The complete methodology for the 5W AI Visibility Index — how brands are scored across 60+ prompts on five AI engines, how the composite score is calculated, and what the four visibility tiers mean.
The 5W AI Visibility Index measures how brands are understood, described, and presented by the five major AI engines that now serve as the first research step for a growing share of buyers, investors, and partners. This is the methodology.
Engine panel
All studies cover five engines: ChatGPT (GPT-4o, no web browsing), Claude (Sonnet, standard mode), Perplexity (default mode, web search enabled), Gemini Advanced (standard mode), and Google AI Overviews (via Google Search). Each engine is queried independently. Sessions are cleared between queries to prevent conversation context contamination.
Prompt design
Each brand is evaluated across four prompt categories:
Category A — Business description (15 prompts). "What is [brand]?" "What does [brand] do?" "Who founded [brand] and when?" Plus 12 variants. Tests entity completeness and accuracy.
Category B — Founder and leadership (12 prompts). "Who is [founder name]?" "What has [founder] said about [topic]?" Plus 10 variants. Tests named-person citation — the signal that compounds most over time.
Category C — Competitive positioning (18 prompts). "[Brand] vs [Competitor] — what's the difference?" "What are the alternatives to [brand]?" "Which [category] company should I use?" Plus 15 variants. Tests whether the brand appears in competitive context and how it is positioned relative to peers.
Category D — Buyer intent (15 prompts). "Should I use [brand]?" "Is [brand] reputable?" "I need help with [use case] — who should I hire?" Plus 12 variants. Tests the high-stakes queries where AI visibility has the most direct revenue impact.
Scoring
Each response is scored across five dimensions:
Mention (0–2): Not mentioned = 0. Mentioned in passing = 1. Named and described = 2.
Accuracy (0–3): Not mentioned = 0. Significant errors = 1. Mostly accurate = 2. Fully accurate = 3.
Sentiment (0–2): Absent or negative = 0. Neutral = 1. Positive or recommended = 2.
Maximum score per prompt per engine: 10. Maximum total across 60 prompts and 5 engines: 3,000. Composite AI Visibility Score = (total score / 3,000) × 100.
Visibility tiers
Tier 1 (75–100): Complete, accurate, positive entity model. Appears consistently in category, competitive, and buyer-intent queries. Named founder citation established. Genuine AI communications leadership.
Tier 2 (50–74): Mostly accurate but significant gaps in category positioning, competitive context, or founder citation. Common in brands with strong press coverage but weak entity infrastructure.
Tier 3 (25–49): Partial brand knowledge — accurate on basic identity, weak on positioning and leadership. Common in brands with earned media but no entity and schema layer.
Tier 4 (0–24): The "billion-dollar ghost" tier. AI engines don't know the brand, describe it incorrectly, or return hedged, uncertain answers that foreground competitors. Common in brands that have grown quickly without investing in communications infrastructure that reaches AI training data.
The methodology is updated annually to reflect changes in AI engine behavior, new engines entering the panel, and improvements in prompt design based on accumulated study data. Custom studies are available through 5W AI Communications.
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
