> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mavel.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Visibility

> The share of captured answers in which your brand appears: computed per prompt, per surface, and rolled up across your selected date range.

Visibility is the fraction of captured answers in which your brand appears, over the selected prompts, surfaces, and date range. It is expressed as a percentage (0-100%).

Formally: `visibility = answers where your brand is mentioned ÷ total answers captured`, summed across every prompt × surface × day in the window, then divided. A visibility of 60% means your brand appeared in 6 out of every 10 answers Mavel captured for the scope you have selected.

## What moves it

Visibility measures presence, not position or framing. A brand mentioned once at the end of a long answer and a brand named in the opening recommendation both count toward visibility equally. Two things drive it:

* **Whether you appear at all**: if AI engines do not mention you for a given prompt, that prompt contributes a zero to the denominator.
* **How many prompts cover your category**: visibility is always relative to the prompts you have set up. Adding prompts where you do not appear will lower the blended number even if nothing changed on the AI side.

## How to use it

<Steps>
  <Step title="Filter by topic first">
    Open the Overview and select a topic from the filter bar. Visibility blended across all prompts can mask a 5% score on the category-intent prompts that win new customers while an 80% score on branded prompts flatters the headline number. Topic-level visibility is the operative signal.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Filter by surface">
    Visibility varies significantly across AI surfaces. A strong number on Perplexity and a weak one on ChatGPT are separate problems requiring different content interventions. Narrow to one surface at a time to see where you are absent.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Read the trend, not the single day">
    Select a 7-day or 30-day range to see the trend line on the visibility chart. The period-over-period delta (shown next to the percentage) compares the current window against the equal-length window immediately before it: a green delta means you appeared in a higher share of answers this period than last.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Benchmark against competitors">
    The Top Brands table on the Overview shows visibility for every brand you track under the same filter. A competitor's visibility rising while yours holds flat is an early warning even if your absolute number looks fine.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## How to interpret it

**Zero visibility on a topic** means AI engines are recommending someone else to every buyer who asks those questions. That is a content gap, not an SEO gap: the fix is creating or improving the pages the AI engines cite (see [Sources](/results/sources) for which domains they trust).

**High visibility on branded prompts** is expected and not strategically interesting. The prompts worth watching are the category-intent and comparison prompts where buyers have not yet decided.

**Declining visibility** is the earliest numeric signal that a competitor has entered or strengthened their AI presence, or that a change in your own content has reduced the signals AI engines read.

<Note>
  A brand tracked but absent from the selected window shows an em dash in the table, not 0%. No data and measured-zero are different states. Visibility can only be measured for prompts that have run and returned answers.
</Note>

## Relationship to the other metrics

Visibility tells you whether you appear. [Position](/results/position) tells you where. [Sentiment](/results/sentiment) tells you how you are described. A brand can have high visibility and still have a problem: appearing late and with mixed framing. Read all four together on the [Metrics overview](/results/metrics-overview).