How the GEO Score
algorithm works.
GEO Score is a composite 0–100 measure of how visible a small business is in AI-generated answers — across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. This is a credit score for the AI search era.
Score bands
Effectively absent from AI answers.
Surfaces rarely; major structural gaps.
Cited intermittently; clear path to improvement.
Appears in most queries; one or two fixes from elite.
Cited consistently across engines.
The pipeline, step by step
Walk through each stage to see what feeds the next. Click a node, or use Back / Next to advance — the panel below updates with live values from the current simulator profile.
Public Data Sources
The algorithm starts with public, verifiable data. Nothing proprietary, nothing self-reported.
- Google Business Profile
- Yelp & TripAdvisor
- ChatGPT / Perplexity / Google AIO
- Schema.org markup
- Press & Wikipedia
- Industry registries
100 points, five dimensions
AI Visibility carries the highest weight because it is both the most important signal and the most actionable gap. Each segment below is sized by its maximum points; the filled portion is your current score for the default profile.
Why the credit-score analogy?
- · Multiple independent data sources, not one metric.
- · Documented, verifiable methodology.
- · Single number on a clear 0–100 scale.
- · Specific, ranked remediation steps.
- · Regular refresh cycle — improvement is trackable.
Why this matters now
Google AI Overviews appear in 15–30% of all queries; the share is higher for local business queries — the exact informational queries AI handles well. A business that ranked #3 in traditional results can be completely absent from an AI Overview.
Large chains benefit from training-data network effects automatically. Small independents have to build the structural signals — schema, multi-platform presence, review authority — that AI engines use as quality proxies. GEO Score makes those signals visible and fixable.