On no budget
Most advice assumes a budget. The free version is short, dull and works better than most retainers.
The short answer
The cheapest start is a fixed list of twenty buyer questions, run by hand across the assistants once a month and logged in a spreadsheet, plus a rewrite of your five most commercial pages so each opens with a complete answer. It costs time only, and it is the first move a paid engagement would make.
What ranked on 23 September 2026: Every first-page result proposed a tool or a service. The free method is published nowhere prominent, which is unsurprising given who does the publishing.
Last reviewed · 3 sources
The unpaid version covers measurement and most on-site work. It does not cover scale.
Claim and reality
Flip a card for what is actually true.
Claim
Free means low value.
Claim
We will start once we have budget approval.
Claim
A free tool tier is enough.
In order. Tick as you go, or copy the list.
0 of 5 done
0%
Questions
Around a day to set up the prompt set and rewrite five pages, then an hour a month to sample.
When sampling outgrows an hour, you need more markets than one person can track, or the diagnosis is clear and nobody has time to act.
The on-site half does, at once. Being recommended depends on others describing you, which is slower.
Evidence, labelled
Each claim is labelled and sourced. Google rows speak only for Google.
Last reviewed · 3 sources
Monthly manual sampling gives a usable baseline.
Reported
Lists differ run to run, so judge appearance over repeated runs. The study used 60 to 100 runs per prompt. Twenty prompts monthly is direction, not proof.
First-party AI reports are free to read.
Confirmed
Search Console shows AI impressions for every site. Bing shows citations and sample grounding queries.
Google, AI performance reports (opens in a new tab) source 1Bing, AI Performance (opens in a new tab) source 2
Rewriting five pages answer-first lifts citations.
Hypothesis
Common advice and cheap to test. I found no controlled public test, so compare before and after on your own prompts.
No public source
Go deeper
Next step
Send me your site and what you have tried. I will say which step comes first for you and which you can skip.