A single comparable number for how well your brand performs in AI-generated answers.
The AI visibility score answers one question: across the prompts my customers ask, how well does this AI engine mention, cite and describe my brand vs. all the alternatives?
It's deliberately simple. Marketing leaders need one comparable number that trends over time — the way Domain Authority gave SEO leaders a single rollup metric.
Citations.io and most other AI visibility platforms weight four inputs:
| Input | What it captures | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Mention rate | Share of tracked prompts that name your brand | 40% |
| Citation rate | Share of answers that link to URLs you own | 25% |
| Average rank | Position when listed alongside competitors (lower = better) | 20% |
| Sentiment | Positive / neutral / negative framing of each mention | 15% |
Each input is measured against your tracked prompt set per engine, normalized to a 0–100 scale, and rolled up.
| Score | What it means | Typical brand |
|---|---|---|
| 80–100 | Category-defining presence in AI answers | Market leader, widely cited |
| 60–79 | Strong — consistently named, often first | Established challenger |
| 40–59 | Solid — appears for ~half of relevant prompts | Growing brand with content |
| 20–39 | Patchy — mentioned only for specific queries | Niche or new entrant |
| 0–19 | Effectively invisible | Pre-AI-era brand, no AEO work |
Scores aren't directly comparable across engines. A 70 on Perplexity is not the same as a 70 on Claude — Perplexity surfaces more brands per answer, so absolute mention rates are higher. Track relative movement and share of voice vs. competitors within each engine.
The AEO framework covers the tactics in detail.