How AI visibility is measured

Four assistants, measured separately

People come across AI answers in four main places: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google’s AI Overview at the top of an ordinary search, and Google’s AI Mode. We measure each one on its own.

They often disagree about the same business. One may name you in most of its answers while another barely mentions you. An average across all four would hide exactly the difference you need to act on, so we never blend them into a single score.

Real questions, not keywords

People ask assistants whole questions: “I want to get cosmetic dentistry in Leeds but I’m nervous, where should I go?” rather than “dentist Leeds”. The way a question is put changes which businesses get named, so we write questions the way people actually ask them.

People also want to know more than “who is best?” before they choose. A business can be visible for one kind of question and invisible for another.

Asked more than once

The assistants don’t always give the same answer. Behind the scenes, one question often becomes several searches, and the results shift from one ask to the next. So we ask every question five times on every assistant, and report how often you were named, not just whether you were.

What we count

Every Visility report uses measures we developed ourselves. The most important is our framework of held, winnable and lost.

Held

Questions where an assistant named you every time it was asked.

Winnable

Questions where it named you some of the time. The assistant already knows you, so these are the place to start.

Lost

Questions where it recommended a competitor and not you.

Share of recommendations

The proportion of all the assistants’ recommendations that were for you.

Who is named instead

Every business the assistants recommend in your place, ranked.

Pages quoted

The web pages the assistants cited as sources, yours and everyone else’s.

Counted, never characterised

“Named in 41 of 50 answers” is a measurement. “Better at marketing than you” is an opinion. Every figure in a Visility report is a count, shown with what it is out of. Every question is printed in full, so nothing rests on our say-so.

What the numbers cannot tell you

AI assistants change. Their answers move from week to week, sometimes for no visible reason. Nobody outside the companies that run them controls what they say. A measurement tells you where you stand today and how that changes over time. It can’t promise where you’ll stand next month.

That’s why we never promise a ranking, a percentage or a timeframe. Anyone who does is guessing.

Check it yourself

Every question in the report is printed in full. Ask any of them in your own browser and you’ll see the kind of answer we counted. It may not match word for word, because the assistants vary. That’s exactly why we ask each question several times.