Methodology

Every AI Visibility Report is run by hand, on each platform individually, and reviewed before it is sent. This page explains exactly what we measure, how, and what the numbers do and do not mean.

What we measure

The primary metric is the AI Recommendation Rate: the percentage of unbranded, commercial-intent questions in which your business appears in the recommendation set an AI platform gives. An unbranded question names a service and a place, not a business: "best Botox provider in Miami", not "is [your business] good?"

For each report we write 25 questions for your category and market: roughly 20 unbranded commercial questions across the services that matter most in your category, and 5 branded diagnostic questions about your business specifically (what it is known for, which services it offers, whether it is reputable, how it compares with a named competitor, who it is best suited for).

How the questions are run

Each of the 25 questions is asked on five platforms: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI and Perplexity. That is 125 observations per report. We record, for every answer, which businesses were recommended and the sources the platform cited, where the platform shows them. Answers vary between runs, so each question is asked once per platform in a fresh session on the same day, and we report what we observed rather than an average of repeated runs.

Competitors

We benchmark against the three to four businesses the platforms name most often in your market for the same questions. If you name a main competitor when you request the report, we include them. Competitors are identified by name in your report; they are anonymised in the public sample.

What "Strong", "Weak" and "Missing" mean

Each question is classified by how many of the five platforms recommended you: Strong means four or five, Weak means one to three, Missing means none.

Source intelligence

For every answer we log the sources the platform cited. Across the 125 observations this gives a list of the sources most frequently associated with recommendations in your market, and which businesses are present on each. We report the strongest observable differences between your presence and your competitors' presence on those sources. We do not claim that any single source causes a recommendation; the platforms do not disclose that, and neither do we.

What the numbers are not

The AI Recommendation Rate is a snapshot of a single day on five platforms with 25 questions. It is not a ranking, it is not guaranteed to repeat, and it is not a prediction of revenue. It is meant to show you, with evidence, where you stand against local competitors and where the largest gaps are.

Questions

Email hello@answercrest.com.