What is SearchScore?

Understanding Your AI Visibility Score

SearchScore is a metric that measures how visible your website is to AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI-powered search features. Just as traditional SEO measures your visibility in Google and Bing, SearchScore measures how well AI systems can discover, understand, and cite your content.

What Does SearchScore Measure?

SearchScore evaluates your website across six key categories that AI search engines use to assess and cite web content:

AI Citability (25%)

How easily AI engines can extract and cite your content. Factors include clear authorship, quotable passages, and structured data that AI can parse.

Brand Authority (20%)

Your brand's digital footprint across the web, including mentions, citations, and presence on authoritative platforms.

E-E-A-T Content (20%)

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals. AI engines prioritises content from credible sources with demonstrated expertise.

Technical Foundation (15%)

Site speed, mobile-friendliness, SSL, clean code, and proper semantic HTML that helps AI understand your content structure.

Structured Data (10%)

Schema.org markup, JSON-LD, and other structured data formats that help AI engines understand your content context.

Platform Optimisation (10%)

How well your site performs on specific platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub, YouTube, and other channels AI engines use for entity recognition.

How the Score Works

Your SearchScore ranges from 0 to 100, calculated by weighting these six categories. A higher score means your website is more likely to be discovered and cited by AI search engines when users ask questions related to your industry or content.

The score is calculated by analysing:

  • Your website's technical setup and crawlability
  • Content quality and structure
  • Brand mentions across the web
  • Structured data implementation
  • Social signals and platform presence
  • Citation patterns in AI-accessible sources

Scoring Tiers

SearchScore uses five tiers to help you understand where you stand:

AI-Ready (80-100)

Your website is optimised for AI discovery and citation. AI search engines can easily find, understand, and cite your content. You're well-positioned for the AI search era.

Strong (65-79)

Your site has good AI visibility with solid fundamentals. Minor improvements in structured data, content structure, or brand signals could push you to AI-Ready.

Developing (45-64)

Your website has some AI visibility but needs work. Focus on E-E-A-T signals, technical improvements, and content structure to improve your score.

Weak (25-44)

AI search engines struggle to discover or cite your content. Significant improvements needed in technical foundations, content quality, and brand presence.

Invisible (0-24)

Your website is essentially invisible to AI search engines. Immediate action required on technical setup, content strategy, and basic SEO fundamentals.

What is AI Visibility?

AI visibility refers to how well AI-powered search systems can:

  • Discover your content through crawling and indexing
  • Understand your content's meaning and context
  • Evaluate your credibility and expertise
  • Cite your content as a source in AI responses

As AI search becomes more prevalent, AI visibility is becoming as important as traditional SEO. Websites that rank well in Google may still be invisible to AI systems that use different ranking signals.

How to Improve Your SearchScore

Improving your SearchScore involves addressing the six categories measured:

  1. Optimise for AI citation — Use clear headings, quotable passages, proper attribution, and structured data
  2. Build brand authority — Increase mentions on authoritative sites, earn media coverage, and establish thought leadership
  3. Demonstrate E-E-A-T — Show expertise through author bios, credentials, citations, and first-hand experience
  4. Fix technical issues — Ensure fast load times, mobile optimisation, SSL, and clean code
  5. Add structured data — Implement Schema.org markup for organisations, articles, products, and services
  6. Optimise for platforms — Maintain active, optimised profiles on LinkedIn, GitHub, YouTube, and industry-specific platforms

Check your SearchScore free to see your current rating and get specific recommendations for improvement.

Related Resources

Ready to Check Your AI Visibility?

Find out how visible your website is to AI search engines.

Get Your Free Score