Before you start
You need nothing but a notebook and an evening. Use a fresh browser window so that your own history does not color what comes back, and keep the list of questions open next to you. The full set is on the questions page.
The method
Forget that you own it
Picture a homeowner holding a large proposal from your company and a free evening. That is the only person whose reading counts.
Type the name on its own first
Search the company name by itself and note what answers first, before any question is asked. Whatever comes back first frames everything after it.
Ask the eleven questions, word for word
Put the company name into each of the eleven tracked questions and ask them on the platforms your customers use. Do not paraphrase. Copy the wording.
Add the question nobody wants to type
Ask why somebody should not choose the company. Also ask about complaints, employees, the warranty and the community.
Write down the sources, not just the answers
For every answer, record which pages, platforms and voices it leaned on. Mark each source as yours or somebody else's.
Ask again next month
Run the identical questions again. One reading is a photograph. A second and a third show which way the company is moving.
How to read what you find
Do not argue with the answers. Study them. Three things are worth marking in the margin.
What is accurate, what is wrong and what is missing. Wrong is fixable. Missing is more common, and it is usually the larger problem, because a blank is filled in by someone else.
Whose voice is speaking. An answer built entirely from your own pages is less believable than one that also draws on customers, employees and third parties. You are looking for a mix, with your own evidence present and not absent.
Whether the answer stays about you. If you asked about your company and the answer ends by pointing at three others, the person who asked now has somewhere else to go.
What one evening cannot tell you
Platforms disagree with each other. Information shifts. Personalization changes what one person sees. So a single night is a first look, not a verdict. Do not plan a month around one screenshot. What counts is the pattern over several questions, platforms and months, which is why the last step is to ask again.
When you would rather not do it alone
Power100 runs this same set monthly, with the sources recorded, for companies that have first qualified in its independent ranking. How Power100 runs it describes how.
Next To understand what you just wrote down, read What the answer is made of