---
title: How QuickSEO measures AI Visibility
description: The exact formulas behind Visibility, Citation Rate, Share of Voice, and Sentiment — applied identically to your brand and every tracked competitor.
---

# How QuickSEO measures AI Visibility

Every metric you see in QuickSEO follows a published formula. The same formula is applied to your brand and to every tracked competitor — that's what makes the leaderboard comparable.

## The four metrics

QuickSEO surfaces four numbers per brand. Each answers a different question.

| Metric | What it answers | Range |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Visibility (Mention Rate)** | How often is this brand named in AI answers? | 0–100% |
| **Citation Rate** | How often is this brand's domain cited as a source? | 0–100% |
| **Share of Voice** | What share of all tracked-brand mentions belong to this brand? | 0–100% |
| **Sentiment (NSS)** | When mentioned, is this brand framed positively or negatively? | −100 to +100 |

## Visibility — the headline metric

> `Visibility = (prompts where brand is mentioned in the answer / total prompts) × 100`

A brand is "mentioned" when its name (or any tracked alias) appears in the AI's answer text. We use an LLM to detect mentions — string matching alone misses paraphrases and pluralizations.

**Worked example.** You run 200 prompts × 4 platforms = 800 prompt runs in the last 30 days. The AI mentions your brand by name in 264 of those runs.

> `Visibility = (264 / 800) × 100 = 33.0%`

The same formula is applied to every tracked competitor. If Salesforce is named in 432 of the 800 runs, Salesforce's Visibility is 54.0% — directly comparable to yours on the same denominator.

## Citation Rate — the source signal

> `Citation Rate = (prompts where the brand's domain appears as a source URL / total prompts) × 100`

"Cited" is stricter than "mentioned". A brand is cited when one of its URLs (root domain or any subdomain) appears in the AI's source list for the answer — not just when its name is dropped in prose.

**Worked example.** Across the same 800 prompt runs, Salesforce.com appears in the source list of 144 runs.

> `Citation Rate = (144 / 800) × 100 = 18.0%`

## Share of Voice — the competitive lens

> `Share of Voice = (mentions_for_brand / sum of mentions across all tracked brands) × 100`

Where Visibility is absolute, Share of Voice is relative. It answers: of the AI-mention pie shared by you and your tracked competitors, what slice belongs to you? SoV is rendered as a dedicated column in the in-product leaderboard, immediately to the right of Visibility.

**Worked example.** Across 800 prompt runs in the last 30 days:

- You: 264 mentions
- Salesforce: 432 mentions
- HubSpot: 198 mentions
- Pipedrive: 106 mentions

> `Your SoV = (264 / (264 + 432 + 198 + 106)) × 100 = 26.4%`

Salesforce's SoV is 43.2%, HubSpot's is 19.8%, Pipedrive's is 10.6%. Rows sum to ~100% (small rounding deltas of ±0.1% are expected — each row is rounded to one decimal).

Share of Voice depends entirely on which competitors you've tracked. We surface SoV alongside Visibility, not as a replacement. If nobody is mentioned in the window, every row's SoV is 0%.

## Sentiment — Net Sentiment Score

> `NSS = ((positive mentions − negative mentions) / total mentions) × 100`

For every mention, the same LLM that detects the mention also classifies the sentiment toward the brand as positive, neutral, or negative. NSS combines those into a single number from −100 (universally negative) to +100 (universally positive).

**Worked example.** Of your 264 mentions:

- Positive: 178
- Neutral: 71
- Negative: 15

> `NSS = ((178 − 15) / 264) × 100 = 61.7`

NSS is reported alongside Visibility, never folded into it. A brand can be highly visible and negatively framed — that's an actionable finding, and merging the two numbers would hide it.

## Per-platform breakdown

Every metric is also broken down per platform (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, plus AI Overviews where supported). The rolled-up Visibility on your dashboard is computed from the union of platform runs; per-platform Visibility uses each platform's runs as its own denominator.

## Why not a single "AI Visibility Score" composite?

Many competitors ship a single proprietary 0–100 number that bakes mentions, citations, position, sentiment, and platform weighting into one figure. QuickSEO deliberately doesn't.

A single composite is easy to read on a dashboard but impossible to defend. If your score moved from 64 to 71, what changed? Without the underlying inputs, you can't tell whether sentiment improved, citations grew, or one platform shifted weight.

QuickSEO surfaces the four atomic numbers and lets you drill into each. Together they answer questions a composite can't.