AI visibility is the share of AI answers to your buyers' questions that name your brand. The answers come from tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. If 100 answers come back and 23 name your brand, your AI visibility is 23%.
It is also called AI search visibility or AI brand visibility. A buyer who asks an AI tool what to buy usually gets a short list of brands. This number tells you how often you are on it. A Google AI Overview is the AI-written summary above the links on some Google searches.
How is AI visibility measured?
AI visibility is measured by asking AI tools a fixed list of buyer questions many times, then counting the answers that name your brand. The formula Depra AI uses is the answers that name the brand, divided by all answers in the period.
Say you track 20 questions on ChatGPT, asked once a day for 30 days. That gives 600 answers. If 150 of them name your brand, your ChatGPT visibility is 150 ÷ 600, or 25%. These figures are an illustration, not customer data.
AI visibility = answers that name your brand ÷ all answers in the period × 100 (the formula Depra AI uses, from how Depra AI measures AI visibility)
What counts and what is left out
Four rules decide what goes into Depra AI's number.
- Questions that name your brand are left out by default. A question such as 'is Brand X any good?' almost always returns Brand X.
- A missing AI Overview is not a miss. Google says Overviews often do not trigger (Google Search Central, checked 7 Oct 2026). Those searches are kept out of the calculation.
- A mention needs proof. A mention without a quoted sentence from the answer does not count. Nor does one where Depra AI is less than 50% sure the text refers to the brand.
- Each AI tool gets its own number. Visibility is calculated per tool, which Depra AI calls an engine, and for any date range. It is compared with the previous period.
What do AI visibility score, share of voice, position and sentiment mean?
They are four numbers that sit side by side in an AI visibility report. The score says how often you are named. Share of voice compares you with competitors. Position says where in the list you come, and sentiment says how the answer talks about you.
Visibility and AI share of voice can move apart. If a competitor starts appearing in more answers, your share of voice falls even when your visibility stays the same.
| Term | In plain words | How Depra AI calculates it |
|---|---|---|
| AI visibility score | How often AI names you | Answers that name the brand, divided by all answers in the period |
| Share of voice | Your share of all brand mentions | Mentions of the brand, divided by mentions of all tracked brands |
| Average position | Where you come when an answer lists options | The average order in which the brand is first named, where 1 is first |
| Sentiment | How AI describes you: positive, neutral or negative | Positive 100, neutral 50, negative 0, averaged across mentions |
A score in one tool is not a score in another
Visibility in Depra AI is a plain percentage of answers. Some other tools blend several factors into one grade. HubSpot's free AI Search Grader, for example, gives a total score out of 100 across five dimensions (HubSpot, checked 8 Oct 2026). Whatever a tool calls its number, whether score, grade or index, ask how it is calculated before you compare.
What is a good AI visibility score?
There is no universal good score. It depends on your category, on how many brands compete in it and on the questions you track. Judge your score against the competitors you track on the same questions, and against your own trend.
Categories differ because the answers differ. A crowded category can be answered with many different brands, so each one appears less often. That is why this page gives no benchmark figure. Use three comparisons in its place.
- Against competitors: rank yourself and each tracked competitor on the same questions, engines and dates.
- Against your own trend: compare this period with the last one, using the same questions.
- Against the sample size: at 50% visibility, 20 answers give a 95% confidence range of about 30% to 70%. With 400 answers it narrows to about 45% to 55%. A confidence range is the band the true figure most likely sits in.
What is an AI visibility audit?
An AI visibility audit is a one-time measurement of how AI answers treat your brand, across many questions and runs. It ends with a list of what to change. Some call it a GEO audit, after generative engine optimisation, another name for AI SEO.
A useful audit covers your visibility per engine, the competitors named in your place, the websites cited and whether AI search bots can read your site. An audit is a snapshot. Tracking repeats the same measurement on a schedule, so you can see whether a fix changed anything. The AI visibility checker page lists what a Depra AI audit covers.
How can you check AI visibility by hand for free?
You can check it with a browser and a spreadsheet. One pass takes about 15 minutes and gives you 20 answers, enough to spot a clear gap.
