What is an AI visibility score?
An AI visibility score is a single number summarizing how often and how prominently AI engines name your brand. What goes into it, why scores differ by vendor, and its limits.
By Max Gillespie, founder of Oetzi
An AI visibility score is a single number that summarizes how visible a brand is inside AI engine answers, usually combining how often the engines name it, how early in the answer the name appears, and how often they cite a page about it. Vendors compute it differently, so a score of 62 from one tool and 40 from another can describe the same product. The plain version of the same idea is share of model: the fraction of answers to a fixed set of buying questions that name you.
What goes into an AI visibility score
Most scores start from a prompt set asked to several engines on a schedule. The inputs are the naming rate, the position of the name within the answer, the sentiment of the surrounding sentence, and the count of AI citations pointing to pages about the brand. Some vendors weight engines by estimated usage, so ChatGPT counts for more than Grok. Each weighting is a judgment, which is why scores are not comparable across tools.
Why AI visibility scores differ between tools
Three reasons. Different prompt sets, since each vendor writes or generates its own questions. Different engines and modes, since one tool may ask ChatGPT with browsing on and another with it off. And different weights for position, sentiment, and citations. None of this makes a score wrong, but it makes a score meaningful only as a trend within one tool. Compare your score this month to your score last month, not to a competitor's score from a different dashboard.
What an AI visibility score does not tell you
It does not tell you why. A score that dropped six points says nothing about which thread the engine stopped citing or which competitor took the slot. The useful companion to any score is the list of cited sources and named competitors per prompt, because that list is the work. Oetzi's share of model check reports the naming rate plainly, shows who was named instead, and lists the threads each engine cited, so the number always sits next to its reasons.
Questions
Is an AI visibility score the same as share of model?
Share of model is the simplest form of an AI visibility score: the fraction of answers that name you, with no weighting. Vendor scores add position, sentiment, citations, and engine weights on top. If you want a number you can explain in one sentence, use share of model. If you want a composite, understand its weights first.
What is a good AI visibility score?
There is no standard scale, so there is no standard good. Within one tool, the useful comparisons are your trend over time and your rate against the competitors named in the same answers. A product named in a third of category answers is doing well in most software categories. Appearing in none is the common starting point.
How do I improve an AI visibility score?
Improve the sources the engines cite. Answer the recommendation threads they retrieve, correct stale comparisons, and publish pages that define and answer a buying question directly. This is generative engine optimization. Scores move within weeks for engines that search on every answer and over months for what a model recalls from memory.
Oetzi is an AI marketer for founders who need users. It finds the threads where people ask for a product like yours on seven platforms, checks whether the AI engines recommend you, and drafts replies, posts, and short video in your voice. You approve everything. 100 credits included, 10 free to try with no card, 50 bonus credits with the first payment.
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