Our Methodology

How we measure AI visibility — transparently.

How We Test Each Platform

We call each calibrated platform's native grounded search API — not consumer UI scraping. ChatGPT uses the OpenAI Responses API with web_search_preview. Perplexity uses the Sonar API. Gemini and China-market platforms are enabled for customer reports only after calibration for the engagement scope.

Buyer Prompts

We run prompts from real purchase decisions, drawn from our calibration fixture library seeded from buyer-intent research across verticals.

What Cited Means

A brand is cited when its canonical name, domain, or alias appears in the grounded answer. Weighted matching: canonical name (1.0), domain (0.9), alias (0.7), product (0.5). Score 0.5+ = cited.

Platform Calibration

Each platform prober is validated quarterly against the consumer UI. Citation-set overlap 70%+ (Jaccard) required before use in customer reports.

Platform Coverage

Default calibrated live probes: ChatGPT and Perplexity. Scoped engagements can add Google Gemini and Chinese-market probes such as Doubao, DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen, and ERNIE after calibration. Entity and schema optimization benefits broader AI platforms including Claude and Microsoft Copilot.

What We Do Not Measure

Sponsored placements in AI answers. Model training-time memorization. Mobile app interfaces. These limitations are disclosed in every report.