No Single AI Visibility Score Captures the Full Picture

The finding

Of the 47 companies tested, 13 (27.7 percent) appeared on at least one AI engine but not all four. A company's AI visibility is not a single number. It varies dramatically by which engine a buyer uses.

Visibility rates by engine

ChatGPT recommended the most companies from the cohort (68.1 percent). Claude recommended the fewest (53.2 percent). The gap is nearly fifteen percentage points.

Why engines disagree

Each engine has different retrieval sources, different summarisation logic, and different priors about which brands are authoritative. When we examined the sources each engine cited most heavily, the differences were clear:

A company with strong presence on Clutch may appear in Claude but not ChatGPT. A company featured in a popular YouTube video may appear in Google AI Overview but nowhere else. A company mentioned in Microsoft documentation may surface in ChatGPT but remain invisible elsewhere.

Position also varies

When companies do appear, where they rank in the recommendation list differs by engine:

Google AI Overview places Utah companies earliest on average, ChatGPT places them latest. A company appearing in position four is very different from one appearing in position one. Attention decays as buyers read through recommendations.

What this means for measurement

Any service offering a single "AI visibility score" is obscuring important variation. A company that appears on ChatGPT but not Claude has a different problem than a company invisible everywhere. A company that ranks first on Gemini but fourth on Google AI Overview has a different opportunity than one that ranks third everywhere.

Comprehensive measurement requires testing across engines, not aggregating to a single number.

What this means for strategy

Because engines read different sources, improving visibility on one engine may not improve visibility on others. A company investing in G2 and Clutch reviews may see gains on Claude. A company earning LinkedIn mentions may see gains on ChatGPT and Google AI Overview. A company creating YouTube content may see gains on Google AI Overview specifically.

The strategic question is: which engines do your buyers use? If you know your buyers prefer ChatGPT, optimise for the sources ChatGPT reads. If you do not know, you need presence across all the surfaces that matter to any engine.