Not every answer is contested
The assumption behind most AI-visibility advice is that a competitor holds the answer you want and you have to take it from them. Run a real prompt set and you find something more useful: for a meaningful share of genuine buyer questions, the engines have no settled source. The answer is assembled loosely, cites something tangential, or wanders.
Those are the cheapest wins available, and almost nobody tracks them because most tools only report three states.
CITED MENTIONED ABSENT OPEN
- CITED — Your domain appeared in the answer's source list.
- MENTIONED — Your brand was named in the answer text, without a link.
- ABSENT — Neither named nor cited — a competitor took the answer.
- OPEN — Nobody owns this answer yet — an opportunity to build the page.
How to find them
1. Write prompts the way a buyer speaks
Not keywords. The full question, in the words a person would type into an assistant — including the constraint that matters to them, like budget, team size or billing model.
2. Run them across engines, more than once
A single query is noisy. Repeat passes across several engines separate a stable pattern from a one-off.
3. Look for the absence of a strong source
An answer that names no specific source, or cites a forum thread and a round-up, is an answer with no owner.
4. Write the page that deserves to be the source
One question, answered directly, high on the page, in a passage that can be lifted whole. Evidence attached. Dates on the facts.
5. Re-run and record the change
Thirty days later, run the same prompt set. The flip from OPEN to CITED is the proof.
Why unclaimed answers are worth more than they look
Search volume is the wrong lens here. A question asked a hundred times a month by exactly your buyer, with no established source, is worth more than a high-volume term where three well-funded competitors are already cited. You are not out-ranking anyone — you are being first.
It also compounds. Once an engine has a reliable source for a question, that source tends to keep being used until something better appears.
What we do not claim
- Per-engine scores are directional estimates, not a guarantee of placement.
- We measure what is on your page and what engines return. We do not measure off-domain authority, and we never promise citations, rankings or traffic.
- A rewrite is a draft grounded in your existing content. It invents no facts and it never publishes itself.
Frequently asked questions
What does an OPEN verdict mean?
That no source currently owns the answer to that question in AI results — neither you nor a competitor. It marks an opportunity to build the page rather than a loss to recover.
How is that different from keyword research?
Keyword research measures how often something is searched. This measures whether an AI answer has a settled source. A low-volume question with no owner can be worth more than a high-volume one with three.
How many prompts should I track?
Start with the questions your buyers actually ask in sales conversations — usually twenty to forty. Depth of repetition across engines matters more than breadth.
How long before a new page gets cited?
It varies and nobody can promise a timeline. Re-run the same prompt set on a fixed cadence and let the data answer.