# What Is an AI Visibility Score? How to Calculate It **Definition:** An AI visibility score is the percentage of tracked AI answers that mention your brand. You divide the answers that name you by every answer in your tracked prompt set, including answers that name no brand at all. If your brand appears in 30 of 100 tracked answers, your AI visibility score is 30%. **Published:** September 30, 2026 **Author:** Connor Lahey --- ## How an AI visibility score works An AI visibility score answers one question: out of all the AI answers you track, how many mention your brand? To get one, you start with a fixed set of prompts: the questions your buyers ask AI engines, like "best CRM for small law firms." Each prompt runs through the engines you care about (say ChatGPT and Perplexity), and every answer gets checked for your brand name. **AI visibility score = (answers that mention your brand ÷ all tracked answers) × 100** The denominator is where people go wrong. It includes every answer in the set, even the ones that recommend no brand at all, and leaving those out makes the score look better than it is. ## A worked example Say you track 25 prompts across two engines and run each prompt twice per check. That gives you 100 answers. | Engine | Answers | Answers that mention you | Visibility score | |---|---|---|---| | ChatGPT | 50 | 20 | 40% | | Perplexity | 50 | 10 | 20% | | **Both engines** | **100** | **30** | **30%** | The combined 30% hides a big gap. In this example Perplexity is where the work is, and you'd miss that if you only looked at the blended number. ## AI visibility score vs AI share of voice Both are percentages built from the same answers, so they get confused. They divide by different things. Your AI visibility score divides the answers that mention you by *all tracked answers*, which makes it a measure of reach: how often a buyer asking these questions will see your name. [AI share of voice](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-share-of-voice) ignores the answers that name nobody and divides your mentions by *all brand mentions*, which tells you how you compare with competitors when brands do get named. The two can move in opposite directions. If a competitor drops out of a lot of answers, your share of voice rises while your visibility score stays flat, so it's worth reporting them side by side. ## What affects your AI visibility score A few setup choices change the number before you've optimized anything. Keep them fixed so the trend means something. - **Branded vs unbranded prompts.** Prompts that name your brand almost always return it. Across 3,736 brands tracked in Searchable (30 days to September 17, 2026), the median brand was named in 93% of answers to branded prompts and 7% of answers to unbranded ones. A score that mixes the two mostly measures how many branded prompts you included. See [branded vs unbranded prompts](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/branded-vs-unbranded-prompts). - **Prompt breadth.** Broad category prompts ("best accounting software") produce lower scores than niche ones ("accounting software for Shopify stores"). - **Engines.** Each engine sources answers differently, so report each one on its own first. - **Number of runs.** AI answers change from one run to the next, and running each prompt several times per check gives you a steadier number than a single pass. - **Prompt set changes.** Adding or removing prompts resets your baseline, so note the date of any change. ## Why AI visibility score matters A buyer who asks an AI engine for a recommendation usually sees a short list of brands and nothing else. If you're not on it, you don't get considered for that question. The visibility score is the most direct measure of how often you make the list. It also works as a headline number for leadership, as long as it travels with the prompt set and engines behind it. A 30% score on narrow niche prompts and a 30% score on broad category prompts are very different results. ## How to measure your AI visibility score You can measure a small prompt set by hand: run each prompt, note whether your brand appears, and divide. It gets slow quickly, since 20 prompts run three times each across four engines is 240 answers to read every week. [Searchable](https://www.searchable.com/features/aeo-insights/visibility) runs your prompt set on a schedule and works out the visibility score as the share of tracked answers that mention your brand. You can filter it by engine or topic and compare competitors on the same prompts. Our guide to [AI visibility tracking](https://www.searchable.com/blog/ai-visibility-tracking) covers the full method, from picking prompts to how often to run them. For what the score means for your brand more broadly, see [AI brand visibility](https://www.searchable.com/blog/improve-ai-brand-visibility). ## How to improve your AI visibility score Start with the prompts where competitors appear and you don't. For each one, look at the sources the engine cited, because those pages shape who gets recommended. The fixes usually come from those sources: getting onto the third-party comparison pages the engines keep citing, publishing clear pages about who your product is for, and correcting wrong descriptions of your brand. Track AI brand mentions and AI citations alongside the score so you can see which fix is actually moving it. ## Frequently asked questions ### How is an AI visibility score calculated? Divide the number of tracked AI answers that mention your brand by the total number of tracked answers, then multiply by 100. The total includes answers that name no brand at all, so appearing in 30 of 100 answers gives you a score of 30%. ### What is a good AI visibility score? There's no universal benchmark, because the score depends on your prompt set. A score built on broad category prompts will come out lower than one built on narrow prompts about your niche, so compare yourself with competitors on the same prompts and with your own trend over time. ### Why is my AI visibility score different in ChatGPT and Perplexity? Each engine finds and weighs sources in its own way, so the same prompt can name different brands on each one. That's why the score should be reported per engine before it's combined into one number. ### Is AI visibility score the same as share of voice? No. Visibility score divides the answers that mention you by every tracked answer, so it shows how often you show up at all. Share of voice divides your mentions by all brand mentions, so it shows how you stack up against competitors in the answers that name brands. ### Does a citation count toward AI visibility score? It depends on the tool. In Searchable, the visibility score counts answers that mention your brand, and citations of your pages are tracked separately, because an engine can cite your site without recommending your brand (and the reverse happens too). ### Why did my AI visibility score drop? First check whether your setup changed, such as new prompts or a different engine mix, because that alone moves the score. If the setup is the same, look at the trend over several weeks, since answers vary from run to run. A drop that holds usually means the engines are citing different sources or competitors have gained coverage, so compare which pages were cited before and after. ## Related terms - [AI share of voice](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-share-of-voice): AI share of voice is the percentage of all brand mentions in AI-generated answers that belong to your brand, measured across a fixed set of prompts. Each brand counts once per answer it appears in. If brands are named 200 times across your tracked answers and 50 of those mentions are yours, your share of voice is 25%. - [AI brand mentions](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-brand-mentions): AI brand mentions are the times an AI engine like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews names your brand in an answer. A mention counts whether or not the answer links to your website. That's the difference from a citation, where the engine credits a specific page as its source. - [Prompt tracking](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/prompt-tracking): Prompt tracking is running a fixed set of buyer questions through AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity on a schedule, then recording which brands and sources appear in each answer and where they rank. Comparing the same prompts over time shows whether your AI visibility is rising or falling. - [Branded vs unbranded prompts](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/branded-vs-unbranded-prompts): Branded prompts are AI questions that name your company, such as "Is Acme good for agencies?" Unbranded prompts describe a need without naming any brand, such as "best project software for agencies." Tracking unbranded prompts shows whether AI engines recommend you to buyers who don't know you yet. - [AI citations](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-citations): AI citations are the links an AI engine attaches to its answer to show which web pages the information came from. Each citation credits a specific URL. A brand mention is different: the engine names a company in the text, even when it doesn't link to that company's site. - [AI visibility tracking](https://www.searchable.com/blog/ai-visibility-tracking): Measuring AI visibility over time by running the same prompts across engines and comparing mentions, citations, and positions from run to run. --- [AI Search Glossary](https://www.searchable.com/glossary) | [Searchable Homepage](https://www.searchable.com)