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AVO Brands measures AI visibility with two scores, Identity and Discovery, because a brand can fail in two different ways. AI may describe the wrong company when someone asks about you by name, or it may never mention you when a buyer asks about your category. We ran the panel on our own brand first, on September 6, 2026, and scored Identity 64/100 and Discovery 14/100.
Key Takeaways
By Elaine Petitgout-Brice, AVO Brands. Audit measured September 6, 2026. Last updated October 9, 2026.
The goal of an audit is to learn what AI says about your brand and whether buyers hear your name. It does that with two scores, and each score has its own list of questions.
From our audit: how we ran it
We ask 35 questions: 9 that name the brand and 26 that do not. Each question goes to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, four times each. Every question-engine pair gets one verdict, which gives 36 verdicts for Identity and 104 for Discovery.
Identity asks whether AI describes your brand accurately when someone asks about it by name. It uses the 9 questions that name the brand, like "Who owns AVO Brands?" Each answer shows your AI presence in one of four categories:
From our audit: how we got 64
Our "64" means 23 of 36 verdicts were CURRENT. Nine described a different company.
Discovery asks whether AI names your brand when a buyer asks a category question with no brand name. It uses the 26 questions a buyer asks without knowing who to pick. It combines three measures:
From our audit: how we got 14
Our Discovery of 14 comes from a Presence of 12%, a Credit of 6%, and a Standing of 30% (12 of 40 mentions).
Presence carries the most weight (55%), then Credit (25%) and Standing (20%). Presence moves the score most.
We ask the same questions every month, so each audit can be compared with the last and shows what changed.
AI answers change from run to run. A SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai study found that ChatGPT and Google's AI almost never returned the same brand list twice for the same prompt.
Repeating each query and keeping the panel fixed averages out natural variation, so a change between monthly scorecards is a real change.
The panel does not measure Google rankings or domain authority, since SEO tools already cover those.
Partly. SEO platforms count how often AI mentions your brand, across far more prompts than our panel covers. They do not check whether those mentions are accurate.
A count of 40 mentions cannot say whether all 40 described the right company.
A low count cannot say why it is low. The brand may be new, or the engine may be confusing it with another business.
AI-native trackers follow specific prompts more closely than SEO platforms do. Most still report visibility rather than cause.
Of everything we reviewed, Profound's FactCheck comes closest to what our Identity score does.
Trackers suit ongoing monitoring for a brand that already knows its identity is clean.
Our panel is much smaller: 35 questions, not millions of prompts. What it gives up in volume it makes up in consistency.
AI engines mix AVO Brands up with other companies, and they almost never name us when a buyer asks a category question.
| Score | Result | Label | Supporting data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | 64/100 | Inconsistent | 23 of 36 verdicts were CURRENT. 9 described a different company, and 4 were stale or absent. |
| Discovery | 14/100 | Invisible | Presence 12% (named in the answer), Credit 6% (our site cited as a source), Standing 30% (12 of 40 mentions). |
Our Identity score showed why. At least four unrelated companies share the AVO name, including AVO Cigars and AVO Clothing.
On three of the four engines, the answer to "Who owns AVO Brands?" described one of those other companies. The same happened with "Who are the founders of AVO Brands?"
A tool that only counts mentions would have reported low visibility and pointed toward publishing more content. Our verdicts showed that AI was answering about other companies when asked about us. More content would not fix that. Clearer entity information would.
We wrote up the full collision case separately.
In a separate tally of answers relevant to our topics, engines cited AVO articles as a source in 11% of them. They named AVO Brands in the text of only 1%. The content was being trusted without credit going to us.
In a scan of 421 AI answers about cannabis AI-visibility services, no provider was named at all. In that scan, no provider owned the category.
How ChatGPT chooses which brands to name is covered in our guide to the mechanics.
Keep your existing dashboard for ongoing monitoring. Use an audit to decide what to fix first.
You can request the AEO Audit on your own brand through the contact form at avo-brands.com. The report is free and it is about you. Your scores will differ from ours. Another company may share your name, and your category has its own competitors.
The audit shows where your brand stands. From there we choose which fixes to make. The usual ones are:
Each monthly re-run shows what moved, so we rework a step that did nothing and do more of one that helped.
Our AEO work builds on your existing SEO program. For the details of what changes, read is AEO just SEO, or start with what answer engine optimization is.
Does AVO measure Google rankings too? No. The panel measures what AI engines say, not where Google ranks a page.
Do I still need my SEO platform? Yes, for ongoing monitoring. The audit tells you what to fix first.
How often is the panel re-run? Monthly, on the same locked-in queries and the same four engines.
What is the difference between Identity and Discovery? Identity scores branded questions, the ones that name your brand: does AI describe it accurately? Discovery scores category questions, the ones with no brand name: does AI mention you?
How much does an audit cost? Nothing. The visibility report is free.
Which AI engines does AVO test? ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Can I get an audit of my brand? Yes. The visibility report is free and uses the same method we ran on ourselves.
