Do AI engines cite you?
More and more buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity first. This is the method to measure whether they cite a company correctly (30 fixed prompts, 5 engines, 3 languages), run on Slash first, with no numbers until the first run completes.
AI engines already speak about us to people who don't know us. If they're going to talk about Slash, we want to measure it: an open methodology, prompts and runs.
AI engines are a channel
And like every channel, it's either measured or ignored.
More buyers now ask an AI engine before they visit a website. If those engines can't retrieve primary facts about Slash (legal identity, headquarters, services, clients), they speak about us on hearsay.
The data points that way. In a Pew Research Center study (July 22, 2025) based on the browsing of 900 US adults, people who saw a Google AI summary clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, versus 15% without one, and clicked a link inside the summary itself in just 1%.
That's why we publish verifiable facts on our company facts page and will measure whether they land.
30 prompts, 5 engines, 3 languages
No numbers until the first run completes.
The LLM Visibility Score is made of 30 fixed prompts about the company and its category, run on 5 engines in 3 languages (Spanish, English and French). Each run records the answer, the mentions and the citations.
We publish the methodology before the results: the study can be replicated and compared quarter over quarter.
Where an engine provides its own data, we cross-check it with the runs. Since August 31, 2026, Search Console's Generative AI performance report has been available to all sites: it counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, with no clicks. Since February 10, 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools has offered an AI Performance report, in public preview, that counts citations in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. For ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, our measure is the fixed-prompt runs.
Mention, citation, correctness
Three levels of landing.
An engine can ignore us, mention us on hearsay, or cite primary facts correctly. The score tells the three apart: a mention with wrong facts is worse than none.
The goal: every mention anchored to verifiable primary facts, not rumor.
What a site controls in October 2026
Crawlers, robots.txt and files: what changes visibility and what doesn't.
| Agent or control | What it does | If you block it |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI) | Surfaces sites in ChatGPT search | You don't appear in ChatGPT search answers, though you may still show up as a navigational link |
| GPTBot (OpenAI) | Crawls content to train models | You signal that your content should not be used for training; search is unaffected |
| Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic) | Indexes to improve Claude's search results | Your content isn't indexed for search |
| ClaudeBot (Anthropic) | Collects content that may be used for training | You signal that your future content should be excluded from training |
| PerplexityBot | Surfaces and links sites in Perplexity; per the company, not used to train models | You stop appearing in its search |
| Google-Extended (token, no separate user agent) | Gemini training and grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI | Per Google, no effect on your inclusion or ranking in Google Search |
| Search Console toggle | Appearing in AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI features in Discover, and grounding their answers | You lose impressions and traffic from those features; Google says it isn't a ranking signal for other results |
Agents that fetch a page on a user's request (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) are a separate case: OpenAI warns that robots.txt may not apply to those visits and Perplexity says its agent generally ignores it, while Anthropic says its bots honour it. Our robots.txt lets all of them in and only closes /api/.
On llms.txt: Google's guide to AI features, updated on July 10, 2026, says Search ignores those files and that AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special files, markup or structured data. We publish an /llms.txt, but we don't count it as a visibility lever. The same guide notes that no third-party tool has access to Google's internal ranking or AI systems: one more reason to state the method.
What this study is not
Stated before publishing.
It isn't a paid advertising index or a game to trick the engines: it's an honest measurement with stated limitations (fixed sample, public engines and repeatable runs).
It follows the rules of the Slash AI Lab: methodology before numbers, limitations stated up front.
Key takeaways
- AI engines are already a channel: measured or ignored.
- 30 fixed prompts, 5 engines and 3 languages, with the methodology published before the results.
- A hearsay mention is not a correct citation of primary facts.
- Blocking OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or PerplexityBot removes you from their search; blocking GPTBot or ClaudeBot affects training, not search.
- Search Console now counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, without clicks, and Google Search ignores llms.txt.
Sources
- Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results
- Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console
- Generative AI performance report (Search)
- New opportunities, control and insights for website owners
- Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search
- AI features and your website
- Google's common crawlers (Google-Extended)
- Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (public preview)
- Overview of OpenAI crawlers
- Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?
- Perplexity crawlers
- The /llms.txt file proposal
Editorial note: this analysis reflects the public information available on the review date. Models, prices and rules change fast; every third-party figure links to its source, and our opinions are labeled as such. Spotted an error? Write to contact@slash-digital.io.
The questions we hear often
What is the LLM Visibility Score?
A measurement, with a public methodology, of whether AI engines know and correctly cite a company's primary facts.
Is the study finished?
No numbers are published until the first run completes; the methodology is already open.
Why does it matter?
Because buyers ask AI engines first, and AI answers reduce clicks: per Pew Research Center (July 2025), users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when Google showed an AI summary, versus 15% without one. Without primary facts, the engines answer on hearsay.
Does an llms.txt file help?
Not for Google Search: Google says it ignores the file and that AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special files or markup. What decides whether an engine can cite you is whether its search crawler (Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or PerplexityBot) can read your pages.
Can it be applied to other companies?
Yes, the method is replicable. Write to us for your company's version.
How often is it repeated?
Every quarter, or sooner when something relevant changes.
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