Plain-English guides from the Reflexa team on how AI engines pick who to recommend — every claim with its proof, every section with a takeaway. No hacks, no myths, sources included.
The same five-layer audit behind Recognition, turned into findings with severity, raw evidence and a fix — no blended score, just what's broken and what to change.
Read the guide → Search trendsChatGPT has ~900M weekly users, zero-click searches hit ~68%, and only 8–12% of AI-cited links also rank in Google's top 10. The trend data on how AI search is displacing traditional search, side by side.
Read the guide → AI vs GoogleAhrefs found only 8–12% of links AI engines cite also appear in Google's top 10 for the same prompt. Why the two rankings diverge, and what it means for how you measure visibility.
Read the guide → Shopping data77% of consumers have used AI to help with a shopping decision in the past six months, and 64% use AI-assisted tools regularly — but most still won't let AI spend their money. What the surveys show.
Read the guide → Tools comparedReflexa, Profound, Peec AI, Semrush AI Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Otterly, AthenaHQ, Scrunch, HubSpot AEO Grader and Frase — compared on engines covered, pricing, and the catch with each.
Read the comparison → Search trends~68% of Google searches now end without a click, AI Overviews push click-through lower still, and AI referral traffic is growing fast from a small base. What it means for how you read your own numbers.
Read the guide → Entity trustWikipedia as training text, Wikidata as structured entity data — what each actually contributes to an AI answer, and what's realistic for a company that isn't a household name.
Read the guide → Competitor trackingWhich specific competitors ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity name instead of you, how often, in what order, and from which sources — tracked like a metric, not a one-off spot check.
Read the guide → MonitoringA single check is a snapshot, not a trend line — why AI answers shift between checks, and the cadence that catches drift while it's still cheap to fix.
Read the guide → Competitive analysisThe classic marketing metric, adapted to a channel with no fixed leaderboard — what AI share of voice means, and how to calculate it across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity.
Read the guide → AccuracyWhy ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity sometimes state wrong facts about your brand with total confidence, why it happens to every engine, and the concrete steps to correct it.
Read the guide → Reference guideSix AI user-agents, who sends each one, what it feeds, and the exact robots.txt rules that let every engine in — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and more.
Read the guide → ComparisonThree engines, three mechanics for deciding who gets named — a shortlist, an inline citation, a visible Sources panel — plus the four levers that control all three anyway.
Read the comparison → Engine guideClaude cites live web search results, and Anthropic runs three separate bots — ClaudeBot, Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot — that all say they honor robots.txt. What that means for getting recommended.
Read the guide → Engine guidePerplexity's citations are visible and countable. PerplexityBot vs Perplexity-User, the robots.txt controversy, and what actually gets a page quoted.
Read the guide → Myth checkGoogle says it doesn't use it. Crawler logs show ChatGPT and Claude's bots barely request it. What llms.txt actually is, and what to do instead.
Read the myth check → GlossaryEntity, corroboration, AI crawler, answer-first writing, Buyer Question, Mentions vs Recommendations vs Citations — the terms used across this site, defined in one paragraph each.
Read the glossary → FundamentalsAI engines recommend entities, not pages — a great page attached to an ambiguous identity still loses. Consistent naming, a real About page and linked sameAs profiles, explained.
Read the guide → Content structureAI engines quote pages that answer directly, not ones that circle the topic first. The structure that gets a page extracted and cited.
Read the guide → Myth checkNo schema markup flips a switch that gets you recommended. What structured data actually does, per Google's own guidance, and what's still worth marking up.
Read the myth check → ChecklistFour groups, twelve steps, in the order that actually matters — crawler access, entity clarity, buying-intent content, corroboration — the same sequence the Reflexa audit checks in.
Read the checklist → ProductA tour of the toolkit — Recognition, Competitors, Sources, What to Fix and Weekly tracking. What each tool answers, what you see, and why it matters.
Read the tour → Data roundupThe key numbers, each sourced: ChatGPT and AI Overviews reach, how buyers use AI to shop, zero-click search, AI-vs-Google overlap, and how many top sites block AI crawlers.
Read the stats → Original researchWe checked the robots.txt of 40 well-known companies. Nearly one in five blocks a major AI crawler — and among news publishers it's the majority. Full method and data.
Read the study → FundamentalsWhat brand intelligence means, the fourth input AI just added, and the five things it now measures — recognition, description, share of voice, sources and accuracy.
Read the guide → MethodPeople ask AI in full, first-person questions, not the keywords they type into Google. Why business-specific prompts measure your visibility better than keyword-derived ones.
Read the guide → Practical guideChatGPT recommends businesses it can access, read and verify. Five steps to become one — each with a check you can run today.
Read the guide → StrategyWhat genuinely changed with AI search, which SEO work still counts, and what to stop doing. With the side-by-side table.
Read the guide → FundamentalsThe practice of getting named in AI answers: how it works, the five signals that matter, and the myths the engines' own docs debunk.
Read the guide →See what AI actually thinks of your business — free check, 3 minutes, evidence included.