How to Measure AI Visibility: Are You Getting Found by AI or Are Your Competitors? | Ep.285

I think we're asking the wrong questions about AI visibility. Everyone wants to know, "How do we get our company found by AI?" and that's a really important question. But there's another one that marketing teams and business owners need to start asking themselves.

When people ask AI questions about the problems we solve, the topics we're experts in, and the decisions that we want to be part of, are we actually showing up? And when our competitors are showing up instead, how do we know why?

More importantly, how do we know whether anything we're doing is actually changing it? Not one-off results, not one lucky ChatGPT response, and not one random win. The real questions are this: where did we start, what did we change, and did our visibility actually move?

Because the next phase of AI visibility isn't just measuring whether you show up. It's knowing whether you're measuring theright things in the first place, whether the change you're seeing is real, and what you need to do next.

AI visibility is getting a lot of attentionright now, and understandably so. Businesses are starting to finally realize that discovery is changing. People aren't only opening Google, typing in a few keywords, scanning the search results, and deciding where to go next.

They're asking ChatGPT, they're asking Gemini, they're seeing the Google AI Overviews, they're asking Perplexity to research something for them, and a lot of the time, they're not even searching for a company yet. They're just searching for an answer.

They have a problem. They're trying to understand something. They're comparing different ways of doing something. They're trying to figure out what their options are before they even know who they should hire or what product they should buy. And that changes the AI visibility conversation.

The first phase of this whole AI search thing was basically, "Can I get mentioned? Can we get cited? How do I get my company to be the number one recommended company by AI? Can we get our company to appear somewhere inside of an AI answer?"

But I think we're moving pretty quickly beyond that. And I think the next phase is something more like this: "Can we actually tell whether we're winning, and what do we need to do next?" And when I say "winning," I don't just mean typing your company name into ChatGPT and getting excited because it knows who you are.

I don't mean asking one perfectly worded question or prompt where your company happens to show up. And I definitely don't mean just staring at one number in a dashboard when nobody can really explain what that number even means.

And what I mean is this: across the questions that actually matter to your customers, like the ones that they're actually asking, the problems you solve, the topics you want to be known for, and the decisions you want to influence, are you becoming easier to find?

Are competitors showing up more consistently than you? Is AI using your content or information about your company? Is it describing your business correctly? Are you becoming part of the research and consideration process? And most importantly, is any of that actually getting better over time?

That's what I want to unpack in this episode. One of the easiest mistakes with AI visibility is confusing recognition with discovery. Let's say I type something like, "Tell me about ABC Manufacturing," and ChatGPT gives me this big, beautiful answer about ABC Manufacturing.

Great. But I gave it the company name. That doesn't tell me much about whether someone who has never even heard of ABC Manufacturing could actually find them. The more interesting questions are things like this: "What should a manufacturer look for when choosing an automation partner?"

Or, "How can a manufacturer reduce downtime on a production line?" Or, "What are the biggest mistakes companies make when upgrading industrial equipment?" Those questions are happening around the company's expertise, not around its name. And that's where I think this gets much more interesting.

Because the bigger opportunity isn't getting AI to recognize your company. It's becoming part of the answer before the buyer ever even knows that your company exists. And I think we need to separate a few things that are getting lumped togetherright now.

AI knowing your company exists is one thing. AI using something you published as a source is another. AI connecting your company with a certain problem or area of expertise is another. AI bringing you into the conversation when somebody is looking at a possible solution is another.

And AI actually recommending your company for a specific solution is another. Those things are connected, but they are not the same thing. So when somebody tells me, "Our AI visibility is great," my next question is, "Great, where? For what?

And in what context?" Because not all visibility is equal. Now let's bring competitors into this conversation. Because comparing yourself to your competitors can be incredibly useful, but only if you're comparing theright things. You can make a list of 100 questions tomorrow, run them through a tool, create a score, compare yourself with three competitors, and have a beautiful chart by lunchtime.

That doesn't automatically mean the chart tells you anything useful. The question underneath all of this matters more than that pretty report. If I'm looking at a business, I want to understand what potential customers are asking before they need that company, while they're figuring out their options, and when they're getting closer to making a decision.

Take a financial advisory firm, for example. The more important question isn't only, "Who are the best financial advisors near me?" Sure, that matters. But people are also asking things like, "How should I prepare financially before selling my business?

What should I do with the money after I sell my company? How much do I realistically need to retire at 55?" Or, "What tax issues should I think about before I sell my business?" Those are incredibly valuable questions.

