The Boston Matrix

AI is changing the shape of our entire world. Its increased use across all aspects of life have made it into a prominent tool that we all use daily. The influence of AI is seeping into the world of marketing too, and from this a new KPI is emerging: an AI visibility score.

Whilst still relevant and necessary to understand, SEO plays a less important role as it once did. I am not going to sit here typing and act like an expert in the field, as I am not. It is an area I take an interest too, and I am writing this off the back of attending a webinar organised by the CIM that explored how AI is going to play a pivotal role in reaching people in 2026.

I will make some further posts on my takeaways, but firstly I will be discussing what an AI visibility score is, and how it is becoming increasingly important. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has been around since the dawn of the internet. It is very important for your site to be ranking as high as possible on search engines, and this is what SEO is all about. Mastering this strategy is still critical, however as artificial intelligence is growing in power and becoming more integrated into the day-to-day technology that you and I use, a new strategy is emerging: Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring your webpage content in order for it to be understood, trusted and then used by AI in response to queries asked by users. AEO goes one step further than SEO, and instead of relying on keywords to rank higher, AEO is all about making content that can be discoverable by AI.

I can guarantee you that within the last week, you would have utilised at least one AI search feature. Whether asking an AI agent a question, or using AI-assisted searching online, many people are influenced by AI in some way. One feature that I find myself using frequently is the AI Overview when searching on Google. This means that users no longer have to scroll through web results to get an answer to their query. Ranking high on the list is still important, but getting your content within this AI Overview, and being used in responses to users queries by AI agents, is essential to reach your target audience in the modern era of technology.

Therefore, a measurement has emerged to track how effectively your content is getting into these areas, and is developing into a strong KPI to look out for. An AI visibility score is a measure of how often a brand, product, or service appears in AI-generated answers.

There are multiple factors that SEO companies use in order to calculate the visibility score of your content. Some of these include: Content quality, Content relevance, Trusted distribution channels, Trust signals (AI Visibility). Typically, a business can receive a score as a percentage, and a primary score can be calculated as so:

• Brand visibility score = (Answers mentioning your brand ÷ Total answers for your space) × 100

SearchEngineLand continue by giving this example: “if you test 100 high-intent prompts like “best CRM software” across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews – and your brand appears in 22 of those AI responses – your Brand Visibility Score would be 22%.”

This puts into perspective how important it is to curate content that AI can identify, trust and cite in its responses to user’s queries. Some facts that I found interesting when listening to the CIM webinar were that if asked 100 times, ChatGPT and Google AI have a <1% chance of generating a duplicate list of brands when making recommendations. Furthermore, there is a 1 in 1000 chance for AI tools to repeat a recommendation order twice from the same prompt. This randomness means that it is essential to be making content that has the highest chances of success in being used by AI when making recommendations.

Overall, whilst SEO is still crucial in today’s marketing economy, AEO is growing in its importance, and is a strategy that brands need to utilise in order to succeed. I will continue to research and learn, publishing my findings on this exciting topic.