Methodology

How we measure AI visibility

What every number in Beaconly means, how it’s calculated, and where its limits are.

Which AI we ask

• Gemini, through Google’s official Gemini API. Right now Gemini answers from its own knowledge, without live web search, so answers don’t list sources.

• Every question is asked as a fresh conversation, with no memory or personal history, set to the market (country) you chose.

What we ask

The questions a buyer would ask when looking for what you sell — like “best CRM for a small agency”. We write starter questions from your website; you can edit, delete or add your own. Questions don’t include your brand name, so we measure whether AI brings you up on its own.

Mentioned

Your brand counts as mentioned when its name, one of its other names you added, or its website address appears in the answer as a whole word. The same rule applies to every competitor, so the comparison is fair.

Position

The order in which tracked brands are first named in the answer: 1 means you were named before any tracked competitor. We show how often you’re named first, 2nd–3rd, later, or not at all.

Recommended

Mentioned and described positively. A separate AI step reads each answer and rates how it talks about each brand: positive, neutral or negative.

Visibility and small samples

Visibility is the share of answers that mention you. With fewer than 20 answers a percentage can mislead (1 answer changes it by 20 points), so we show the count instead — for example “3 of 5”.

Perception scores

We ask the AI to compare you with your competitors on the traits you choose, then score what the answer says about each brand from 1 to 10, using only the answer — not our own opinion. “What AI says about you” groups the reasons AI recommends you, its criticisms, and who it prefers instead, counted across your latest tracked answers.

Brand facts check

We ask the AI about your brand directly and compare each factual claim with the facts you gave us. Claims your facts don’t cover are marked “not covered”, never “wrong”.

AI traffic

The snippet on your site counts visits whose referrer is an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and others), or that carry ChatGPT’s utm_source tag. Some apps hide the referrer, so the real number is usually higher. No cookies are used and no IP addresses are kept.

Page watch

We re-read the pages you watch once a day and look for your brand name, other names, or website address in the page text. Some sites block automated visits; we tell you when we can’t read a page.

Answers vary

AI assistants give different answers to the same question, and API answers can differ from what a signed-in person sees in the app (memory, location, model updates). That’s why we track over time and link every question so you can ask it yourself.

Spotted something wrong?

Email [email protected] with the page or brand, and we’ll look into it.