Channel99 AI Visibility FAQ

About AI Visibility

What is Channel99 AI Visibility?

Channel99 AI Visibility helps B2B marketers understand how their brand and products appear when buyers use AI platforms to research solutions.

Channel99 analyzes buyer-oriented questions across major AI platforms, compares your visibility with your selected competitors, identifies the sources influencing AI answers, and provides actionable recommendations to improve your competitive positioning.

Which AI platforms does Channel99 monitor?

Channel99 currently measures visibility across:

• ChatGPT
• Claude
• Gemini
• Perplexity

Using multiple AI platforms provides a broader view of your visibility than measuring a single AI assistant.

What does AI Visibility measure?

AI Visibility measures how your company and configured competitors appear in AI answers related to the product areas you track.

This includes factors such as whether your brand appears, how prominently it appears, how you compare with competitors within your product areas, and the sentiment expressed in relevant AI responses.

What is the difference between being mentioned, cited, and recommended?

A mention means your brand appears in an AI-generated answer.

A citation means a page from your website is used as a source supporting an AI-generated answer.

A recommendation means the AI presents your company or product as a relevant option for the buyer’s question.

These signals provide different information about how AI platforms understand and present your brand.

Why does AI Visibility matter for B2B companies?

Buyers increasingly use AI assistants to discover products, research categories, compare vendors, and evaluate potential solutions.

AI is therefore becoming another important B2B discovery channel alongside traditional search, paid media, review sites, analyst research, and other sources buyers use during their purchasing journey.

How is AI Visibility different from SEO?

SEO focuses primarily on how your website performs in traditional search engines.

AI Visibility measures how your company, products, competitors, and supporting sources appear within AI-generated answers.

The two can overlap, but performing well in traditional search does not necessarily mean your company will be discovered or recommended by AI platforms.

Getting Started

How do I set up AI Visibility?

An administrator begins by opening the AI Visibility Settings page.

Channel99 can suggest product areas based on an analysis of your website. You then choose which product areas you want to track, add any that were not identified automatically, and enter the competitor domains you want to monitor.

You can also specify which of your tracked product areas each competitor participates in.

Saving these settings automatically starts your initial AI Visibility analysis.

How does Channel99 suggest product areas?

Channel99 analyzes your website and uses AI to identify likely product areas based on the products and solutions you offer.

These are suggestions only. You decide which product areas should actually be tracked and can add additional product areas that were not identified automatically.

Who chooses my competitors?

You do.

Enter the domains of the competitors you want Channel99 to track and identify the product areas in which each competitor competes.

A competitor can participate in multiple product areas.

Is there a limit to the number of product areas or competitors I can track?

The number of product areas and competitors available for tracking depends on your Channel99 plan.

How long does the first analysis take?

Initial AI Visibility results are typically available in less than an hour.

You can continue using the rest of Channel99 while the analysis runs. AI Visibility will display an analysis-in-progress state until the results are complete.

How will I know when my first results are ready?

The administrator who saves the initial AI Visibility settings receives an email when the first analysis is complete.

Do I need to install a tag, pixel, or integration?

No.

AI Visibility does not require a website tag, advertising integration, CRM connection, or other data integration to perform its analysis.

Visibility Index & Scoring

What is the Visibility Index?

The Visibility Index is a 0–100 score that summarizes your company's visibility across the AI platforms, product areas, and competitors you are tracking.

A higher score indicates stronger overall AI visibility.

What goes into the Visibility Index?

The Visibility Index considers several dimensions of AI visibility, including:

• Brand visibility and prominence
• Competitive performance within your product areas
• Sentiment within relevant AI responses

These signals are combined to provide an overall view of how your brand performs across the AI landscape you are monitoring.

What is a good Visibility Index score?

There is not a universal score that represents "good" AI visibility for every company.

The most useful comparisons are:

• Your score relative to your configured competitors
• Your score over time

This helps you understand both your competitive position and whether your AI visibility is improving.

Can I see how my Visibility Index changes over time?

Yes.

Channel99 shows your historical Visibility Index and your change from the previous measurement period, making it easier to see whether your overall AI visibility is improving or declining.

Can I compare my Visibility Index with competitors?

Yes.

Configured competitors receive their own 0–100 Visibility Index using the same measurement methodology. Channel99 provides competitive rankings and historical competitor trends so you can understand how your position changes relative to the companies you compete against.

Can I see my performance by product area?

Yes.

Channel99 provides a 0–100 score for your tracked product areas and allows you to compare your performance with competitors participating in those areas.

