Two scores, measured from different evidence
AI Says produces two scores. They are reported separately, carry separate methodology versions, and are never combined or averaged, because they are not built from the same kind of evidence.
The AI Readiness Score is part of the free AI Readiness Report. It is measured entirely from the assessed business's own website across 5 weighted categories — Technical Readiness, Entity & Brand Signals, Content Authority, Answer Readiness, Trust Signals — under AI Says Readiness Methodology v1.0. Every factor in it is observed rather than inferred, and a factor that could not be tested is removed from both the earned and the available total rather than scored zero. It describes how ready a website is to be read, understood and quoted by AI systems. It does not describe what any AI platform says about the business, and the free report contains no AI platform visibility data of any kind.
Being AI-ready does not automatically mean being AI-visible. AI Says does not connect to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Google AI, and the automated audit does not measure what any of them say about a business. Where a consultation includes a review of actual platform visibility, that review is carried out by a specialist looking at those platforms directly, and is not an automated measurement.
The AI Readiness Score records the methodology version under which it was produced, so that a change to the methodology never silently rewrites a historical comparison.
Non-affiliation
AI Says is not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity or other AI/search providers. Platform names are used descriptively to identify the services being assessed.
AI Says does not represent, resell or act on behalf of any AI or search provider, is not a partner or certified vendor of any of them, and does not have privileged access to any platform's ranking systems, training data or internal metrics. The automated audit does not query any AI platform. Competitor discovery uses a web-search service to identify businesses in a market; it does not ask any platform which businesses it recommends.
AI answers are not deterministic
Generative systems can return different answers to the same question. Results vary by platform, model version, geographic location, account personalisation, prompt wording and time of day. A single observation is a sample, not a fact about the world.
This is one reason the automated audit measures readiness rather than visibility: readiness is a property of your website and can be measured repeatably, while what an AI platform says is a moving sample. A specialist reviewing platform visibility during a consultation treats every answer as a sample, not a verdict.
Measured, not tested, and never estimated
Every factor in the AI Readiness Score is either measured from the website or reported as not tested — for example when a page could not be retrieved in time. A factor that could not be tested is removed from both the earned and the available total, so it neither helps nor hurts the score. Nothing is estimated, and no factor is inferred from AI platform behaviour.
Competitor figures are produced by applying the same checks to competitors' public websites. Because competitor sites are read one page deep, the comparison uses the subset of checks that can be measured the same way on both sides.
Website analysis
AI Says retrieves publicly accessible resources only: your homepage, robots.txt and sitemap.xml, requested exactly as a search or AI crawler would request them. It does not attempt to access password-protected areas, bypass access controls, or submit forms. Where a resource cannot be retrieved — because of a timeout, an access restriction, or because it does not exist — the affected checks return NOT_TESTED with the reason attached, and are excluded from the AEO Readiness calculation rather than scored as failures.
No guarantee of results
Acting on the recommendations in an AI Says report is intended to make a business easier to identify, easier to quote and better corroborated by independent sources. It does not oblige any AI or search platform to surface, name or recommend that business, and no such outcome is promised, warranted or implied. Nobody — including the platforms themselves — can guarantee inclusion in a generated answer.
Demonstration content
Content marked DEMO, including the sample report, describes a business that does not exist. It is provided so that prospective customers can evaluate the product before purchase. It is not a real assessment and must not be represented as one.
Not professional advice
An AI Says report is a technical and marketing assessment. It is not legal, financial or professional advice, and it should be read alongside your own judgement about your market and your business.
Questions
If anything in a report is unclear, or you believe a finding is wrong, write to hello@aisays.io. Corrections to the methodology are published as new methodology versions rather than applied silently.