AI Visibility Index: Measuring your brand in the AI Era

In recent years, search behavior has changed completely. Users are moving away from traditional Google searches for restaurants, stores or Hotels toward direct answers from platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude.

The AI Visibility Index is our solution to this new reality. It provides a concrete way to measure whether your brand is being recommended when a user asks an AI about your category or service.

📍 Where to find it: This feature can be accessed from the new Intelligence tab, which also includes the AI Readiness Score.

Please note that the AI Visibility Index is a premium feature and might not be included in your subscription. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support@localistico.com to activate this feature.

Why you need an AI Visibility Index

• Zero-Click Reality: Approximately 60% of Google searches now end without a single click. When AI Overviews appear, that figure rises to over 80%.

• Declining CTR: Organic Click-Through Rates (CTR) drop between 34% and 61% on queries where AI answers are present.

• Migration to Chat: It's estimated that traditional search volume will drop 25% by 2026 as users migrate to conversational interfaces.

In this context, the question is no longer "What is my Google ranking?" but rather "Is the AI recommending me?"

How does it work

For every business, our AI Visibility tool automatically runs a structured, continuous battery of prompts against leading AI models to test how the brand performs in real-world scenarios.

Rather than using generic templates, the exact wording of each prompt is generated dynamically using the venue's actual business categories. This ensures the AI models are tested against highly accurate, contextual queries that real customers would type.

For every venue, we systematically test the four canonical search-intent types:

• Informational: Queries where users are looking for general knowledge or answers (e.g., "What are the best...?").

• Navigational: Queries aimed at finding a specific brand, location, or website (e.g., "Where is the nearest...?").

• Commercial: Queries where users are investigating products, services, or brands to compare options (e.g., "Which … has the best reputation?”).

• Transactional: Queries where users have a clear intent to buy or make a reservation right now (e.g., “I need … right now”).

What exactly does it measure

The AI Visibility Index is a composite score (0–100) that quantifies your brand's presence within generative responses. It is built on four pillars, weighted to reflect their impact on real-world visibility:

1. Presence (High Weight)

• The Metric: The percentage of times your brand is mentioned across relevant AI queries.

• Why it matters: In generative responses, there is no "page two." You either appear in the answer, or you don't. Research shows that "mentions" are the primary visibility metric in Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

2. Position (Medium Weight)

• The Metric: Where your business appears in a list of recommendations (e.g., #1 vs #5).

• Why it matters: Users pay the most attention to the first few mentions. While a lower position is still "visible," the "primacy effect" means the top spot carries significantly more weight.

3. Sentiment (Medium Weight)

• The Metric: The context of the mention—is the AI actively recommending you or just listing you?

• Why it matters: Users view AI recommendations as advice from a trusted advisor. A mention that says your brand "stands out for excellent value" is far more powerful than a neutral name-drop.

4. Attribution (Lower Weight)

• The Metric: The presence of a link, URL, or direct citation.

• Why it matters: Attribution closes the loop between awareness and action. While not all models cite sources consistently, having a direct link increases organic CTR significantly.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are probabilistic, meaning they can give different answers to the same question. To ensure your score is accurate, our methodology includes:

1. Multiple Models: We query leading providers (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) to avoid single-model bias.

2. Multiple Runs: We execute a statistically significant number of independent samples per query to ensure score stability.

3. Intent Coverage: We analyse various search intents—informational, commercial, and transactional—to represent the full user journey.

4. Normalisation: All data is normalized to a 0–100 scale for easy comparison over time.

What the score means at a glance

Important Considerations

To get the most out of this metric, it is important to understand what it is and what it isn't:

• It is Probabilistic: A score of 70 doesn't mean you appear 100% of the time; it means you have a 70% weighted probability of visibility based on our samples.

• It is Dynamic: AI models update constantly. Changes in your score may result from model updates or changes in how the AI perceives your brand.

• Visibility ≠ Traffic: Being visible generates brand trust and awareness, but the final click depends on the platform's citation policy and user behavior.