# Understanding your scores

> How each AI model is scored 0-100 and how scores roll up per engine and overall.

Source: https://youcited.com/docs/getting-started/understanding-your-scores
Section: Getting Started
Last updated: 2026-10-29
All docs: https://youcited.com/docs/index.md

## One score per AI model

Every AI model in your audit gets one score from 0 to 100. It blends three numbers:

| Part | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| **Cited** | 50% | How often the model links to your site as a source in its answer. |
| **Visibility** | 30% | How often you show up at all: linked, named, or among the pages the model read. |
| **Share of Voice** | 20% | Your share of all the sites the model cited across your questions. |

Each part is a percentage of the questions the model answered. If a model gave no answers (an outage, for example), it gets no score rather than a zero.

### Example

Say Claude answered your five questions. It linked to your site in 2 answers (Cited 40%), named you without a link in 1 more (Visibility 60%), and your site was 10% of all the sites it cited (Share of Voice 10%). The score is 40 × 0.5 + 60 × 0.3 + 10 × 0.2 = **40**.

## Rolling up: engine and overall

- **Engine score.** Each engine (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google AI) averages the models inside it.
- **Overall score.** Every engine counts the same.

You can change both weights in the report under **How the overall score adds up**. Set a weight to 0 to leave an engine or model out. Weights go from 0 to 10.

## What the bands mean

| Score | Band |
|---|---|
| 0-19 | Not showing up |
| 20-39 | Weak |
| 40-59 | Fair |
| 60-79 | Strong |
| 80-100 | Leading |

## API vs as seen

Cited can ask a model two ways:

- **API:** the model's developer API with web search turned on.
- **As seen:** what a real person sees in the ChatGPT or Gemini app.

Where an engine has as-seen results, those count toward the engine score and the API results are shown beside them for comparison.

## Repeats

AI answers vary from one ask to the next. In a paid audit each question is asked three times per model, and the question's row shows the majority result and how many of the three runs cited you.

## The site-check score

The site check has its own 0-100 score, separate from the AI scores. It measures whether your site gives AI what it needs: bot access, llms.txt, sitemap, structured data and more. See [Site check](/docs/feature-guides/site-check).

## Using your scores

- **Look at the answers, not just the number.** Every question shows each AI's answer and the sites cited instead of you. That list is often the most useful thing in the report.
- **Compare like with like.** Scores move when you change questions or models. To track progress, re-run the same questions and check **Since the last audit** in the [report](/docs/feature-guides/reading-your-report#since-the-last-audit).
- **Give fixes time.** AI engines pick up site changes over days to weeks. Re-check two to four weeks after you ship a batch of fixes.

For a list of every term, see [Metric definitions](/docs/geo-concepts/metric-definitions).