What is AI visibility?
AI visibility is how often AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI recommend your business when someone asks them who to choose. It isn’t a simple yes or no. The same question can name you one time and someone else the next, so the only way to know is to count many answers.
For a UK business, there are four assistants to know about: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode. We explain how the four differ in a separate guide.
Why it matters
People used to type a few words into Google and choose from a page of links. Now, more and more of them ask an AI assistant a full question instead. “Which accountant in Reading is good with small businesses?” The answer names a handful of businesses.
That answer is the shortlist. If your business isn’t on it, that person may never come across you. And you’ll never know they asked.
Some people see these answers without ever choosing to use AI. For some searches, Google now shows an AI Overview above the normal results. So someone searching the way they always have still reads an AI answer first.
How it differs from ranking on Google
A search engine lists pages in order, and a business on the first page has a fair chance of being clicked. An AI assistant writes one answer and names a few businesses in it. There is no second page.
The two are linked, because the assistants read the web to answer. But they aren’t the same. A business can rank well on Google and still be left out of the answers. That’s why AI visibility has to be measured from the answers themselves.
Why one search tells you very little
It’s tempting to judge it from a single search. But ask the same question twice and the list can change. Ask a different assistant and it can change again. One answer only shows what one person saw, once.
To know where you stand, the questions people really ask have to be put to every assistant many times, and every answer counted. That’s what a Visility audit does. You can read the principles behind it on our method page.
Held, winnable and lost: how Visility reads it
Hundreds of answers are hard to make sense of. So we developed our own framework to read them. Every question lands in one of three groups.
- Held
- Named every time the question was asked.
- Winnable
- Named some of the time. The assistant already knows you, so this is the place to start.
- Lost
- Other businesses named instead of you.
That gives you three numbers to follow on each assistant, quarter by quarter. A single score would hide where the gaps are.
The other names for it
You may hear it called other things:
- AI visibility or AI search visibility: how often the assistants name you. This is the part that can be measured.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation): the work of trying to improve it, much as SEO is the work of improving search rankings.
- LLM visibility: the same idea, named after the large language models the assistants are built on.
Whatever the name, the question is the same. When someone asks who to choose, are you named? And if not, who is?
Can I check my own?
You can get a feel for it. Ask an assistant the kind of question someone might ask about a business like yours in your town. You’ll see the sort of answer people get.
But one search can’t show you how often you’re named, on which assistants, or for which questions. Nor will it show who’s named in your place. That takes a proper measurement. To understand why an answer might leave you out, read why ChatGPT recommends a competitor.
Sources
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website