How we measure AI visibility

Your AI visibility score comes from asking real AI assistants the questions your customers ask, and reading what they say back. This page explains exactly what that number is, and what it is not.

Where the score comes from

For each business we hold a set of questions, the kind someone nearby would actually ask when looking for a business like yours. On every check we put those questions to six AI assistants: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and the two AI answers Google shows, the AI Overview above its search results and AI Mode. We read each answer and record one thing: whether your business was named in it.

Your score is the share of those answers that named you. Nothing is estimated or guessed. A score of 40 means four in ten of the answers we collected on that check named you.

Named means the answer says your business's name. An answer that only links to your website, without saying your name, is not counted as naming you.

We ask each question up to three times on each assistant, because one answer is not a measurement. What you see is the result across those runs.

How we ask each assistant

• ChatGPT and Gemini: we read the answer from the ChatGPT and Gemini apps, the ones people use every day.
• Claude: we ask the model claude.ai uses by default.
• Perplexity: we ask Perplexity's own search model.
• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: we read what Google shows for the search.

We see what each assistant shows someone who is not signed in, with no history or personal settings. Someone signed in, with their own history and preferences, can be shown different businesses. Nobody outside those companies can see a signed in person's answers, and we do not try.

If an assistant does not answer when we check, we ask it again the same way for up to three days and update the check as answers come in. If it still has not answered, your score uses the assistants that did.

The companies behind these assistants change the models inside them from time to time. We mark your chart when one moves to a new major version, and when we change how we measure, so you can see where a change came from.

AI answers vary, and that is normal

AI answers change constantly. The same question can name you one day and not the next. These assistants write a fresh answer each time they are asked rather than looking one up, so judge the trend across checks, not any single check.

What the score is not

• It is not a position. Being named is not the same as being first.
• It is not a guarantee. It describes what happened when we asked, not what will happen when your customer asks.
• It is not comparable to a Google Maps rank or anyone else's AI visibility score. Different questions and different methods produce different numbers.
• We do not control what any AI assistant says, and nobody can honestly promise to make one name your business.

Assistant names belong to their owners, and nothing here implies any of them endorse us. Questions about any of this? Email hello@localseobot.com.