AI Sourceworthy Score Explained

How likely is AI to choose your brand as the answer?

The AI Sourceworthy Score is a 1–100 rating that reflects how likely your business is to be selected as a source in AI-generated responses. That includes tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE).


Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in a list of links, this score measures how AI perceives the trustworthiness, clarity, and accessibility of your content. The higher your score, the more likely AI is to reference your brand directly in conversational answers.

This page breaks down how the score is calculated, what it means, and what to do with it.

How This Score Is Calculated

This score reflects how well your content aligns with what large language models (LLMs) are trained to look for. It’s based on three key signals:

  • Topical Authority
  • Content Quality
  • GEO Discoverability

Let’s unpack each one.

Topical Authority Score

Does your content demonstrate subject-matter depth?

AI models prioritize content from sources that appear focused and deeply knowledgeable. Brands that go wide without going deep get overlooked. The more your content signals a consistent and clear expertise in a specific domain, the more reference-worthy you become.


What we evaluate:

  • Clear topical focus across your pages and posts
  • Internal linking that reinforces your expertise in key subject areas
  • Author credibility and evidence of expertise (bios, citations, original insights)

Think of it like building a neural map. If your site connects tightly around a specific subject, AI models are more likely to see you as a reliable node in that knowledge graph.

Content Quality Score

Is your content structured the way AI prefers to read?

LLMs are trained to extract useful, relevant, and well-structured information. The content that wins isn’t always the most keyword-rich—it’s the most clearly written and logically formatted.


What we evaluate:

Clarity of language and structure (H1s, H2s, bullet points, summaries)

Alignment with user intent: Does the content actually answer the implied question?

Depth and usefulness: Does your page offer original value, or just rehash existing info?

If your page reads like it was written for humans and understood by machines, you’re on the right track.

GEO Discoverability Score

Can AI find and access your content at all?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It's not just technical SEO under a new name—it's a new discipline. GEO focuses specifically on how AI systems interpret and access your site. If your content isn’t visible, structured, and machine-readable in ways generative models understand, it doesn’t exist in their results.


What we evaluate:

  • Crawlability and indexing signals specific to AI search models
  • Use of schema markup and structured data
  • Site speed, mobile performance, and architecture that support AI ingestion

GEO is the foundation. You can have the best content in the world, but if AI can’t parse or index it, you don’t exist in the new search landscape.

How AI Uses Content

AI tools don’t crawl the web the same way Google does. They’re trained on massive datasets and rely on a mix of live retrieval, trusted source databases, and internal knowledge graphs to generate answers.


When a user asks a question, the model:

  • Interprets the query
  • Searches its trained index and retrieval sources
  • Filters for clarity, context, and reliability
  • Synthesizes a response from high-trust content

To be selected, your content must be both technically accessible and semantically strong (clear, consistent, and contextually useful).

Why Your AI Sourceworthy Score Matters

The way people search is shifting. Instead of scrolling through ten links, they’re asking AI tools for fast, conversational answers and trusting the results.


Your Sourceworthy Score helps you understand:

  • Whether AI tools see your content as credible and referenceable
  • Which parts of your site are holding you back
  • Where to invest in content, structure, or technical improvements to increase visibility

The old SEO game was about ranking. The new game is about being quoted.

AI Sourceworthy Score FAQs

  • What is the AI Sourceworthy score, really?

    It’s a visibility and credibility score for AI-driven search. It tells you how likely it is that tools like ChatGPT will reference your content when answering user questions.

  • Is this the same as traditional SEO?

    Not exactly. Traditional SEO is about optimizing for web crawlers and SERP positions. Sourceworthy focuses on LLM behavior—how AI systems perceive and prioritize content.

  • How is the AI Sourceworthy score different from Domain Authority?

    Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by SEO tools to estimate the likelihood of a website ranking in traditional search engines. It’s primarily based on backlinks. The AI Sourceworthy Score, by contrast, evaluates how AI systems interpret your brand’s trustworthiness based on clarity, topical focus, and accessibility. 

  • What’s considered a “good” score?

    Generally, a score above 70 means you’re showing up regularly in generative search results. 40–69 is inconsistent visibility. Below 40 means you’re likely being overlooked.

  • How often should I update my audit?

    We recommend running a new audit every 30–60 days, especially after publishing new content or making structural changes to your site.

  • How can I improve my score?

    Focus on narrowing your topical focus, writing clearer long-form content, adding schema markup, improving site speed and mobile structure, and earning high-quality links from relevant sources.

Glossary of Terms

LLM (Large Language Model): A type of artificial intelligence trained on massive datasets to understand and generate human-like text. Examples include ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.


GEO (Generative Engine Optimization):   The process of optimizing your content and website so it can be read, trusted, and referenced by AI models in generative search results.


AI Visibility: A measure of how often and how prominently your brand appears in AI-generated answers across tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's SGE.


Authority Score: An evaluation of how credible and influential your brand appears to AI systems based on service depth, reputation, client results, and thought leadership.


Sourceworthy Score: A separate metric evaluating whether your content is clear, helpful, and structured in a way AI can access and understand.

Is ChatGPT Recommending You or Your Competitors?

Most brands have no idea how often they’re mentioned, or missed, by AI tools like ChatGPT. That’s costing them traffic, trust, and leads.


Your AI Visibility Report shows where you appear, where you don’t, and how to beat competitors already showing up.