Findable

The 'Oops" I found when I ran the AI Visibility Audit on myself.

I built an AI Visibility Audit service. Then I ran it on myself.

My newsletter wasn’t hard to find.

It wasn’t buried on page three.

It wasn’t anywhere.

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Let’s start at the beginning.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been quietly developing an AI Visibility Audit — a structured way to help authors find out whether AI systems can see them, describe them, and recommend them. The premise is simple: the way readers find books and newsletters is changing. AI assistants are increasingly part of that discovery chain. If AI can’t find you, it can’t recommend you.

I’d done the research. Built the framework. Run it on three clients – one Substack, one published author and a coach.

Then I sat down to run it on my own Substack.

Results: Curiosity Unhinged had no search visibility.

Not low visibility — no visibility. Multiple searches for the newsletter by name, by my name alongside Substack, by related terms.

Nothing, nada.

I’ve been publishing for months. Posting consistently. Dropping Notes regularly.

How is this possible?

Why AI Visibility matters (even if you’re not chasing growth)

Substack has its own discovery engine. Notes, recommendations, the explore page.

And it works. Beautifully.

But something is shifting underneath it.

Readers are increasingly asking AI assistants what to read, who to follow, which newsletters are worth their time. Not everyone. Not yet. But enough that the question “does AI know you exist?” is starting to be more important.

If you only want to build on Substack, you don’t have to care about this. The Substack tools will serve you well. Just realize that your only audience are those folks who become part of the Substack community.

If you’re wanting to build something you want to compound — readers who find you through more than one path, a presence that holds up as discovery modes change — then being findable must be part of your infrastructure. Not all of it – a part of it.

I didn’t think I had a gap. Boy, was I wrong.

The missing step

I started with the obvious things — was I blocking AI crawlers? Was something set wrong in Substack? I wasn’t, and nothing was.

I have a confession to make. I hate these kinds of problems. You know the one where it’s something technical and the answer is not obvious. I like things simple and straightforward – where you do 3 steps and it’s fixed. Technology isn’t usually that straightforward. A source of regular frustration for me, especially since I’ve spent years being a ‘techie’.

But this time, I had AI to help me. It told me why Curiosity Unhinged was a ghost. What I had to do to fix it. And walked me through it step by step.

Turns out, I was missing from Google’s indexing. What I learned was that Google’s indexing is the primary gatekeeper for AI search features.

Google AI Overviews, the data that informs most AI assistants — runs through the same indexing pipeline as regular Google search. If your posts aren’t in Google’s index, they’re invisible to AI recommendation systems regardless of what Substack settings you’ve configured.

I doubt most writers know this. I certainly didn’t. You post on Substack. Substack publishes it. It’s on the internet. The assumption is reasonable. It’s also wrong.

Getting into Google’s index requires a step nobody mentions in the “how to grow your Substack” advice: Google Search Console, verified through Google Tag Manager, with your sitemap submitted. Once it’s done, every post you publish goes into an indexed Substack — a Substack Google can actually open and read.

Before that setup? They’re just in a box Google can’t see.

In a previous post, I said SEO had been demoted — that it’s the plumbing, not the strategy. That’s still true. But I underestimated how important the plumbing actually is. When I ran my own visibility audit, I discovered the plumbing to my Substack wasn’t even connected.

Hooking up the plumbing

Let’s have a quick look at what ‘hooking up the plumbing’ means.

First, create an account with Google Tag Manager — an account name, a container, a GTM ID that looks like GTM-5C9V9RCF. (I didn’t know some of the terminology and AI helped me understand what the Tag Manager was asking).

Then, with the GTM ID, head over to Substack settings, into the Analytics section, and paste the ID followed by Save.

After that, go to the Google Search Console. Add your Substack as a URL prefix property. Google will verify it automatically using the Tag Manager ID you just created.

Ownership verified.

That’s the message you’re aiming for because it means Google can see your Substack.

You’re not finished. You must submit your sitemap and then do manual indexing for your most important posts. Submitting the Sitemap is straightforward. It’s the manual indexing that gets tricky. Google cut me off with a daily quota message for my first post, which is apparently completely normal for new accounts (thanks AI for alleviating my panic). This step may take a few days to manually index the posts. If you wait for Google, it takes approx. 3 months.

Fixing the plumbing is the first step in AI Visibility. I consider it the findable layer — the first part of a formula I’ve been working on:

AI Visibility = Findable + Selectable + Trustable

This step took me one morning. Expect more posts on the other two layers in the future as I do each step.

What this means for you

If you’re on Substack and want to be findable, there’s a quick check you can do.

Go to Google and search your newsletter name alongside “Substack.” Then search your name alongside your newsletter topic. If nothing from your own Substack comes up in the results, you’re likely not indexed. You probably have the same gap I had.

The fix is not complicated.

And if you want to know more specifically where you stand — what AI systems can see about you, describe about you, and recommend about you — that’s exactly what an AI Visibility Audit is for.

Reply “audit” and I’ll tell you what’s involved.

Exploring AI as one more tool in the systems that writers use

Website: AIMagicforAuthors.com

E-Mail: info@aimagicforauthors.com