What are AI Visibility Metrics?
AI Visibility Metrics refer to how AI visibility is measured by tracking tools, such as buzzsense.ai.
Brands want to know whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI assistants are recommending their products or services when people ask questions about their niche. For example: best AI consultancy companies in Kuwait, top-rated pizza restaurants in the Avenues, or plus-size wedding dresses for summer.
We define three metrics. One focuses on AEO, while the other two focus on GEO.
AEO Visibility Metric
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. In simple terms, it means optimizing your content and website so your brand appears directly in AI responses.
This is the most straightforward metric. It measures how often your brand is mentioned in AI-generated answers.
AEO Score = Number of responses mentioning the brand / Total number of responses
For example, if a brand appears in two out of three AI responses about its niche, its AEO score is 66%.
GEO Visibility Metrics
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It focuses on how your brand appears in the sources that AI assistants use to generate answers.
Sometimes, when a user asks a question, an AI system performs web searches, reads the resulting web pages, and uses them to answer the query.
(1) User Query -> AI -> Web Search
(2) Answer <- AI <- Web Search Results
GEO metrics check how often your brand appears in those referenced web pages. We compute this on two levels:
-
Source-level: Measures how often cited sources mention the brand.
GEO Source-level Score = Number of sources mentioning the brand / Total number of sources -
Prompt-level: Checks whether the brand appears in at least one cited source for each prompt.
If at least one cited source mentions the brand, the prompt is counted as 1. Otherwise, it is counted as 0.
GEO Prompt-level Score = Number of prompts with at least one source mentioning the brand / Total number of prompts
Although GEO Prompt-level may look similar to AEO, it is different in two important ways:
- Previous Knowledge: AEO can reflect what the AI model already knows. GEO focuses only on the cited sources used for a specific prompt.
- Dynamic Content: Dynamic content, such as JavaScript-rendered content or data fetched from additional sources, may not be considered.
Example and Metrics
This example shows how the metrics are computed for different brands.
- AEO counts how often a brand appears in AI answers.
- GEO (Source-level) counts how often a brand appears in cited sources.
- GEO (Prompt-level) checks if a brand appears at least once per prompt.
> USER: What are the best tools for niche 1?
> ChatGPT: Brand A and Brand B
Sources:
1.1 medium.com -> mentions Brand B
1.2 runzbuzz.com -> mentions Brand A
> USER: What are the best tools in niche 2?
> ChatGPT: Brand A
Sources:
2.1 reddit.com -> mentions Brand A
We now compute the metrics for each brand:
-
Brand A
- AEO: 2 / 2 = 100%
- GEO (Source-level): 2 / 3 = 66%
- GEO (Prompt-level): 2 / 2 = 100%
-
Brand B
- AEO: 1 / 2 = 50%
- GEO (Source-level): 1 / 3 = 33%
- GEO (Prompt-level): 1 / 2 = 50%
Why It Matters
As the saying goes, "you can't optimize what you can't measure." These metrics help you understand how your brand is perceived by AI systems and where to improve.
If AEO is high but GEO is low, your brand may be mentioned because of existing model knowledge, but it is not well represented in current cited sources. In this case, improving SEO and content visibility is important.
If GEO is high but AEO is low, your content may be discoverable, but not strong enough to influence the final AI answer. This often means your content needs clearer structure, more direct language, or better alignment with user questions.
If both AEO and GEO are low, the issue is likely related to overall discoverability. Improving SEO, backlinks, social presence, and content relevance can help increase visibility.