How each is asked
| Assistant | How it is asked | Plans |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | The ChatGPT app, with web search, from your country | Starter and Growth, every week |
| Gemini | The Gemini app, from your country | Starter and Growth, every week |
| Google AI Mode | A real AI Mode answer, from the business’s home state or country | Starter and Growth, every week |
| Google AI Overviews | Read from the same Google results page that gives your rank, from the question’s place | Starter and Growth, every week |
| Perplexity | Its API, with search; the question says it comes from a buyer in your country | Starter and Growth, every week |
| Claude | Asked with web search, from your country | Growth: odd weeks and the last week |
The apps are what a buyer actually uses; they search before they answer a buying question, and they name different businesses from the developer APIs. Claude is asked in alternate weeks because one Claude answer costs more than the other four together; asking it in the first and the last week keeps the before and after comparable.
What every answer keeps
- The assistant, the question and the week.
- The answer itself, and the pages and sites it used.
- Whether it named your business (by its name, the names you gave it, or its website), in what position, and whether it cited your site.
- Which of your competitors it named, and names it recommended that are on nobody’s list: the competitors you did not know about.
- How it spoke of each name: recommended plainly, with a caveat, listed among others, or cautioned against, with the words that decided it.
Why you are not named
For each question where the answers left you out, the report gives the main reason: the pages the answers used do not mention you, the assistants do not find your page when they search, bigger names hold the answer, or your page does not say it the way the answers do. Each reason points at different work: being named on the pages the answers read, a page that ranks, or a page that answers in the buyer’s words.
What is not built
Oftheard does not ask the assistants from inside a city or district; the apps take a country only, and the questions are asked from the business’s country. Google’s results, and its AI Overview, are read from each question’s place. See places and languages.