Understanding Your AI Visibility Scan Scores
A breakdown of the ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity scores — what they measure and what they mean for your content.
The Three Engine Scores
AEO Track AI scores your page against three major AI engine families, because each rewards different content signals. Understanding what each engine looks for helps you prioritize your optimization efforts.
ChatGPT / OpenAI Score
ChatGPT rewards pages that are mentioned in high-trust external sources — Reddit threads, G2 reviews, LinkedIn posts, Wikipedia entries, and YouTube videos. A high ChatGPT score reflects strong presence in the broader web's conversation about your topic. ChatGPT also favors direct answers in the first 80 words, visible author and publish date, and entity clarity (AI engines knowing who you are).
Google AI Overviews / Gemini Score
Google AI Overviews favor structured data: JSON-LD schema, comparison tables, clear heading hierarchy (H1 to H2 to H3), and mobile-optimized pages with fast load signals. Author and date visibility matters here too — Google needs to establish the freshness and authority of the content it surfaces in AI Overviews.
Perplexity Score
Perplexity uses a hybrid model that heavily weights citations: external links pointing to your page from authoritative sources, statistics backed by verifiable source attribution, and recent content (Perplexity heavily favors recency). It is the most citation-driven of the three engines — appearing in a cited academic paper or industry report matters more here than on ChatGPT.
Citation-Ready vs Mention-Ready
Citation-ready means AI can directly reference the URL as a source — the page has enough structure, authority signals, and direct-answer content for an AI to cite it. Mention-ready means AI may mention your brand or topic but won't necessarily link the URL. Most pages are mention-ready but not citation-ready.
Ghost Citation Risk
61.7% of AI citations are ghost citations — the AI cites the URL internally when forming its answer, but the brand name never appears in the visible response. This means your content influences the AI answer without you getting credit. Ghost citation risk appears in your scan when your page has citation potential but weak brand entity signals.
The Findings Grid
Each finding shows Pass (strong positive signal), Warning (needs attention but not penalizing), or Fail (active negative signal on your AI visibility score). Focus on converting Fails to Warnings first, then Warnings to Pass.