Can I see my performance by AI platform?

Yes.

Channel99 provides a current 0–100 visibility score for each monitored AI platform, allowing you to see where your brand performs better or worse across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Are all AI platforms treated equally?

Yes.

The supported AI platforms contribute equally to the overall measurement.

If a platform temporarily fails to provide a usable response after automated retries, that missing result is excluded rather than treated as poor visibility. The remaining successful measurements are adjusted so a platform error does not unfairly reduce your score.

Prompts & AI Measurement

How does Channel99 determine which AI questions to measure?

Channel99 creates a measurement framework based on your company, configured product areas, and selected competitors.

The questions are designed to represent ways buyers might discover solutions, research a category, evaluate vendors, and compare alternatives.

What types of AI prompts does Channel99 use?

Channel99 uses several types of buyer-oriented questions, including:

Discovery prompts ask about products or solutions without naming your company. These help measure whether AI platforms discover and recommend your company independently.

Brand and competitor prompts evaluate how AI platforms understand and describe your company and the competitors you track.

Competitive prompts compare your company with specific competitors within relevant product areas.

Why are unbranded discovery questions important?

They help answer one of the most important AI visibility questions:

Will an AI assistant surface your company when the buyer does not already know your brand?

This provides a more realistic measurement of discovery than forcing your company name into every question.

Can I see the prompts Channel99 uses?

Yes.

You can inspect the individual prompts used in your analysis.

For each prompt, you can see the actual question, the responses returned by the AI platforms, and the citations and sources associated with those responses.

Can I edit the prompts?

Prompts are currently generated and managed by Channel99 based on your configured product areas and competitors.

How often are the prompts run?

Channel99 reruns your AI Visibility analysis every week.

Each tracked prompt is measured across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Can I manually trigger another analysis?

No.

After the initial analysis, updates run automatically on the scheduled weekly cycle.

Product Areas & Competitors

What are product areas?

Product areas represent the categories, products, or solutions in which you want to measure your AI visibility.

Rather than treating your company as one generic brand, product areas allow Channel99 to evaluate how well you perform within the specific markets where you compete.

Can I add my own product area?

Yes.

If Channel99 does not automatically suggest an important product area, an administrator can add it from AI Visibility Settings.

Can a competitor be tracked for only certain product areas?

Yes.

You choose which tracked product areas apply to each competitor. This prevents a competitor from being evaluated in categories where it does not actually compete.

What happens when I add a new competitor?

The competitor will begin appearing in your analysis during the next scheduled weekly run.

Historical results are not recreated for periods before the competitor was added because Channel99 cannot reliably determine how historical AI responses would have changed if that competitor had been included.

What happens if I remove a competitor?

The change takes effect during the next scheduled analysis.

Previously collected historical data for that competitor remains available.

What happens when I add a new product area?

The product area begins accumulating results with the next scheduled analysis.

Channel99 does not create historical results for periods before the product area was tracked.

Citations, Sources & Website Analysis

What are citations in AI Visibility?

Citations are sources referenced by an AI platform when generating an answer.

Reviewing these sources helps explain where AI platforms are obtaining information about your company, competitors, and product category.

Can I see the actual citation URLs?

Yes.

Citation URLs are available when reviewing individual prompt responses.

Does Channel99 distinguish between my website and third-party sources?

Yes.

Channel99 distinguishes between first-party sources from your own website and third-party sources used by AI platforms.

Do citations directly affect my Visibility Index?

No.

Citations are primarily diagnostic evidence. They help Channel99 understand what information may be influencing AI responses and help support recommendations for improving your visibility.

Does Channel99 analyze my website?

Yes.

Channel99 crawls your website as part of AI Visibility analysis.

The analysis evaluates your site's content and technical factors that can affect how AI systems discover, understand, and use your content.

What website factors does Channel99 evaluate?

Channel99 evaluates content and technical factors relevant to AI visibility, including page and content structure, headings, structured data, crawlability, sitemaps, robots.txt configuration, AI crawler accessibility, and other GEO/AEO-related factors.

How often is my website analyzed?

Your website is recrawled as part of the weekly AI Visibility analysis so recommendations can reflect your current content and site configuration.

Does Channel99 crawl competitor websites?

Channel99 does not currently perform a full crawl of competitor websites.

Competitive performance is primarily evaluated through the AI responses themselves and the sources used in those responses.

Does Channel99 analyze third-party pages cited by AI platforms?

Yes.

