Metric Definitions

AI Visibility reports several metrics that answer different questions. This page defines each one, the field that returns it, and how it is calculated.

At a glance

Metric	Field	Range	Answers
Presence Rate	avgPresenceRate	0–100	How often does the brand appear in AI answers?
Quality Score	avgQualityScore	0–100	When the brand appears, how well is it presented?
Visibility Index	avgVisibilityIndex	0–100	Which brands rank highest overall?
Mention Share of Voice	mentionShareOfVoice	0–100	What share of all brand mentions does this brand hold?
Citation Share of Voice	citationShareOfVoice	0–100	What share of all brand citations does this brand hold?
Average position	avgBrandPosition	1 and up	Where in the answer does the brand's citation appear?
Average sentiment	avgBrandSentiment	—	How positively do answers talk about the brand?

Absolute versus relative. Presence Rate, Quality Score and Visibility Index describe one brand on its own: every brand in a project can have a 100% Presence Rate at the same time. Share of Voice is relative: shares are split between the brands in scope and sum to 100%, so one brand gaining share means others losing it.

All metrics respect the query's scope filters — dateRange, topic, prompt, aiProviderTypes and country.

Presence Rate

The percentage of finished prompt runs in which the brand was mentioned or cited.

presence_rate = runs where the brand was mentioned or cited / total finished runs × 100

A run where the brand is both mentioned and cited counts once. Use Presence Rate to track reach: whether AI providers bring the brand up at all.

Quality Score

How favourably the brand is presented when it does appear, independent of how often it appears.

quality_score = 0.75 × avg_brand_mention_quality + 0.25 × avg_citation_quality

• avgBrandMentionQualityScore (0–100) — average quality of the brand's mentions: how prominently and favourably the answer names it.
• avgCitationQualityScore (0–100) — average quality of the citations to the brand's domains.

A missing component counts as 0, so a brand that is mentioned but never cited scores at most 75. A brand that appeared in one run with excellent coverage can have a high Quality Score and a low Presence Rate.

Visibility Index

A single ranking number that combines quality with how often the brand appears. Use it to order brands. Use Presence Rate and Quality Score to explain the ranking.

visibility_index = avg_citation_quality × √(citation_runs / total_runs) × 0.25
                 + avg_brand_mention_quality × √(mention_runs / total_runs) × 0.75

The square root softens the appearance penalty: appearing in 10% of runs scales quality by 31.6%, not 10%. Consistent brands still outrank rare ones:

Brand	Appears in	Quality	Presence Rate	Visibility Index
A	10 of 10 runs	80	100	80
B	1 of 10 runs	100	10	31.6

avgVisibilityScore is the former name of this metric. It returns the same value and is deprecated in favour of avgVisibilityIndex. On a single prompt run, visibilityScore is likewise a deprecated alias of qualityScore.

Share of Voice

The brand's share of all brand appearances in AI answers within the current scope.

mention_share_of_voice  = answers mentioning the brand / Σ answers mentioning each brand in scope × 100
citation_share_of_voice = answers citing the brand     / Σ answers citing each brand in scope × 100

• One appearance per answer. A brand named five times in one answer counts once. Repeated instances stay visible in totalBrandMentions and totalBrandCitations. The Share of Voice numerators are mentionAnswerAppearances and citationAnswerAppearances.
• The denominator is every brand in scope. That means every brand mentioned or cited under the current filters, not a fixed competitor list. Filtering to one topic gives each brand's share within that topic.
• Context brands are excluded. Platforms and surfaces that answers name constantly, such as Google or ChatGPT, keep their appearance counts but are left out of every denominator. You choose which brands are Context; see Brands.
• brandTypes narrows the comparison set. Passing [Own, Competitor] rescales shares so they sum to 100% across your brand and its competitors only. Brands outside the set return null (or 0 on non-null fields) for their share. getAiVisibilityTopBrands, getAiVisibilityTopics and getAiVisibilityShareOfVoiceTrend take this as brandTypes; getAiVisibilityBrands takes it as types.
• Unattributed citations are excluded from both sides of the ratio.
• Not position-weighted. A brand named last counts the same as one named first; use position or the Visibility Index for prominence.

Shares are rounded to 2 decimal places, so they may not sum to exactly 100.

Reading the denominator

The denominator changes as new brands are discovered. Tracking more prompts, or a new competitor entering answers, can lower every brand's share without any change in its own performance. Results that return Share of Voice also return the denominator so you can tell the difference: totalMentionAnswerAppearances, totalCitationAnswerAppearances and brandsInScope. Brand lists also return others, which combines every in-scope brand not on the current page, so returned rows plus others add up to the whole.

When you compare with an earlier period, pass the same brandTypes (or types) to both windows. Shares calculated over different sets of brands are not comparable.

Position and sentiment

Field	Meaning
avgBrandPosition	Average position of the brand's citations within answers. 1 is the first citation; lower is better.
bestBrandPosition	The brand's best (lowest) citation position.
avgBrandSentiment	Average sentiment of the brand's mentions. Each mention's sentiment includes a sentimentJustification explaining the rating.

Counts

Field	Counts
totalBrandMentions	Every mention instance, including repeats within one answer
totalBrandCitations	Every citation instance, including repeats within one answer
mentionAnswerAppearances	Distinct answers that mention the brand
citationAnswerAppearances	Distinct answers that cite one of the brand's domains

Which metric to use

Question	Use
Are AI providers bringing up our brand at all?	Presence Rate
When they do, is the coverage good?	Quality Score, then sentiment and position
Who leads the category overall?	Visibility Index
How much of the conversation do we own compared with competitors?	Share of Voice with brandTypes: [Own, Competitor]
Did our share fall because we lost ground or because more brands were tracked?	Share of Voice alongside brandsInScope and the appearance totals

Empty data

• getAiVisibilityBrands metrics need a dateRange. Without one, Presence Rate, Quality Score and Visibility Index return 0, and the component, position and sentiment fields return null. getAiVisibilityTopBrands defaults to the last 30 days when dateRange is omitted.
• In time series, a bucket with finished runs but no appearance for the brand returns 0. A bucket with no finished runs returns no data point. Build the bucket grid from dateRange and timeBucket to show those gaps.

Related

• Visibility Scores — time-series queries for these metrics
• Brands — brand lists, types and Share of Voice rankings
• Topics — per-topic metrics, leaders and gaps