How We Score AI Visibility
A guide to the Surfaced audit framework
Why we built a scoring framework
Most businesses have no idea how AI search engines see them. There is no equivalent of checking your Google ranking. You cannot just search and see where you appear. AI engines generate different answers depending on the query, the context, and the platform.
We built the Surfaced scoring framework to give businesses a clear, repeatable way to measure their AI visibility and track progress over time. Every audit uses the same four scoring categories, each evaluating a different dimension of how AI engines discover, understand, and recommend your business.
The four scoring categories
GEO Score (Generative Engine Optimisation)
This measures how well your content is optimised for generative AI systems. It evaluates whether your website content is structured in a way that AI engines can extract, parse, and cite when constructing answers.
Key factors include heading hierarchy, answer structure, FAQ presence, schema markup, and content depth on your core topics. A high GEO score means AI engines can easily find and use your expertise when answering relevant queries.
AI Visibility Score
This is the direct measurement of whether AI engines actually mention, recommend, or cite your business. We test your brand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews using queries that your potential customers are likely to ask.
The score reflects how frequently you appear, how accurately you are described, whether your website is cited as a source, and how you compare to competitors for the same queries.
Speakable AI Score
This evaluates how well your content performs in voice and conversational AI contexts. As more people interact with AI through voice assistants and conversational interfaces, the ability of AI systems to speak your content clearly and accurately matters.
This category measures clarity of language, conciseness of key answers, speakable schema implementation, and whether your content provides direct, quotable responses that AI can deliver verbally.
Entity Intent Score
This measures how well AI engines understand your business as a distinct entity. It is not enough to have good content. AI engines need to recognise your business, understand what you do, know where you operate, and connect those signals consistently.
Key factors include entity consistency across the web, the clarity of your brand signals, alignment between what your website says and what third party sources say about you, and the strength of your presence on the platforms AI engines trust most.
How scoring works
Each category is scored out of 100. The scores are based on a detailed assessment of signals specific to each category. The free AI visibility check provides an overview score across the four categories. The full audit assesses 39 core signals plus proprietary scoring techniques across all four categories and provides the granular breakdown with specific recommendations for improvement.
Score ranges
Strong visibility. AI engines recommend you confidently and accurately for relevant queries. Focus on maintaining and expanding.
Moderate visibility. You appear in some AI responses but inconsistently. Specific gaps are holding you back from being a default recommendation.
Weak visibility. AI engines may know you exist but do not recommend you reliably. Significant work needed across entity signals, content structure, or third party validation.
Invisible or misrepresented. AI engines either do not mention you or describe you inaccurately. This is the starting point for most businesses and the biggest opportunity for improvement.
What happens after scoring
The score tells you where you stand. The audit report tells you what to fix and in what order. Every recommendation is prioritised by impact and mapped to a specific scoring category so you can see exactly which actions will move which numbers.
For businesses on a monthly retainer, we rescore weekly using our monitoring platform. This creates a clear performance trend and ensures the work is moving visibility in the right direction.
Why this approach works
AI visibility is not a single metric. A business can have excellent content structure but weak entity signals. Or strong third party validation but no schema markup. The four category framework ensures nothing gets missed and every recommendation is grounded in measurable signals.
The businesses that improve fastest are the ones that understand their scores, know which category needs the most attention, and work through the recommendations systematically.
See where your business stands. Start with a free AI visibility check.