What is AI visibility?

Why AI visibility matters

When someone types "best project management software for small teams" into Google, they get ten blue links and can click several. When they ask an AI assistant the same thing, they usually get one answer naming three to five products. If you're not one of them, that buyer may never hear of you.

This is now a mainstream way to shop. ChatGPT alone is used by over a billion people a week, and Google shows an AI Overview above the results on roughly a quarter of searches, according to Conductor's 2026 benchmarks. For many categories, the AI answer is the new first page.

What AI visibility is made of

• Mentions: is your brand named in the answer at all?
• Position: are you first, or fifth after "also consider"?
• Sentiment and accuracy: does the assistant describe you correctly, with the right prices and features?
• Citations: does it link to your website, or to someone else's page about you?
• Share of voice: how often you're named compared with each competitor across many questions.

How AI assistants decide who to recommend

Assistants that search the web (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Gemini) run searches, read the top pages and summarise them. So you're recommended when the pages they find recommend you: review sites, "best of" lists, comparison articles, Reddit threads, and your own site if it answers the question clearly.

The models also have built-in knowledge from their training data. Brands that are written about often and consistently across the web are "known" to the model and show up even without a search. That part changes slowly, over months.

How to measure your AI visibility

1. List 20 to 50 questions your buyers ask, such as "best X for Y", "X vs Y", "is X worth it", and "cheapest X that does Z".
2. Ask each question on several assistants, at least ChatGPT, Google (AI Overviews), Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity.
3. Ask each question more than once. Answers vary between runs. Three runs give a steadier number.
4. Record every brand named and every source cited in a spreadsheet.
5. Calculate your score: answers that name you ÷ total answers. Do the same for each competitor.

That's 50 questions × 5 assistants × 3 runs = 750 answers, which is why most companies use a tool or a service. Our free AI check does a small version for you, and the full audit runs 50 questions across 10 assistants.

How to improve AI visibility

The short version: be clearly described on your own site, and be mentioned on the pages the assistants already trust. Our guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT goes through it step by step, and what is GEO covers the discipline as a whole.