What the score measures
The AI Visibility Score is a 0–100 estimate of how likely a law firm is to be named when a potential client asks ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, or Perplexity a real question in its practice area and city, such as “best personal injury lawyer in Austin” or “who should I call after a car accident.” It is not a search ranking. It measures whether AI names the firm directly inside the answer.
How we test it
For each scan, CiteRadar sends a set of client-intent prompts, built from the firm's practice area and city, to a web-searching AI. Each engine runs the prompts live and returns its actual answer. We then read back which firms it names, how prominently, and how that compares to the other firms the same prompts surface.
How the 0–100 score is built
The score combines four signals, each pulled from the live scan results:
- Mention rate — of the prompts asked, how many returned the firm's name at all.
- Prominence — whether the firm was the first name given, one of a short list, or buried after several competitors.
- Share of voice — how the firm's mention rate compares to the other firms named across the same prompts, not to some fixed benchmark.
- Consistency — whether the firm shows up reliably across repeated prompts and phrasings, rather than on a single lucky match.
A firm named first, consistently, across most prompts scores in the 80s and 90s. A firm that never appears scores near zero. Most firms that haven't done any AEO work land somewhere in the 20-to-50 range: known to the AI, occasionally surfaced, rarely the firm actually recommended.
What "share of voice" means here
Share of voice is the firm's mention rate measured against the other firms that show up for the same prompts, not against every firm in a city. If five firms compete for a given search and one gets named in 4 of 5 answers while the rest split the remainder, that one firm has the dominant share of voice for that practice area and city, regardless of how many total firms exist in the market.
What this score doesn't measure
- It isn't a Google ranking position. A firm can rank #1 in organic search and still score low here.
- It isn't a guarantee of future performance. AI models update, and a competitor's new page or press mention can shift results between scans.
- It isn't lab-controlled. We're reading real, live answers from commercial AI products we don't control, the same way a client would experience them.
Which engines are checked
ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity, the three that shape most consumer-facing AI answers today. Read more on how they differ in how each engine decides who to recommend.
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Run your free AI Visibility Scan →Questions about the score
Is the AI Visibility Score the same across every practice area?
The score formula is the same, but the prompt set differs by practice area — a personal injury firm is tested against personal-injury client questions, a family law firm against divorce and custody questions, and so on.
Why do I get a slightly different score if I scan again the same day?
AI answers aren't perfectly deterministic — the same prompt can return a slightly different answer on repeat runs, especially on ChatGPT and Perplexity. CiteRadar asks multiple prompts per engine and averages, which smooths this out, but a single free scan is a snapshot, not a lab-grade measurement. Weekly tracking (paid plans) shows the trend, which matters more than any single number.
Can a firm game the score?
Not directly, and that's intentional. The score reflects what AI engines already say about a firm today, pulled live. Improving it means doing the things AI engines actually weigh — consistent facts across the web, structured data, real case results and reviews — not anything that touches CiteRadar itself.
Does a low score mean a firm has bad SEO?
Not necessarily. A firm can rank well in Google's ten blue links and still score low here, because AI visibility and search ranking are related but different systems. See our guide on the difference.