AI visibility
AI visibility is the degree to which AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity name, recommend and cite a brand when people ask them questions about its category. It is measured by sampling the assistants with a fixed set of buyer questions and is reported as visibility rate, share of voice, average rank, first-mention rate and citation share.
How it is measured
By sampling. A fixed set of buyer questions is run against the assistants on a schedule, many times each, and every answer is parsed for brand mentions, positions and cited sources. The results aggregate into visibility rate, share of voice, average rank, first-mention rate and citation share, tracked over time.
What it is not
It is not a measure of real user conversations, which are private and which no tool can see. A visibility rate describes what the assistants tend to say when asked a prompt set. It does not say how many people asked.
Why it matters
When a buyer asks an assistant for the best product in a category, the answer names three or four brands and the conversation usually ends there. Being inside that answer, and being named first, is the new equivalent of ranking on page one.