The AI Visibility Index

Last updated: 2026-06-01

When a buyer asks an AI assistant “who’s the best [category] in [city]?”, it answers with a short list of names. An AI Visibility Index ranks those names — showing which businesses ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity recommend most often in a category and city, and which are missing.

How the index is built

1. 1

   Define the category and city

   e.g. “best accounting firms in [city]” or “top marketing agencies for [industry]” — the exact way a buyer would ask.

2. 2

   Ask the four assistants like a real buyer

   Dozens of buyer-style questions are run across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — each several times, because AI answers vary.

3. 3

   Record who gets named

   Every business the models recommend is extracted and counted: how often it appears, and how high in the answer.

4. 4

   Rank by AI recommendation share

   Each business gets a share — the percentage of answers it appears in — and the category is ranked from most- to least-recommended.

Why it matters

• The index is a snapshot of how AI assistants route high-intent buyers — at the exact moment they're choosing who to contact.
• Every business in the category has a reason to look: the ones at the top to defend their position, the ones missing to understand why.
• It's measurable and repeatable. Run it again in 90 days and you can see whether your position moved.