specific source the others are finding that Gemini isn't. Perplexity scored highest, which tracks — it searches the live web by default, so a fresh mention shows up there fastest.
Three moves: a Podchaser profile with real show notes, a pitch to the genre-blog roundup that named all three competitors, and a guest-swap with one of them.
Read This Before Month Two
Run the check twice in a week, in the same engine, and you might get two different scores. Normal — each one picks its own searches, like sending a fresh researcher after the same question. That's on top of the differences you'll already see between Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity in the same month.
Look at who shows up in every run: the shows on every directory, in every roundup, holding real ratings. Every doorway you open raises the odds any research path bumps into you.
Page 1 of Google is sticky for years. AI answers rebuild every single time someone asks. A newer or smaller show has a real shot at getting pulled in this month, even if it wasn't last month.