And if the same competitor keeps appearing throughout the types of questions while your company is nowhere to be found, that tells you something. Maybe they have better information around those topics. Maybe more websites are talking about them. Maybe AI has a much clearer understanding of what they're an expert in.

Or maybe there's an entire area your customers care about when your company simply hasn't built much of a presence yet. That is useful information. So I don't think about AI visibility as just one ranking. I think about it as a pattern across a meaningful group of questions.

And here's another thing that we need to understand here. The exact question somebody types isn't always the whole story. AI can go off and look at a bunch of different information behind the scenes before it gives you an answer.

So even if what we build is a really beautiful and thoughtful list of questions, we're still only seeing a small part of the much bigger discovery process. That's another reason I care a lot about the patterns, or more about the patterns, than I do about one perfect prompt.

What problems do our customers have? What are they trying to understand? What are they comparing? What questions come up before they buy? What are they asking when they know they need help but they still don't know who they need to call?

That's the world that you actually want to understand. Because you can win one question and still be mostly invisible. And you can lose on one question while still having a really strong presence across a much larger group of questions, and that really matters for your business.

And now this is usually where a lot of people just want a checklist. And there are definitely things worth paying attention to. But I want to be careful here because I don't think there's just one magic number that tells every single company whether its AI visibility is good or bad.

So what do I actually look at? First, are you even showing up at all? Pretty simple,right? And when you're not showing up, who keeps showing up instead? Is it the same two or three competitors over and over again, or is it completely different depending on the question?

Then I'd want to know where AI seems to be getting its information. Is it finding useful information on your website? Is it using other websites that mention your company? Are third-party websites constantly backing up your competitors while there isn't much information out there that's supporting your company?

I'd also want to know whether AI actually gets your businessright when you do show up. Does it understand what you do? Does it understand who you serve? Does it understand what you're actually good at? Because being visible for the wrong thing isn't much of a win.

Then there's the types of questions you're showing up for, because not every AI question has the same value for your business. Somebody might be asking AI because they're trying to learn something. Somebody else might be comparing possible solutions or getting ready to make a buying decision.

And somebody else might simply just be asking AI to write something better or do a task for them. Those are completely different situations. Maybe you show up everywhere when someone is just trying to learn about a topic. But the second they start comparing real options or getting closer to making a buying decision, you completely disappear.

Or maybe the opposite is true, and that difference tells you something. And the biggest one for me is: is any of this actually getting better over time? Where did we start? What did we do? What actually happened after that?

That sounds simple, but AI doesn't behave like old-school Google rankings. You can ask the same question more than once and get different wording, different sources, or even different companies in the answer. ChatGPT might tell you one thing. Gemini might give you something different.

Google could surface something else. And all of these platforms keep changing constantly. So one result can be interesting, but one result isn't a pattern. One response is an observation. Repeated patterns become evidence. That's why I keep coming back to measurability over time.

Allright, now let's say you do all of this. You put together a meaningful group of questions, figure out where you currently stand, and then discover something you really don't want to see. A competitor keeps showing up where you don't.

Now what? This is where I think a lot of the AI visibility conversation gets way too shallow, because the answer automatically can't be "create more content." Yes, maybe you do need to create more content. But first you need to figure out what the actual problem is.

What are they beating you on? Are they strongly connected with a topic that you're barely connected with? Do they have a much deeper body of useful information? Are websites talking about them more? Are they publishing something useful and original?

Are they getting better reviews? Is their positioning clearer? Do they have more proof behind what they're saying? Are they simply doing a better job at answering a specific problem that their customers have? Or maybe they're not beating you everywhere at all.

Maybe they're only much stronger around one small group of questions. Those are completely different situations, so they shouldn't automatically get the same solution. And before you even ask why a competitor is beating you, there's an even simpler question.

Are you showing up and losing, or are you not even being considered in the first place? Because those are two very different problems. If your company is showing up but another company keeps getting recommended ahead of you, that's one thing.

If your company never even makes it into the conversation, that's something else. So before you try to move up, you need to know and understand whether you're even in the game. And that's why I think the future of AI visibility gets much more interesting than watching mentions or just staring at a score.

The valuable question becomes: what is everything we're seeing telling us to do next? Maybe you need a new piece of content. Maybe something that already exists needs to be updated. Maybe your website isn't the problem at all. Maybe you need stronger outside proof.