- Step 1: Write 5 buyer questions. Phrase them as a buyer would and leave your brand name out: 'best face wash for oily skin under ₹500'.
- Step 2: Open each engine in a private window. Use ChatGPT with web search on, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, logged out where the app allows it.
- Step 3: Ask each question once in each engine. That makes 20 answers. On Google, note whether an AI Overview appears at all.
- Step 4: Record four things per answer. Named or not, your position in the list, the competitors named and the websites cited.
- Step 5: Repeat on another day and count. Two passes give 40 answers. Visibility is the answers that named you divided by all answers: 8 of 40 is 20%.
Free instant checkers
A free instant checker gives a faster first look. Ahrefs has a free AI Visibility Checker that needs no signup and shows a limited preview (Ahrefs, checked 8 Oct 2026). Depra AI has no free plan. Its first scan of ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity is free and runs during setup, before the trial, with no card.
Why do hand checks mislead?
Hand checks mislead because AI answers change from run to run. A handful of answers can show you on a list you rarely make, or miss you where you usually appear.
Depra AI's published study measured this. It asked 10 buying questions in English and Hinglish, 8 times each, to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity from inside India on 14 August 2026. Hinglish is Hindi and English typed in English letters. Across the 480 answers, it compared two runs of the same question in the same language. On average they shared 54.7% of their named brands on ChatGPT, 51.2% on Gemini and 68.3% on Perplexity (Hinglish vs English AI shopping study).
Sample size adds to the problem. With 8 of 40 answers naming you, the 95% confidence range runs from about 10% to 35%. How to measure AI visibility covers how many answers you need.
On ChatGPT and Gemini, two same-language runs of one buying question shared 54.7% and 51.2% of their named brands on average. (Depra AI Hinglish vs English study, 480 answers, 14 Aug 2026)
What tracking adds
AI visibility tracking in Depra AI asks your questions from inside the country you choose. ChatGPT with web search, Gemini and Google AI Overviews are checked every day, and Perplexity every week. Every answer is stored in full. Your report shows visibility per engine with a 95% confidence range and the number of answers behind it. Other engines, such as Google AI Mode and Claude, are not tracked. The best AI visibility tools compares other trackers.
How do you improve AI visibility?
Three things can increase AI visibility. Let AI search bots read your site. Answer buyer questions clearly on your own pages. Get named on the websites the answers cite. Then measure again on the same questions.
The first follows what the engines document. The other two are our recommendation: we found no engine that publishes how it chooses brands. No one can guarantee a place in an AI answer, so treat each change as a test and measure it. The AI SEO guide sets out the method in five steps.
- Let AI search bots in. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt, the file that tells bots what they may read. Check that no Disallow rule covers an AI search bot such as OAI-SearchBot, which finds pages for ChatGPT search. OpenAI says sites that opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers (OpenAI crawler documentation, checked 7 Oct 2026). The AI crawlers list names the bot for each engine.
- Answer the question on the page. Put a direct answer near the top of product and category pages, with facts a shopper can check: price, size and ingredients.
- Get named where the answers get their sources. Open the pages cited for your questions. If they list rivals and not you, write to the author with your product's facts, or create your listing on that site. Depra AI's citation gap analysis lists the sites cited in answers that name a competitor while your brand is missing. The pricing page lists it on Growth and above.
How is AI visibility different from Google rankings?
A Google ranking is the position of one page for one search. AI visibility is the share of many answers that name your brand. A ranking is read off a list once. Visibility is a rate, counted over repeated answers.
The two are linked but not the same. A page can rank well while the answer names other brands. Search Console, Google's tool for site owners, has a Generative AI performance report. It counts how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google's chat-style search mode (Search Console Help, checked 7 Oct 2026). It counts links to your pages. The help page lists no count of brand mentions.
| Aspect | Google ranking | AI visibility |
|---|---|---|
| What is measured | Where your page sits in the list of links | How often answers name your brand |
| Unit | A position, such as 3rd | A percentage of answers |
| What is counted | One page | Your brand, wherever the answer found it |
| How it is read | Once, from the results page | Over many answers, because they change between runs |
| How you check it | Search Console or a rank tracker | Stored answers, collected by hand or by a tracker |