What is an AI visibility score, and what’s a good one?
Preferly’s AI visibility score is a number from 0 to 100 in four parts: Visibility (40 points), Accuracy (25), Sources (15) and Access (20). It measures whether AI recommends you when customers don’t name you, whether what it says matches your website, whether it cites your own pages, and whether it can read your site. There’s no standard scale, so read the four parts, not only the total.
What goes into the score
- Visibility (40 points): how often AI recommends you when the question doesn’t name you, weighted by rank. A top-3 recommendation counts most, a passing mention much less.
- Accuracy (25 points): the share of checkable things AI said about you that match your website. When AI says too little about you to judge, this part gets a neutral half score.
- Sources (15 points): how often AI cites your own site or profiles in answers that list sources.
- Access (20 points): whether AI crawlers are allowed in by robots.txt, can load your homepage without a bot check, can read your key facts without JavaScript, and find valid structured data.
The total is the sum, rounded. The methodology gives the exact formula for each part.
Why scores differ between tools
- Which models are asked. Each AI model names different businesses. Preferly’s free score uses 3 models and the full report’s uses 10.
- Which questions. Asking about you by name shows what AI knows. Asking the way a new customer does shows whether it recommends you. Visibility here counts only the questions that don’t name you.
- Whether accuracy counts. Some scores only count mentions. Ours also checks what AI said against your own website.
- When it ran. Answers vary from run to run, so a score is a dated snapshot.
What moves the score
- Access: let AI crawlers in and remove bot checks for them. How do I let AI crawlers like ChatGPT access my site?
- Access and Accuracy: put your hours, prices and services in text and structured data. Does schema markup help my business show up in AI answers?
- Accuracy: correct the outdated sources AI repeats. Why does AI give the wrong hours for my business?
- Visibility and Sources: get named on the lists and review sites AI cites. How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business?
- The full report ranks your fixes by the points each can add. See what the fixes look like.
An example score
The example report, built from a real run with every name and some results changed, scored 44 out of 100:
- Visibility: 4.6 of 40. You appeared in 6 of 49 AI answers to customer questions; 5 were a top-3 recommendation.
- Accuracy: 23.6 of 25. 3 of 52 things AI said about you contradict your website or Google profile.
- Sources: 1.1 of 15. AI cited your own site or profiles in 3 of 40 answers that listed sources.
- Access: 14.7 of 20. Robots.txt allows all 9 major AI crawlers (and the 4 others we check); your site loads without a bot challenge.
Each part comes with its one-line reason, so you can see which one to work on first.
Questions
What’s a good AI visibility score?
There’s no industry standard, and scores from different tools aren’t comparable. In Preferly’s score, read the parts: a low Visibility with high Accuracy means AI gets you right but rarely names you, and that is the part to work on first.
Why is my free score different from my full report’s score?
The free score uses 3 AI models; the full report’s score uses all 10, with more questions. Different models name different businesses.
Why did my score change when I didn’t change anything?
AI answers vary from run to run, and the sites AI reads change too. Every result shows its date and the exact questions, so you can compare like with like.
How do I see whether my fixes moved the score?
The full report includes one free re-scan within 30 days, with a before-and-after view.
3 AI models, about a minute. Or the full report: 10 AI models, $99 once.