An independent research property · Vol. 01

Where does your brand stand in AI Visibility — measured, not guessed.

An open-methodology AI Visibility audit (also called AEO — Answer Engine Optimization) scoring how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Grok actually cite your site. Free. No signup until you see results.

Real-time scoring opens to founding members first. See what a complete report looks like meanwhile.

§ 00 · Glossary

First, the language.

The category has three names — AI Visibility, AEO, GEO — and they describe the same problem with slightly different framing. Here’s the difference, in plain English.

What is AI Visibility?

AI Visibility is how often, and how favorably, AI assistants — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok — mention your brand when answering buyer-intent questions. Unlike SEO, which measures ranking on a results page, AI Visibility measures whether you are cited as a recommended source. The signals that move it are content citation geometry, directory presence, brand mention frequency, and entity disambiguation in Knowledge Graphs.

What is AEO?

AEO — Answer Engine Optimization — is the practice of engineering content and entity signals so AI assistants extract, attribute, and cite your brand verbatim when answering category questions. AEO is structurally different from SEO: it rewards question-format headings, 134-167 word extractable passages, sourced statistics with dates, and FAQ schema. 90% of ChatGPT citations come from pages that are notin Google’s top 20 results.

What is GEO?

GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is the term Search Engine Land and others use for the same discipline: optimizing for AI-powered answer engines including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Claude. The signals AEO and GEO measure overlap roughly 80%. Most practitioners use the terms interchangeably; we use AEO because Answer Engine is the more precise frame for what these systems do.

10-point AI Citation framework
Across 5 LLMs
12+ AI bot crawlers tested
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot…
5 LLMs scored independently
ChatGPT · Perplexity · Claude · Gemini · Grok
40-point AEO standard
Validated against citation behavior
§ 01 · The AEO Framework

What we measure.

Every audit runs the same 10 checks. Each one scores zero to ten. Each one rolls up into per-LLM citability scores with weights we publish in plain text on every report. No black box, no “proprietary AI” smoke. Just the methodology.

01

Crawler accessibilityveto

Validates every major AI bot can reach the site. The #1 silent killer — Cloudflare's default blocks GPTBot.

02

Brand mention frequency

Recent web mentions of your brand outside link contexts. Research shows brand mention frequency is the #1 predictor of AI citation — stronger than backlinks (0.334 correlation coefficient).

03

Directory citation footprint

AI assistants trust directories before they trust your brand. We check the ones that matter for your vertical.

04

Schema markup

Organization, FAQPage, Article with declared author, LocalBusiness, BreadcrumbList. Machine-readable trust signals.

05

Content citation geometry

Extractable passages, question-format H2s, sourced statistics with dates. The 40-point AEO standard.

06

Entity signals & Knowledge Graph

NAP consistency across the web. Wikidata, Wikipedia, GBP. Track 2 of the Two-Track Law.

07

Original data publication

LLMs cite new data. Synthesizing other people's thinking gets ignored.

08

Trusted publication backlinks

Recent mentions in authoritative sources. Single Forbes feature beats fifty more blog posts.

09

Topic cluster architecture

Pillar pages with supporting clusters. AI weights topical authority over isolated content.

10

Per-platform optimization

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Grok each reward different signals. Scored separately.

§ 02 · AI Visibility audit findings

What we’ve found.

Three brands. Three industries. All three doing the on-site work. None of them being cited by AI. The gap between “invisible” and “recommended by ChatGPT” is almost never the content.

Luxury Real Estate
Westside Los Angeles
44/ 100
Grade D · Projected lift +18

Top 1.5% agent nationwide. ChatGPT couldn't find her because the directories it trusts didn't list her.

  • 224-page site with 70+ recent blog posts — but Wikipedia, Wikidata, FastExpert, and HomeLight all missing.
  • Listed twice under different brand names on the same chamber of commerce.
  • Stale Berkshire Hathaway profile from a former brokerage still live, splitting authority across three entities.
Three live profiles. AI assistants saw three different agents and recommended none of them.
Painting Contractor
San Diego County
55/ 100
Grade C · Projected lift +18

Gold-standard technical setup. Invisible on the four directories ChatGPT favors for service businesses.

