How PickScore measures

The one thing to know first

PickScore measures whether an AI assistant named a business in its answer. It does not measure whether the assistant recommended, picked, preferred or ranked that business. An answer that mentions a business in passing, or even unfavourably, still counts as naming it. Every page that shows a result says so.

The free AI presence preview (methodology p1)

The preview is a lightweight presence check. It makes at most two requests to an AI assistant with live web search, and returns four signals in words. It never returns a number, a score, the name of another business, a source, a rank or an order.

• AI Recognition: the assistant is asked about the business by name, type and place. Detected, not detected or unclear says whether its answer found information about that business at that place.
• Official Website: whether that same answer stated a website of the business's own. A social profile or a directory listing does not count. We do not verify who owns the website.
• Public Identity: strong, moderate, weak or unclear says how consistently the answer could establish the name, address and contact details.
• Sample Customer-Choice Signal: one question of the form “What is the best (type of business) in (place)?” is put to the assistant, and the signal says whether the answer named the business. The question comes from a fixed template and is never written by a model. The answer is shared by every business of that type in that place and may be up to 30 days old.
• Full PickScore: always “not measured” in a preview, because it has not been.

What the preview cannot tell you

It does not measure how often AI names or recommends a business. One sample observation does not establish recommendation performance: being named once is not being recommended, and not being named once is not being ignored. A business gets one fresh preview every 30 days; inside that time the saved preview is shown again, with the date it was checked and the date the next free refresh is available.

The Full PickScore (methodology m1)

The paid measurement starts only after a payment has been verified. It does not use anything from the preview.

• The questions. For each market (a type of business, in a city or area, in a country) a model writes eight short questions of the kind real customers type into an AI assistant. They contain no business name. They are written once per market and used for every business in that market, so businesses in the same market are measured on the same questions. The question set is part of the paid report and is not published.
• The assistant. Each question is put, on its own, to a leading AI assistant with live web search, with the country of the business given as the searcher's location where the search tool supports it. The exact model is recorded with every answer. That one assistant is the only one measured: other assistants, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity, are not queried, and they may answer differently.
• What counts as named. A second pass lists the businesses each answer named. A question counts for the business when its name, or the other name the owner gave, appears as whole words in the answer's text or in that list. Where the automatic match is uncertain — an ordinary one-word name, or another business whose name is close to it — nothing is counted automatically: a person reads the answer and decides before the report is released. This is naming, not recommendation.
• The score. The PickScore is the number of answered questions that named the business, out of the number of questions that were answered. A question that could not be answered is retried up to three times. If fewer than six questions end up answered, no score is released: the owner is told plainly, and we either complete the measurement or refund the payment. When some questions stayed unanswered, the report says how many, so five answers are never presented as eight.
• Competitor evidence. For each question the report lists the other businesses the answer named. It does not claim those businesses were recommended, only that they were named.
• Technical checks. The website, domain and email checks in the report are run directly over the internet, not by AI. When a check could not run, the report says “not tested” rather than “no issues found”.
• The guide and the plan. The advice sections are researched with live web search and written by a model, then read by a person before release. Prices and options in them were researched on the date shown and can change.

How fresh the evidence is

• Every answer carries the date it was asked, the model that answered and the methodology version.
• An answer to a market's question may be reused for another business in the same market for up to 7 days. After that it is asked again.
• Research behind the guide sections is reused within a market for up to 14 days.
• A preview's signals are kept for 30 days per business, and the sample answer for 30 days per market.
• A report is a reading taken on its date. AI answers vary from one run to the next and change over time; a report does not show a trend.

What PickScore does not measure

• Whether an assistant recommends, prefers or ranks a business, or the order in which businesses appear in an answer.
• Any assistant other than the one named above, and any voice assistant.
• Rankings in Google or any other search engine, website traffic, calls, bookings or sales.
• Why an assistant answered as it did. The report gives researched, likely reasons and what to fix; it cannot see inside the assistant, and no one can guarantee how an assistant will answer.

Review and delivery

Every paid report is read by a person before it is released. Reports are delivered at a private link within 24 hours of payment, not instantly. Report pages are private and are not meant to be indexed; the public sample is made from a real check with every business name removed.

Change log

• 21 September 2026: p1 introduced (the free AI presence preview replaced the free score). m1 unchanged: eight questions per market, naming counted as whole-word matches, answers reused for up to 7 days.