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What it means

The percentage of AI answers in the period where your brand was named in the text or linked to. It is the broadest of the five metrics. It asks whether you were present at all, not where, not how, and not whether the reader was told anything flattering.

How it is calculated

A response counts once whether it names you, links to you, or both. The two signals are merged deliberately, since an answer that writes “Surfaced” and an answer that carries an inline link to getsurfaced.ai are both an appearance. They are merged without double-counting, so the figure will never equal “mentions plus links”. The denominator is every analysable answer in the window: one that came back with text, or that the analysis could read. Empty and failed responses are in neither half of the fraction, so a bad run shrinks the sample rather than depressing the percentage. One case is deliberately excluded from the numerator: an answer that cites a page on your domain without naming you in the text and without an inline link. That is a citation rather than an appearance, and it is counted on Sources instead.

Worked example

From the public demo, which runs on a real workspace’s data:
  • Responses collected in the period: 2,140
  • Responses naming or linking the brand: 1,006
  • Brand visibility: 1,006 ÷ 2,140 = 47.0%
The card’s subtitle spells the fraction out, “1006 mentions in 2140 responses”, so you never have to take the percentage on trust.

Where to find it

The first KPI card on Analytics, with a trend chart below it and a per-platform breakdown beside that. The same figure appears per prompt on Prompts, and per competitor on Competitors.

What it is not

Not a share. Two brands can both be named in the same answer, so visibility across every brand in your market sums to well over 100%. The metric that is a share is share of voice. Not a ranking. Being named last in a list of nine counts the same as being the only recommendation. Average position is the one that separates those. Not an endorsement. Being named as the expensive option is an appearance. Sentiment is what tells you which kind. Not comparable across different prompt sets. Visibility is measured over the prompts you chose. Adding ten prompts about a category you have no content for will lower it without anything having got worse.
Brand visibility defaults to unbranded prompts rather than all of them. On a workspace where that control is shown, the unfiltered figure is typically far lower than the blended one, because prompts containing your own brand name almost always return it. Periods and filters explains what you are looking at by default.