Methodology
How the Footprint Score works
GetCited gives you an honest 0–100 score for how findable and credible you are — on Google and in AI answer engines. Here's exactly how it's calculated. No black box.
The 6 pillars
Your score is a weighted blend of six pillars. Each is measured for a company or an individual.
| Pillar | Weight | What it measures | Data source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-Visible ★ | 25% | Do ChatGPT, Gemini & AI Overviews actually know and cite you? | Live Claude + Gemini probes, sampled |
| Entity / Knowledge | 20% | Are you a recognised entity — Organization/Person schema, sameAs links? | Your page's structured data (deterministic) |
| Findable | 20% | Rank for your own name, indexable, server-rendered (not a JS shell) | Crawl + robots/sitemap (deterministic) |
| Credible | 15% | Reviews, ratings, mentions, sentiment | Live search of your review presence |
| Owned Health | 10% | Speed, accessibility, AEO-readiness of your site | Real Google Lighthouse (deterministic) |
| Influence / Reach | 10% | Social & creator footprint, share of the conversation | Your linked profiles (deterministic) |
(Weights shift slightly in Individual mode — reputation weighs more, owned-health less.)
How we keep it honest
- Deterministic first. Owned-Health, Entity and Findable are computed from stable facts — the same site scores the same every time.
- AI pillars are sampled, with confidence bands. The AI-Visible and Credible pillars ask real models several times and report a confidence level — because AI answers vary.
- We never fabricate. If a check can't run, that pillar shows not measured and is excluded from your score — which re-normalises. Your coverage % tells you how much was measured.
- Cached for 24h & versioned. Re-checking within a day gives the same number; every result is stamped with the score version.
This runs real Google Lighthouse and live AI-answer-engine checks — not opinion. Where we can only estimate (e.g. peer benchmarks), we say so.
What it doesn't do
It's a snapshot, not a guarantee. It doesn't remove data about you, and peer benchmarks are indicative until our dataset grows. It's designed to show you exactly where you're invisible — and what to fix.
Check your score →