AI Visibility Score: What It Is and How to Raise It

"Does ChatGPT recommend us?" used to be a vibe. AI visibility scoring turns it into a number — a 0–100 measure of how prominently the major engines mention your brand for the queries your buyers actually ask.

What the score measures

A real visibility check isn't one lucky question. It's a fixed probe set — the buyer-intent questions your customers type ("best invoicing app for freelancers", "quickbooks alternative for one person") — run across each engine, with your brand's presence, position, and sentiment recorded per answer.

The score aggregates: how often you're mentioned, how early in the answer, and whether the framing is recommendation or warning.

The score bands

• 0–20 Invisible: engines don't know you exist. Fix: presence in ranking threads.
• 20–45 Occasional: you appear inconsistently, usually low in lists. Fix: more threads, more consensus.
• 45–70 Cited: regular mentions on core queries. Fix: breadth — adjacent queries, more engines.
• 70+ Dominant: you're the default answer. Fix: defend it — competitors are reading the same threads.

What actually moves it

Presence in the sources engines draw from — which for product questions is overwhelmingly ranking Reddit threads and review aggregations. The score doesn't move from on-site tweaks; it moves from consensus building in public discussion.

The measurement discipline

Check weekly with a fixed question set, not vibes. Single probes are noise — assistants vary run to run. Tracked over months, the trend line is a leading indicator: citation share tends to move before branded search does. It's the earliest growth signal most SaaS companies aren't measuring.