These are the terms that appear across every area, category, and report on AI+ Local: what each one means, and how it is measured. The procedure that produces the numbers is the Methodology.
The Basics
AI+ Local
The platform you are reading. It measures which local businesses the major AI assistants recommend across a market, and tracks how those answers change over time.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
The practice of understanding and improving how generative AI models recommend you. AI+ Local is the measurement layer for it.
AI assistants
The five generative models we query, each in its live, web-connected mode: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok.
Reading the Rankings
AI rank
A business's place in the combined answer across all five assistants. It is an appearance-frequency ranking: businesses named more often rank higher, with ties broken by their average position in the assistants' lists. #1 is the top recommendation in an area.
Named by
How many of the five assistants named the business, like 4 of 5. The closer to five, the more the assistants agree on it.
Share of voice
Of all the AI mentions in an area, the share that belongs to one business: its mentions divided by every mention of every business named there. If 200 mentions are made across an area and a business accounts for 40, its share of voice is 20%. It measures presence in the conversation, separate from rank.
Rankings by intent
The same area asked four ways, matching how customers phrase it: best (overall), most affordable (value), cheapest (lowest price), and fastest (speed). For each, a business lands in one band: the answer (#1), podium (#2–3), named (#4+), or not named.
Race
How settled the answer is, week to week, from the average churn in each assistant's top three. It is one of three states.
Stable
The same names hold the top spots run after run.
Competitive
The leaders are mostly steady, but the order moves.
Open
The top turns over often, with no settled leader.
Change
Movement since the previous run, by average position across the assistants: 2 climbed, 2 slipped, “new” just entered the rankings, “out” left them.
Mention
A single instance of an assistant naming a business in its answer. Mentions are the unit behind named-by, AI rank, and share of voice.
Source
A page an assistant cites to back its answer, also called a citation, grouped by type: directories, reviews, local news, community threads, and a business's own site. A mention is a business being named; a source is the page cited to support it.
The Reports and Plans
Public report
The free, public side of AI+ Local: every area, category, and business we track in a market, refreshed weekly. Anyone can read it, for any business, with no account.
Pro Report
The paid report for a single business: every area it is tracked in, its position with each assistant and full rank history, its rankings by intent, its share of voice against the rivals named alongside it, the sources to win, and where to focus next. It refreshes more often than the weekly public pages. See The Pro Report.
Subscription
A paid plan that includes the full Pro Report. Plans differ only by how many businesses you track: Local (1 Pro Report), Growing (3 Pro Reports), and Scaling (10 Pro Reports). See pricing.