Maybe there's an important customer question nobody in your company has ever even created a piece of content around. Maybe the way you describe your business is too vague. Maybe there just isn't enough consistent information across the web for AI to clearly understand what your company should be known for.

The point is, what you do next should come from what you actually found, not from chasing a score. And after you make the change, you'll look again. Not because you're trying to manufacture a pretty report, but because you want to know whether the thing you actually did helped.

That's where this becomes something you can actually manage and improve instead of another dashboard you just check once a month. Now this is probably the part that I want marketing teams and business owners to hear the most. Be careful with AI visibility screenshots.

Someone asks ChatGPT a question, their company appears, they take a screenshot, throw it on LinkedIn, and say, "Oh, hey, look, ChatGPT recommended us." Okay, maybe that's encouraging. But what does it actually prove? What happens when they asked again?

What happened in Gemini? What happens when the question was worded a little bit differently? What happens when somebody asks a broader question about the actual problem instead of asking the question in a way that it basically leads AI straight to your company?

What if your competitor appeared eight times and you only appeared once? We need a higher standard than that. And this is why testing questions matters. But the list of questions can't tell you the whole story by itself. If all I know is that you appeared in 37% or 62% of whatever percentage of some list of questions, I still want to know which questions they were.

I want to know who else appeared. I want to know where the information came from. I want to know whether you were just mentioned or whether you were actually being considered for part of the answer. And the other thing I want to know is whether that pattern is changing.

The same thing goes for AI visibility scores. Let's say somebody tells you your AI visibility score is 73. Okay, great. 73 based on what? What questions did they test? Who picked those questions? Are those actually questions that your customers care about and are genuinely searching online?

Did every question count the same? Which AI platform did they test? How often did they test them? What counted as showing up? What counted as being cited? What counted as being recommended? Did they measure your competitor exactly the same way?

I'm not saying the score is useless. A score can be extremely helpful. But I need to understand how you got the number before I'm going to make a business decision because of it. Otherwise, we're just creating another vanity metric.

Marketing has already spent years watching companies obsess over impressions, followers, traffic, rankings, clicks, and engagement without ever stopping to ask themselves whether any of those numbers actually mean something for the business. We don't need to make the same mistake here with AI visibility.

And here's another place where I don't want people fooling themselves. Let's say we figure out where we actually stand, publish some new content, clean up a few things, and 30 days later our visibility improves. Awesome. But did what we do actually cause it?

Maybe. Maybe a competitor lost visibility. Maybe another website published something about us. Maybe Google changed something in their algorithm. Maybe an AI platform changed. Maybe an industry publication mentioned our company. So yes, I absolutely want to see those numbers moving in theright direction.

But I'm not going to automatically take credit every single time the number goes up. And I'm not automatically going to assume we screwed something up every time that number goes down. And before we even start explaining or trying to explain why a number moved, let's make sure we can trust the number in the first place.

Sometimes a platform has a reporting problem. Your chart can suddenly drop even though your visibility actually didn't. So sometimes your visibility changed, and sometimes the measurement changed. Those are obviously not the same thing. None of this means measurement is pointless.

It means we need to be smarter and understand how we use it. So what you need to do is figure out where you started. Keep track of what changed. See what happens next. Look for patterns instead of isolated wins.

Pay attention to what competitors are doing around you. And over time, you start building evidence around what seems to actually be improving your visibility. That is a much higher standard than claiming victory because of one screenshot. I believe this is where the AI visibility conversation is headed next.

The first phase was, "Look, our company showed up in ChatGPT." Now the next phase is figuring out whether we're actually getting better at doing this. Are we showing up around questions that our customers actually care about and are currently searching for online?

Are our competitors showing up where we aren't? What changed? And did anything we do actually move the needle? Because businesses don't need another marketing metric or report that nobody can understand or explain. They need to know whether the work they're doing is actually making them easier to find, understand, and trust across Google and AI platforms.

If you want to see how your business currently stacks up, go to billcorcoranjr.com/assessment and take the free Podcast-Powered AI Visibility Assessment. And if there's anything that you take away from this episode, I want you to understand this. AI visibility isn't just a ranking.

It's a pattern. And the goal isn't just to show up once. It's to understand the pattern, improve it, and know exactly what to do next. Thanks for watching until the end. I cover a lot here, but the conversation doesn't stop with the podcast.

I post daily on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn@Bill Corcoran Jr. with quick hits, behind the scenes, and the raw stuff that doesn't always make it into the podcast. Follow along there, and for deeper dives, head over to billcorcoranjr.com.