AI visibility

AI visibility is how often AI engines name your brand when they answer the questions your buyers ask. As a metric, it is the share of runs whose answer names you, where a run is one prompt asked once in one engine. If 50 runs complete in a period and 20 of the answers name you, your visibility is 40%.

Why it's a rate

The same prompt can get a different answer each time. In a 2026 study by SparkToro, 600 volunteers ran 12 prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI Overviews or AI Mode 2,961 times, and the same list of brands came back less than once in 100 runs. The author concluded that visibility measured across dozens to hundreds of prompts, each run several times, is a reasonable metric. A single answer, or a screenshot of one, proves little.

How to read it

• Per engine. Google says even its own AI Overviews and AI Mode may use different models and techniques, so the responses and links they show vary. Read each engine on its own before you combine them.
• Branded prompts apart. Prompts that name your brand usually return it, and they inflate any average they join.
• Same setup each period. Compare periods with the same prompts, engines and markets, so a change reflects the answers and not your setup.

Visibility measures how often engines name you for the prompts you track. It does not measure how many people ask those prompts, and no tool can guarantee what an engine will say. Other metrics build on it: share of voice compares your mentions with your competitors', and first mention shows how often you lead the answer. Our methodology defines visibility and each metric built on it.