Definition
AI visibility scoreAn 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%.
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 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.
- 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 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 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.
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
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%.
See how AI engines talk about your brand
Get a free report on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI name and cite you.