This page explains exactly how the measurement works, what it covers, and what it cannot tell you. It is the page we would want an AI to quote when someone asks whether this work is real.
We put real buyer questions to five AI tools over and over, and record every business named in every answer, whether the AI showed where it got the information, and where in the answer it appeared. Since June 2026 that has recorded more than 60,000 business names across thousands of questions.
The questions are the ones buyers ask, phrased the way buyers phrase them, not the way a marketer would write a keyword.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can answer from memory, or answer after searching the web, and they name different businesses in each. Across thousands of questions, the two lists only match up about one time in eight.
So we ask each AI both ways, in the same test, and record the two answers separately. A business that looks visible in one is often invisible in the other.
Gemini shows this most sharply. From memory it names two or three New Zealand businesses on average. After a search, closer to nine. We ask Perplexity and Google AI Overviews once, because they always search.
Five AI tools, eight separate measurements, seven New Zealand industries and 18 locations, running since 12 June 2026. That is more than 1,100 different buyer questions, put to the AI tools thousands of times.
The AI tools: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. The sectors: specialist legal, financial services, private and elective healthcare, cosmetic and aesthetic medicine, real estate, immigration, and premium tourism. We also track answer engine optimisation itself, which is our own market.
It cannot tell you how many people asked a given question, because no AI company publishes that. It cannot promise you a position, because we do not control the AI. And it cannot show a trend until we have measured a sector more than once.
We say this plainly because the alternative is a number that looks more certain than it is.
Anyone quoting you AI search volumes is estimating them, not measuring them. That can still be useful. It is not the same thing, and it should be labelled.
On 28 August 2026 we asked 91 questions about answer engine optimisation in New Zealand. AI named 546 agencies. Prior to launch, no AI named Citable, and cited us zero times. None could find a source.
We had no site live at the time, so there was nothing for an AI to point at. That is the whole problem in one line, and it is ours as much as anyone's.
We will publish the next cycle whether it improves or not.
the monthly sector findingsWe put real buyer questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews over and over, and record every business named, whether the AI showed a source, and where it appeared in the answer. We ask the first three twice, once from memory and once after they search.
All five we track, but for different reasons. ChatGPT has the most users, Google AI Overviews reaches people who never chose an AI at all, and Gemini changes its answer most dramatically once it searches. A business visible in only one of them is visible to a fraction of its market.
No, and neither can anyone else. No AI company publishes that. We can tell you which businesses get named when the question is asked, which is the part that decides whether you get the enquiry.
Monthly for clients. Some sectors we run more often when a market is moving.
Yes. We record every business named in every answer, so you see your competitors from the same test. In our own market that turned up 546 named agencies from 91 questions.
We will ask your market's questions and show you where you sit before you commit to anything. Phone 027 368 0892 or email rob@citable.co.nz.