AI Visibility Checker: does AI search cite your website?
We ask an AI the questions your customers ask, with live web search, and measure how often your website is retrieved, cited and named, and which competitors are cited instead.
What AI visibility means
AI visibility is how often AI search answers cite or name your website when people ask questions in your category. It is measured from real answers, not estimated from SEO metrics: citation rate, brand mention rate, retrieval rate and your share of all citations.
How the live AI citation test works
The same retrieve-then-cite process AI search engines use, run on real questions for your category.
Real questions
AI writes the questions your customers ask: unbranded discovery questions and a couple that name your brand.
Live web search
Each question is searched on the live web, returning the sources an AI search engine would read.
Cited answers
A GLM model answers each question from those results and cites the sources it used by number.
Your share
We record whether you were retrieved, cited or mentioned, and who won the citations you missed.
What the AI visibility score measures
Every number comes from observed answers. Nothing is estimated.
Citation rate · 50%
Share of unbranded category questions where your site is cited as a source. This is discovery by new customers.
Mention rate · 20%
Share of unbranded questions where your brand is named in the answer, cited or not.
Retrieval rate · 10%
Share of questions where your pages appear in the live search results the AI reads. Retrieved but not cited means found, not chosen.
Branded citation · 20%
When people ask about your brand directly, does the answer cite your own site or only third parties?
How to read your results
Retrieved but rarely cited
AI finds your pages but chooses other sources. Open key pages with a direct 40 to 60 word answer, add specific facts and prices, and use question headings.
Rarely retrieved
Your pages are not reaching the results AI reads. Check AI crawler access, publish pages that target the exact questions in your report, and earn mentions on the domains listed under "cited instead".
Mentioned but not cited
AI knows you from third-party sites. Make your own pages the clearest source about your offering, with Organization schema and consistent facts.
Not cited for your own brand
Usually weak entity signals: a thin About page, missing Organization schema or inconsistent details across profiles. These are the fastest wins.
AI visibility vs SEO rankings
| Aspect | SEO ranking | AI visibility |
|---|---|---|
| What wins | A whole page in a list of links | A quotable passage inside the answer |
| How many win | Ten results per page | Usually two to six cited sources |
| How it is measured | Position for a keyword | Citation and mention rates across sampled questions |
| Main levers | Relevance, links, technical health | Direct answers, facts, entity clarity, independent mentions |
How to improve AI visibility
- Allow AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot (test your robots.txt).
- Answer the exact questions in your report, each under its own heading with a 40 to 60 word direct answer.
- Add specifics: prices, numbers, dates, comparisons and named examples make passages worth citing.
- Declare your entity with Organization schema, sameAs links and consistent business details (generate schema).
- Earn mentions on the domains AI cites for your category: directories, review sites, publications and communities.
- Re-test monthly with the same questions and track the trend. Read how to measure AI visibility for a full process.
For the complete picture, run the GEO score check: 22 checkpoints with a fix for every issue.
AI visibility questions
What is an AI visibility checker?
An AI visibility checker measures how often AI-generated answers cite or mention your website when people ask questions in your category. Instead of estimating from SEO metrics, it samples real answers produced with live web search and reports your citation rate, mention rate, retrieval rate and the domains cited instead of you.
How does this AI visibility test work?
An AI writes the questions your customers actually ask about your category, plus a couple that name your brand. Each question is searched on the live web. A GLM model then answers it from those results and cites them by number. We record whether your site appeared in the results, whether it was cited and at what position, whether your brand was named, and which other domains were cited instead.
Does it check ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?
The citation test runs on a GLM model with live web search, which follows the same retrieve-then-cite process as other AI search engines. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity are not queried directly, so the tool never shows invented numbers for them. Their crawler access is checked in the AI crawler checker and in the full GEO audit.
How is the AI visibility score calculated?
Score = 50% unbranded citation rate + 20% unbranded brand mention rate + 10% unbranded retrieval rate + 20% branded citation rate. The methodology explains each part.
What is a good AI visibility score?
Any citation on unbranded questions is a strong signal, because those are the questions new customers ask. A score above 60 means you are cited regularly; 30 to 60 means you appear for some questions; below 30 means other sources win most citations in your category.
Why is my site not cited even though it ranks on Google?
AI answers use only a few sources per question and prefer pages that state a direct, specific answer and are confirmed by other sites. Review sites, directories and competitors often win those citations. The "cited instead" list shows exactly who.
How can I improve my AI visibility?
Allow AI search crawlers, open key pages with a direct 40 to 60 word answer, add specific facts and prices, use question headings and FAQ sections, declare your organisation with structured data, and earn mentions on the domains AI already cites for your topic.
Will I get the same result every time?
Search results and AI answers change daily, so each test is a real sample of current behaviour. Results are kept for 24 hours so a repeat test of the same domain shows the same sample. Track trends across several tests rather than a single result.
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