Methodology

How the GeoAscend audit works.

Transparent scoring, real AI engine queries, and a clear confidence framework.

How the audit works

GeoAscend follows a standardized pipeline: crawl the site, classify the business, discover competitors, generate prompt clusters, query AI engines, parse responses, and calculate a weighted score. Every step is logged and auditable.

AI engines queried

We query ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude with the same standardized prompt set. Each engine is called in real time with a low-temperature setting for deterministic responses. Using multiple engines prevents single-engine bias and reveals cross-engine consistency gaps.

Scoring formula

The overall GEO score is a weighted composite of seven dimensions:

Non-branded visibility

30%

Mention rate for queries that do not include the brand name.

Citation share + quality

20%

How often your pages are cited as sources, and how diverse those citations are.

Competitor gap

15%

How often competitors appear in answers where you do not.

Technical AI-readiness

15%

Crawlability, structured data, sitemap, robots.txt, and schema presence.

Topic / entity coverage

10%

How broadly your site covers relevant services, entities, and use cases.

Cross-engine consistency

5%

Whether visibility is uniform across all queried engines.

Measurement readiness

5%

Whether the sample size (query count, engine count, crawl depth) supports a confident score.

Confidence levels

Every report includes a confidence indicator. A score based on 4 engines, 10+ queries, and a fresh crawl earns "High confidence." Fewer engines or queries result in "Medium" or "Low" confidence, and the report explains exactly why.

Branded query cap

Branded prompts (queries that include the brand name) tend to inflate scores because the brand is naturally mentioned in its own results. GeoAscend caps branded contribution at 10-15% of the overall score to keep measurement honest.

What we check

  • Mention frequency by engine
  • Citation sources and cited pages
  • Competitor wins and gaps
  • Prompt cluster coverage
  • Technical crawl signals
  • Entity and topic breadth

What we do not do

  • xWe do not game AI engine results.
  • xWe do not guarantee rankings or placements.
  • xWe do not pay for mentions or citations.
  • xWe do not manipulate engine outputs.