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Run a Direct AEO check ​

A Direct check asks the five major AI assistants — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek — a set of category questions and measures how often they mention your brand. Use it to see, in a couple of minutes, whether AI is recommending you and who it names instead. Direct is the free mode and is selected by default, so you can run one without signing up.

Before you start ​

Nothing is required to run a Direct check. If you run as a guest, your results live at a shareable link but are not saved to your account. To keep your runs and see them later, sign up for VWAM first.

Run a check ​

  1. Open the AEO Tracker home page.
  2. In VerifyYour brand, type your brand name (for example, Allbirds).
  3. In VerifyCategory to track, enter the category you want to check, such as "running shoes" or "project management software."
  4. Choose a VerifyMarket from the dropdown, or leave it set to Global.
  5. Make sure the mode is set to VerifyDirect · free. It is selected by default.
  6. Click Run analysis.

The check runs 25 queries across all 5 assistants and takes a couple of minutes. You'll see a live progress view counting the AI answers as they come in, moving through stages labeled Mapping intents, Querying the engines, Reading answers, and Scoring visibility.

Screenshotthe home page with Your brand, Category to track, Market, and the Direct mode selected

Read your results ​

When the check finishes, your results open on the Overview tab:

  • Visibility Score — your total score out of the maximum possible, shown as a percentage of that maximum.
  • Visibility Rate — the share of queries your brand appeared in (for example, "Appeared in 12 of 25 queries"), plus your top rival.
  • Share of Voice — how mentions split across every response, brand by brand.
  • Platform Breakdown — your visibility on each AI model, so you can spot where you're strong and where you're missing.
  • Detected Competitors — the other brands the assistants named in your category, with how many times each came up.

Screenshotthe Overview tab showing Visibility Score, Visibility Rate, Share of Voice, and Platform Breakdown

To see the raw answers, switch to the Query Explorer tab. Each query expands to show every assistant's response, with a badge marking whether your brand was directly recommended, mentioned indirectly, or not mentioned at all.

Screenshotthe Query Explorer tab with a query expanded to show per-assistant responses and mention badges

What each response shows ​

When you expand a query, each assistant's answer comes with more than just the mention badge:

  • Cited sources — if the assistant backed its answer with links, the source URLs are listed beneath the response.
  • Sentiment — a one-word read on the tone of the mention: positive, neutral, or negative. (Responses with no sentiment to report don't show one.)
  • Brand position — shown as "pos N" (for example, "pos 2"), telling you where your brand landed in that answer when it was ranked among others.
  • Response score — a per-answer visibility score shown as "X.X pts" (for example, "3.5 pts"), so you can see which answers helped your total the most.
  • Highlighting — inside the answer text, your brand name is highlighted, and any competitor names the check detected are highlighted too, so you can scan who got named alongside you at a glance.

Screenshota single expanded assistant response showing the mention badge, the "pos N" position, the sentiment, the "X.X pts" score, highlighted brand and competitor names, and the list of cited source links

How the tracker counts company mentions ​

The tracker records every mention of a company as its own observation. Each observation keeps the AI assistant that gave the answer and the question that produced it.

The tracker also resolves different spellings of one company onto a single identity. For example, the tracker treats "Nike", "Nike Inc.", and "nike" as one company. Without this step, similar spellings can split one company's mentions across several rows, so its true share can look smaller than it is.

Two labels mark a mention the tracker cannot place on your Detected Competitors list:

  • Other — a real company an answer named, outside the brands on your Detected Competitors list. Treat it as a candidate to watch.
  • Unattributed — a name the tracker could not match to a known company. Take no action in most cases. This label marks a known limit of name matching, not an error in your data.

Visibility Rate and Share of Voice measure two different things. Visibility Rate reports how often your brand appeared in an answer at all. Share of Voice reports your brand's share of every mention, counted across all named companies. A brand can hold a high Visibility Rate and a small Share of Voice at the same time, when other companies receive more mentions inside each answer.

This section adds detail to the Detected Competitors list above. The list itself still works the same way.

Tips ​

  • Save and revisit: signed-in users can find past checks under VerifyHistory, filtered by "My runs" or "Your team's runs."
  • No mentions? If Share of Voice shows "No mentions detected," the assistants aren't naming your brand for that category yet — a strong signal to look at the competitors that did show up.
  • Try a broader or narrower category: the category you enter shapes the questions, so rerunning with a different phrasing can reveal where you appear and where you don't.