Glossary
AI Visibility Baseline
An AI visibility baseline is the first documented measurement of a brand’s mentions, citations and recommendations across a fixed prompt set and named engines. It establishes the comparison point for later work and must preserve the collection method, date, model and sample size.
In plain terms
It is the starting measurement used to judge whether AI visibility changes.
Why it matters
Without a baseline, later improvements are anecdotes because there is no consistent before-and-after comparison.
How to apply it
- Freeze the prompt set and scoring rules.
- Record engines, models, dates and sample counts.
- Save source URLs and response evidence for auditability.
Example
A SaaS company records its September results before publishing new comparison content, then reruns the same method monthly.
Sources
Related reading
Related terms
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Ranking is no longer enough
You need to be cited, mentioned, and recommended.
Being cited, mentioned, and recommended are three different outcomes, and most brands only ever achieve the first one. Ranking is no longer enough because AI engines answer buyers directly and name only a short list of vendors as the recommendation — everyone else is cited in passing, if at all. Get a free AI Visibility Report to see exactly where your brand appears today across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot, where competitors are winning the recommendation instead, and what's keeping you from moving up the shortlist.