Methodology
How the Visibility Score Works
A transparent, reproducible framework for measuring how prominently your company appears when AI assistants answer the questions that matter most to your stakeholders.
What we measure and why it matters
When executives, buyers, or analysts research a market today, they increasingly turn to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity. Unlike traditional search, these tools don't return a list of links. They give a single, synthesised answer and typically name only a handful of companies.
Being part of that answer, and appearing near the top, is becoming a decisive factor in brand perception and lead generation. The European Visibility Index quantifies exactly that: how present and how prominent your company is when AI responds to the questions your stakeholders are asking.
How the data is collected
We run structured, industry-specific queries against each AI engine on a regular schedule. These queries mirror the kinds of questions a potential customer, investor, or journalist would realistically ask, such as "Which companies lead in industrial automation?" or "Name the most innovative pharmaceutical companies in Europe."
Every query is assigned to one of five thematic categories. Together, they cover the full spectrum of how your brand is perceived by AI systems.
Market Leadership carries the highest weight because it most directly reflects how AI positions your company against competitors in buyer-relevant queries.
Two signals from every AI response
For each response, we extract two pieces of information that together paint a complete picture of your company's visibility.
Mention Rate
The question it answers:"How often does our company come up at all?"
If we ask 20 industry-relevant queries and your company is named in 14 of the responses, your mention rate is 70%. A high mention rate means AI systems consistently recognise your company as relevant to the conversation.
Average Position
The question it answers:"When we are mentioned, how high up do we appear?"
AI responses typically list companies in order of perceived relevance. Being named first or second carries far more weight than appearing at position eight. The average position tracks where in the response your company typically lands, converted to a 0 to 100 scale where 100 means you are always listed first.
Industry Relevance: combining presence and position
For each of the five categories, the mention rate and position score are combined into a single Industry Relevance score. Mention rate contributes 60% and position contributes 40%, because being part of the conversation is the more fundamental signal, while where you appear within it differentiates the leaders.
A company that is mentioned in most responses but typically appears in the middle of the list will score well but not as highly as one that is both frequently mentioned and consistently listed near the top.
From industries to the Visibility Score
The overall Visibility Score combines two perspectives on how your company appears in AI-generated answers.
Industry Relevance
How visible is your company within your own industry? This is the weighted sum of all five category dominance scores from industry-specific queries. It answers: "When someone asks AI about our sector, are we part of the answer?"
National Relevance
How visible is your company across Nation-wide queries that are not limited to a single industry? Questions like "Name the most innovative large corporations in Germany" pit all companies against each other, regardless of sector. National relevance captures whether your brand has broken through to broader recognition beyond your immediate competitive landscape.
Cross-industry Bonus
Some companies are visible far beyond their home sector. When a company appears in queries for other industries, it earns up to 6 bonus points added directly to the final score. Ranking in the top three of another industry's queries earns 2 points; any mention earns 1. This bonus is additive, not a weighted component, and it rewards companies whose brand resonates across industry boundaries.
How multiple AI engines are weighted
Because each AI platform has a different user base and market share, the scores from individual engines are not simply averaged. Instead, each engine carries a weight that reflects its current market relevance.
The Visibility Score is the weighted average of the per-engine scores. This means your score automatically reflects where the largest audiences are asking questions today, and it adapts as the market evolves.
Smoothing for stability
AI responses can vary slightly from one day to the next. To prevent random fluctuations from affecting the index, the published score is the average of multiple consecutive measurement runs. This smoothing window ensures that only sustained changes in visibility move the score, while day-to-day noise is filtered out.
The result is a stable, trustworthy signal that reflects genuine shifts in how AI perceives your company, not temporary quirks in a single response.
Tiers
To make scores immediately interpretable, every company is assigned a tier based on its Visibility Score.
Transparency and reproducibility
Every score can be traced back to the individual queries and responses that produced it. Tracked companies can log in to the dashboard to see per-engine breakdowns, per-category contributions, and the actual AI responses behind each data point.
In summary
The Visibility Score gives you a single, trustworthy number that answers: "When AI recommends companies in our industry, how visible are we?" It is built from real AI responses, covers the questions your stakeholders actually ask, weights the platforms that matter most, adjusts for competitive intensity, rewards cross-industry reach, and can be verified down to every individual data point.
Back to the Visibility Index