Methodology

How the number is produced, and what it will not tell you

Every scorecard on this site carries a score. This page is what that score means, how to read it, and where it stops being reliable — because a number without stated limits is worse than no number.

What it measures

Out of the questions your buyers ask, how many name you

Not rankings. Not traffic. A set of buying-intent questions in a category is put to several AI engines, and each answer is read for which companies get named. The score expresses how often the domain in question is one of them.

In one line

The score is the share of category questions where an engine names the domain. Higher means your brand appears more often at the moment a buyer is deciding what to consider.

How to read it

Four bands

Treat the band as the finding and the exact number as noise around it. A 63 and a 68 are the same result.

BandWhat it means
0–20AI engines almost never name the domain. Competitors hold the category.
21–50Intermittent — usually branded or long-tail questions. Most category questions miss it.
51–80Strong presence on category questions. A frequent answer, not the default one.
81–100The default answer in its category across most of the engines audited.
Limits

What this number cannot do

Four things worth knowing before you act on one.

It is a sample

Engines do not answer the same question the same way twice. A score is a sample of something that moves, so two runs a week apart can differ without anything on your site having changed.

It is not causal

A score going up after you shipped a page is evidence, not proof. Engines retrain, competitors publish, and the answer set drifts on its own schedule.

It is category-relative

A 40 in a crowded category can be a stronger position than a 70 in a thin one. Comparing scores across different categories does not mean much.

Being named is not being chosen

It measures whether you enter the consideration set, not whether you win the deal. It is a leading indicator, and it should be read as one.

What is not published

The check set stays private, on purpose

Two reasons, and only one of them is mine.

The first is commercial: the engine is the part that is not for sale. The second is that a published check list is a list of things to game. A site could raise its score without becoming any easier for an agent to actually use, which would make the number worthless to you and to me.

What you do get, on every report: each failing check named in plain language, why it matters, and what to change. That is the part that is useful. The part that stays private is only the bookkeeping.

Check my work

Every finding names the page it applies to and every engine result is dated, so you can open the page and ask the engine the same question yourself. If a result does not reproduce, tell me. That is a bug worth more to me than a compliment.

Related

See it on a real site

The scorecards are reports on real domains, produced this way.