Channel99 analyzes relevant pages cited in current AI responses. These citation pages are revisited during weekly analysis so recommendations are based on current source content rather than an outdated copy.

Recommendations

How does Channel99 generate AI Visibility recommendations?

Channel99 combines evidence from your AI prompt results, citations, your website analysis, and relevant cited pages to identify opportunities to improve your AI visibility.

Recommendations require supporting evidence. A low score alone does not automatically produce a recommendation.

Will every visibility gap generate a recommendation?

No.

Channel99 may withhold a recommendation when there is not enough evidence to support a useful action.

This helps prevent speculative recommendations based only on a score or isolated AI response.

How often are recommendations updated?

Recommendations are reevaluated during every weekly analysis using the latest AI responses, citations, citation-page analysis, and customer website crawl.

A recommendation may appear again when the underlying opportunity still exists, but it is reevaluated using the latest available evidence.

How many recommendations will I receive?

Channel99 can provide up to 25 recommendations from an analysis.

Most customers will typically receive fewer, often around 8–10, because Channel99 requires sufficient evidence before generating a recommendation.

How are recommendations prioritized?

Recommendations are prioritized based on their expected impact on AI visibility and the strength of the supporting evidence.

Customer-facing recommendations are categorized as High, Medium, or Low Impact, and recommendations can be sorted or filtered by impact.

What information is included with a recommendation?

Depending on the opportunity, a recommendation can include:

• The recommended action
• Impact
• Why the issue matters
• Supporting evidence
• The affected product area
• Specific pages where action may be needed

When specific website pages are identified, you can follow links directly to those pages.

Can I see the evidence supporting a recommendation?

Yes.

Recommendations are tied to supporting evidence, including relevant AI responses and citations, so you can understand why Channel99 is recommending an action.

What kinds of changes can Channel99 recommend?

Recommendations can include:

• Changes to content on your website
• Technical improvements such as content structure, headings, schema, or crawlability
• Opportunities involving third-party sources that influence AI answers

Suggest Solution

What does Suggest Solution do?

Suggest Solution turns a recommendation into a more detailed, step-by-step implementation guide.

It is designed to help your team move from understanding an AI visibility opportunity to taking action.

Can Suggest Solution provide technical instructions?

Yes.

Depending on the recommendation, Suggest Solution can provide content guidance, technical implementation instructions, and steps for addressing relevant third-party or off-site opportunities.

Are Suggest Solution guides saved?

Yes.

The generated solution is saved with that week's recommendation.

Because recommendations are reevaluated as new evidence becomes available, the suggested solution may also change in future analysis periods when the underlying evidence or recommended approach changes.

Can I mark a recommendation as complete or dismiss it?

Not currently.

Recommendations are reevaluated automatically during subsequent weekly analyses.

Updates & Historical Results

How often does AI Visibility update?

AI Visibility updates weekly, with scheduled analyses running on Sundays.

A weekly measurement cycle provides a more stable view of AI visibility and reduces the impact of normal day-to-day variation in generative AI responses.

How do I know when my data was last updated?

AI Visibility displays a Last Updated date showing when the most recent analysis was completed.

Why might my results change even if I haven't changed my website?

AI-generated answers can change over time even when your website does not.

Changes can result from updates to AI models, retrieval systems, source selection, competitor content, third-party sources, and other changes in the broader information environment.

Weekly measurement helps identify these changes over time.

Why doesn't my manual AI query always match Channel99's result?

Generative AI responses are not completely deterministic.

Answers can vary because of model updates, retrieval behavior, timing, conversation context, personalization, and other factors.

Channel99 uses a consistent measurement process across platforms and over time to make comparisons more meaningful.

What happens if I change my AI Visibility settings?

Changes to product areas or competitors are saved immediately but take effect in the next scheduled weekly analysis.

Because the measurement configuration has changed, results from before and after a significant configuration change may not always represent a perfectly like-for-like comparison.

Access & Availability

Who can view AI Visibility?

Users within the same Channel99 account can view the same AI Visibility results and recommendations.

Who can change AI Visibility settings?

Only Channel99 account administrators can change AI Visibility settings such as tracked product areas and competitors.

Is AI Visibility available during a Channel99 trial?

Yes.

Trial customers receive AI Visibility for 30 days, including scheduled weekly updates during the trial period.

After the 30-day period, continued AI Visibility analysis requires a paid Channel99 plan.

Does AI Visibility support different languages or geographic locations?

AI Visibility currently measures English-language AI responses and does not provide user-location-specific AI results.