Visibility score
What your visibility score means and how it's calculated
Your visibility score is the primary metric in Heading. It tells you how often your brand appears when people ask AI assistants questions relevant to your business.
How it works
Heading monitors a set of prompts across multiple AI platforms. For each prompt, the AI's response is analyzed for two signals:
- Citations: the AI links directly to your website as a source
- Mentions: the AI names your brand in the response text
Your visibility score combines these signals into a single percentage.
Calculation
Visibility = (prompts with citation or mention) / (total monitored prompts) × 100For example, if you monitor 100 prompts and your brand appears in 42 responses, your visibility score is 42%.
Sub-metrics
Citation rate
The percentage of prompts where your brand is cited with a source link. Citations are the strongest signal. They drive traffic to your site.
Mention rate
The percentage of prompts where your brand name appears in the response, even without a link. Mentions indicate brand awareness but don't directly drive traffic.
A brand can be mentioned without being cited (the AI talks about you but doesn't link to you), or cited without being mentioned (the AI links to your page but describes it generically).
What's a good score?
Visibility scores vary by industry and prompt set:
| Range | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 60%+ | Dominant: your brand appears in most relevant AI responses |
| 30-60% | Competitive: appearing regularly but with room to grow |
| 10-30% | Emerging: some visibility but competitors likely dominate |
| Under 10% | Low: AI assistants rarely mention or cite your brand |
Don't compare scores across different properties or industries. A 30% score for a local plumber in a specific city is very different from a 30% score for a global SaaS product.
Improving your score
Common improvements include:
- Adding structured data to your website
- Creating content that directly answers common AI prompts
- Building authoritative backlinks that AI platforms trust as sources
- Ensuring your brand name is consistently used across your web presence