  • Perfect 10/10 robots.txt — explicitly allows every major AI crawler by name.
  • 73-URL topic cluster spine with three Pattern C displacement plays against named competitors.
  • Missing from Angi, HomeAdvisor, Houzz, Thumbtack — so ChatGPT recommends Yelp randos instead.
10/10 on technical AI-readiness. 4/10 on the directories that determine whether ChatGPT actually mentions them.
Personal Injury Law
Midwest metro
38/ 100
Grade F · Projected lift +24

Strong Avvo profile. Zero schema. Cloudflare blocking GPTBot for nine months without anyone noticing.

  • Veto-level: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot all blocked at the WAF.
  • Zero Organization or LocalBusiness schema on any page.
  • Three years of practice-area blog posts with no declared author entity.
Nine months of paid content marketing. Zero AI citations possible — the crawlers literally couldn't read the site.
§ 03 · Inside an AI Citation Audit

See the report.

The full audit ships as a designed report — radar chart per LLM, 10-point breakdown, prioritized remediation roadmap ordered by speed-to-result, and the math behind every score visible inline.

Open a sample report →
AI Citation Audit · 2026-06-19
v0.2.0
westsideluxurybroker.example
Overall
44/ 100
Grade D
Per-LLM citability
ChatGPT
51
Perplexity
45
Claude
44
Gemini
43
Grok
36
Same-day fixes: 6 · Projected lift: +18 pts in 30 days
● LIVE · Recent scans
Luxury Real Estate·Pacific Palisades·44/100·just nowPainting Contractor·San Diego·55/100·12 min agoFamily Law·Boston·32/100·28 min agoRIA Firm·Houston·61/100·41 min agoB2B SaaS·Remote · US·49/100·1 hr agoRestoration·Denver·27/100·1 hr agoCosmetic Dentistry·Miami·52/100·2 hr agoMarketing Agency·Brooklyn·58/100·2 hr agoSpecialty CPA·Austin·35/100·3 hr agoLuxury Travel·NYC·47/100·4 hr agoLuxury Real Estate·Pacific Palisades·44/100·just nowPainting Contractor·San Diego·55/100·12 min agoFamily Law·Boston·32/100·28 min agoRIA Firm·Houston·61/100·41 min agoB2B SaaS·Remote · US·49/100·1 hr agoRestoration·Denver·27/100·1 hr agoCosmetic Dentistry·Miami·52/100·2 hr agoMarketing Agency·Brooklyn·58/100·2 hr agoSpecialty CPA·Austin·35/100·3 hr agoLuxury Travel·NYC·47/100·4 hr ago
§ 04 · Reserve

Audits ship in cohorts. Pick your seat.

Volume is intentionally constrained so every audit is reviewed by a human before delivery. The first hundred founding members get the Pro tier free for life.

Luxury real estate47 waiting
Law firms23 waiting
B2B SaaS31 waiting
Specialty contractors18 waiting
Financial advisors14 waiting
Healthcare practices12 waiting
Reserve your audit

Next cohort opens Monday.

We’re running 50 audits per week. Founding member access — free Pro tier for life — closes at 100 brands. 47 claimed.

We need your site and industry to scope the audit. No marketing spam. One welcome email + cohort invite when your slot opens.

§ 05 · Open AEO scoring methodology

The methodology is open.

Every report we ship includes the per-LLM weight formulas inline. Each platform — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok — scores via a different recipe because each one rewards different signals. We publish the recipes so you can verify the score, replicate the audit, and argue with the weights. Transparency is the only durable trust signal in a category this new.

// ChatGPT score recipe
0.30 × directories +
0.20 × content geometry +
0.20 × brand mention frequency +
0.10 × schema +
0.10 × topic clusters +
0.05 × backlinks +
0.05 × original data
= a number, on a page, that you can argue with.