How We Score AI Visibility
Every other tool tells you whether you appear in AI answers. We also score whether what's said is right. This page is the full method: how we query, how we classify, and what we check on your site.
Sourcepull Methodology v3.2. No black boxes.
Last updated: May 10, 2026
Get your auditWhat does the AI visibility score measure?
Your Citation Health Score answers one question: when someone asks an AI about your business or category, do they get accurate, useful information that makes them want to contact you?
We query four AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini) with 12 real questions about your business, your category, and your services. That produces 48 responses. We classify each one, apply position weighting, and score each platform independently. 40 of those responses count toward your headline score; the two informational queries (B4 and C3) are reported separately as Topical Authority.
How is the score calculated?
Each platform is scored independently and floored at zero. Misattributions on one platform cannot erase real visibility on another. The headline is a weighted average of three dimensions.
Per platform: score = max(sum(tier x position) / queries, 0) x 10
Per dimension: average of 4 platform scores
Headline = (Brand x 0.4) + (Service x 0.4) + (Category x 0.2)
Clamped to 0.0 - 10.0
How does position in the AI response affect the score?
Being named first in an AI response is more valuable than being mentioned sixth. We track where your brand appears relative to other entities.
| Position | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| 1st named | 1.0x |
| Top 3 | 0.8x |
| Top 5 | 0.5x |
| 6th or later | 0.3x |
What are the Brand, Service, and Category sub-scores?
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Recognition | 40% | Am I seen? Do AIs know who you are? |
| Service Visibility | 40% | Am I seen accurately? Can AIs describe what you offer? |
| Category Authority | 20% | Am I recommended? Do AIs cite you in category searches? |
| Topical Authority | -- | Do AIs treat you as a knowledge source? (not in main score) |
What signals does Sourcepull check on your site?
Alongside the AI query results, every audit runs a technical precheck against your homepage. The findings shape the fix plan. If you've already done the work, the audit suppresses the recommendation. If you haven't, the fix plan tells you exactly what's missing.
None of these signals change your score directly. They feed the fix plan and prevent us from telling you to add things you already have.
| Signal | What we look for |
|---|---|
| Schema markup | JSON-LD blocks on the homepage. Types found (Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Person, AboutPage, etc.). |
| /about entity anchor | Whether your /about page exists with Organization + Person + AboutPage schema and at least 2 sameAs links to LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Wikipedia. |
| FAQPage schema (sitewide) | FAQ schema on the homepage, dedicated /faq subpaths, AND a sample of service or blog pages. |
| AI crawler robots.txt access | GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot. We report how many of the 6 are allowed. |
| SSR / non-JS rendering | Whether your homepage ships visible text content to crawlers that don't execute JavaScript. SPAs without SSR ship near-empty HTML. |
| Quick Answer block | A 40-60 word direct answer paragraph immediately after your H1 that shares topical language with the H1 or title. AI Overviews extract from this position. |
| Question-format H2 ratio | How many of your H2 subheadings end in a question mark. Question-format H2s get cited more often by AI Overviews. |
| Title and meta description | Presence and length. Title under 60 chars, description under 160. |
| Open Graph tags | og:title, og:description, og:type. How your site renders when AI tools surface a link card. |
| Hosting platform | Detected from response headers. Used to make the fix plan platform-aware (Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare, etc.). |
We do not recommend llms.txt. A 300,000-domain study confirms it has no measurable impact on AI citations. If your site has llms.txt, that's fine. If it doesn't, that's also fine. Our fix plan won't list it.
Methodology FAQ
See where you stand
Run a free signal check in 60 seconds, or get the full audit with fix plan.