FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is AI visibility?
How often, and how accurately, AI engines name your products and cite your pages when people ask questions in your field. Some call the practice generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO).
How is this different from SEO?
Search rankings and AI answers draw on overlapping but different sources. In our pilot, Claude answered 65% of engineering questions without searching the web at all, and ChatGPT and Claude shared only 12% of cited domains for the same question. AI visibility needs its own measurement.
Which engines do you measure?
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode. Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and regional engines are available on request.
Why run each question several times?
Engines vary from run to run. One independent study put the odds of getting the same brand list twice in 100 runs at under 1 in 100. We report rates with their spread, not single screenshots.
Can you guarantee our products will be recommended?
No. Engines are probabilistic and change often. We guarantee measurement you can audit and content engineered to the standard engines cite, and we report the change honestly.
Do AI engines read our PDFs and datasheets?
Yes, when they can reach them: 14–20% of the URLs cited in our pilot were PDFs. The bigger problem is delivery. In our audit of 14 flagship grades, only 3 suppliers published a full HTML datasheet; others delivered theirs through JavaScript, third-party catalogs that block crawlers, or firewalls, and a distributor's copy was often the one engines could read.
Should we block AI crawlers?
Separate three kinds of bot. Training crawlers (such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot) feed future models. Search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) put pages into AI search answers. User-triggered fetchers (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User) read a page when someone asks. Blocking search agents removes you from AI search answers; blocking training crawlers keeps future models from learning your products, and most of Claude's engineering answers in our pilot came from training data. We help you decide deliberately.
Will you publish our confidential information?
No. We publish only content you've approved, and every claim traces to documents you've cleared for publication.
What about regulated claims (FDA, UL, REACH)?
Spec Watch monitors how engines describe them, and every claim we publish goes through your review with documentation behind it.
How long until results?
Answers built from retrieval can change within weeks of new pages being published and crawled. Answers built from training data change with model releases, over months. We measure both.
Do you work with our agency, web team and distributors?
Yes. We supply the measurement, the content standard and the assets, and work through whoever runs your site.
How do you treat competitors?
Fairly. Comparison pages include the alternatives, and we never disparage. Balanced pages are also the ones engines quote.
What do you need from us?
Technical and safety datasheets, approved technical content, a competitor list and a technical reviewer. Analytics, Search Console and server-log access are optional and make crawler verification possible.
Where does your data come from?
Live answers captured from the engines' consumer products and official APIs, plus your server or CDN logs when you share them, for crawler verification.
How does Reference Grade relate to Homiere?
Same team, same engine, different industries. Homiere serves real estate; Reference Grade serves materials and manufacturing. Both are built on Assay, our AI-answer measurement engine.
Do you cover non-English markets?
On request: German, Japanese, Chinese and Korean, including regional engines where relevant.
Start with evidence
See what AI tells engineers about your materials.
We'll run 25 of your customers' questions across three engines and show you who gets named, which sources get cited, and what's wrong. Free, in five business days.