Methodology
How Your AEO Score Works
Your AEO Score measures how well AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews know and recommend your brand. It’s a 0–100 composite of four dimensions.
The Four Components
Presence
35%How often your brand appears when people ask AI about your category. We only count organic appearances. If your brand was named in the question (e.g., “What is [Brand]?”), it doesn’t count toward Presence. This is the heaviest-weighted component, because showing up at all is the precondition for everything else on this page.
Quality
25%Whether AI mentions are positive recommendations, neutral namechecks, or warnings. A brand that’s mentioned negatively scores lower than one that’s not mentioned at all on this dimension. Quality is the one component scored across every query we run, including the branded ones. Presence and Prominence count organic queries only.
Prominence
20%Where you land when AI does mention you. Named first scores highest, and each spot lower scores less, through fifth place. Sixth place or lower scores zero, the same as last in a long list. A miss is different: it isn’t scored zero, it’s left out of the average entirely, so this component measures how well you land when you show up, not how often you show up. That’s Presence’s job. We only score Prominence on organic queries, the ones that didn’t name your brand up front, so landing first in a comparison you asked for yourself doesn’t count.
Share of Voice
20%Of the organic answers where an engine named a brand at all, yours or a competitor’s, how often it was you. Answers that name nobody are left out of the count entirely, because they say nothing about how you compare.
We used to score a fifth component here, Consensus, agreement across the five engines. We don’t anymore. Engines are still scanned to gather evidence, but the score reflects how a brand performs across the whole query set, not how many engines happen to agree in a given scan.
Why Rare Mentions Don't Inflate a Score
Prominence and Quality are calculated only from the queries where your brand was actually mentioned. Left alone, that would let a brand mentioned once, ranked first, with a positive mention score just as high on those two dimensions as a brand mentioned constantly. We correct for that with a coverage adjustment. Full credit on Prominence and Quality applies once your Presence (organic mention rate) reaches 25% or above. Below that threshold, credit ramps down toward zero as mention rate drops. Brands with strong Presence, most of the index, see no change from this adjustment.
Score Bands
| Band | Score Range |
|---|---|
| Invisible | 0–10 |
| Minimal | 11–25 |
| Emerging | 26–40 |
| Moderate | 41–55 |
| Established | 56–70 |
| Strong | 71–85 |
| Dominant | 86–100 |
How We Classify Mentions
For each AI response, we analyze: the query’s intent (discovery, alternative, comparison, use case, integration, audience, problem, feature, category), the sentiment toward your brand (positive, neutral, negative, confused, hallucinated), and the strength of any recommendation (0–100 scale). This classification uses AI to evaluate AI — giving us nuance that simple keyword matching can’t provide.
What About AI Randomness?
AI engines don’t give the same answer every time. Ask the same question twice and the wording, the order, sometimes even the verdict can come back different. Run a scan twice and you’ll see it yourself. We address this by:
- Scanning across 5 different AI engines (more data points, less noise from any single engine)
- Using 10 diverse queries per scan (more data points = more reliable signal)
- Classifying quality not just quantity (a consistent negative mention is worse than an inconsistent positive one)
Your score is a snapshot, not a permanent truth. We recommend re-scanning periodically to track trends.
Score Interpretation Tips
- Don’t fixate on the exact number — focus on which component is weakest
- Low Presence? Create more category content that AI can discover
- Low Quality?Fix your brand narrative — check the Issues section for specifics
- Low Prominence? Build authority through comparison content and case studies
- Low Share of Voice? Find the organic queries where a competitor was named and you weren’t. Those specific slots are what pull the number down, not your overall presence