# Pondral

> Pondral is an AI Visibility platform. It measures how AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok) cite and recommend brands when buyers ask real questions, scores every response on a published 5-factor rubric (Presence, Prominence, Context, Citation Link, Competitive Presence), and shows the gaps worth closing.

Pondral publishes its scoring methodology, factor weights, and a versioned changelog. Scores are built from raw AI-engine responses, not estimates.

## Product

- [Pondral](https://pondral.com): What Pondral measures, who it is for, and the free check.
- [Free AI visibility check](https://pondral.com/demo): Enter a domain, get a scored audit of how AI engines see the brand. No signup.
- [Pricing](https://pondral.com/pricing): Free, SMB, Growth, and Agency plans. Paid plans include a 14-day free trial (card required at signup; converts to a paid subscription at trial end unless cancelled). The Free tier needs no card.
- [Features](https://pondral.com/features): What the platform does: audits, monitoring, gaps, briefs, reporting.

## Methodology

- [What is AI Visibility?](https://pondral.com/what-is-ai-visibility): Plain definition of the category, how it differs from SEO, and how it is measured.
- [Scoring methodology](https://pondral.com/methodology): The public 5-factor rubric and how the AI Visibility Score is computed.
- [Methodology changelog](https://pondral.com/methodology/changelog): Versioned history of every scoring change.
- [Methodology status](https://pondral.com/methodology/status): Current instrument state: engine roster, panel versions, open work.
- [AI Visibility vs SEO](https://pondral.com/ai-visibility-vs-seo): What carries over from SEO, what does not, and which signals differ.

## Research

- [AI Visibility Index 2026](https://pondral.com/index-2026): A ranked benchmark of brands' AI visibility, with the full methodology and raw-data disclosure.

## Solutions

- [For SaaS & B2B](https://pondral.com/saas), [For Agencies](https://pondral.com/agencies), [For Law Firms](https://pondral.com/lawyers).

## Guides

- [Guides library](https://pondral.com/guides): In-depth playbooks for closing AI visibility gaps. Every guide is listed below.
- [The AEO playbook](https://pondral.com/guides/aeo-playbook): A 30-day plan for moving a B-grade brand to A territory.
- [Schema markup that AI models actually read](https://pondral.com/guides/schema-markup-that-works): Which schema.org types matter, which are ignored, and how to validate.
- [Building citation-worthy content](https://pondral.com/guides/citation-worthy-content): Why models cite some pages and not others.
- [Entity consistency across the web](https://pondral.com/guides/entity-consistency): Knowledge graph alignment for ambiguous brand names.
- [AI Visibility for agencies](https://pondral.com/guides/aeo-for-agencies): Pitching, scoping, and reporting AEO retainers.
- [Prompt-resilient positioning](https://pondral.com/guides/prompt-resilient-positioning): Writing pages that survive paraphrasing.

## Articles

- [Blog](https://pondral.com/blog): Guides and research on AI visibility and answer-engine optimization.
- [Brand audit profiles](https://pondral.com/blog/audits): Published AI Visibility audits of real brands, scored on the public rubric.
- [RSS feed](https://pondral.com/blog/feed.xml): Every post, machine-readable.
- [Our own audit prompt was role-playing a finance analyst.](https://pondral.com/blog/audit-prompt-finance-bias): Every scored engine call carried a finance-analyst persona left over from an earlier product. A 324-call paired test measured the cost: +1.04 points overall, +14.31 on open-ended advisory questions across 9 paired comparisons, -1.44 on the finance controls. PROXY throughout, measured under methodology v2.0.3.
- [AI Visibility Audit #002: We audited an AEO agency's own AI visibility.](https://pondral.com/blog/audits/aeo-agency-ai-visibility): An agency that sells Answer Engine Optimization scores 95.3 when asked about by name and 15.6 on the discovery questions its buyers actually type. Five engines. Correction, August 2026: the run counts originally published here are unverified. We do not name teardown subjects.
- [We Audited Pondral with Pondral. Here's What We Found.](https://pondral.com/blog/methodology-integrity): Two formulas existed. Three production bugs surfaced. Our generic visibility was zero. The full audit trail of our methodology reconciliation.
- [Why a Strong Brand Won't Get You Named by AI Assistants](https://pondral.com/blog/brand-strength-vs-ai-visibility): Great branding and SEO get you considered by AI assistants, not named. What actually drives whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini cite you.
- [How AI Assistants Actually Choose Which Brands to Name](https://pondral.com/blog/how-ai-assistants-choose-brands): Retrieval vs generation, why citations matter, and competitive share. The mechanics behind AI-assistant recommendations.
- [AI Visibility Audit #001: The #1 spa franchise scores 38.](https://pondral.com/blog/audits/spa-franchise-ai-visibility): A national #1 spa franchise scores 38/100. Brand strength gets you into the candidate set. Page quality gets you cited.
- [AI Visibility for B2B: Why Your Brand Isn't in AI Answers](https://pondral.com/blog/ai-visibility-for-b2b): B2B buyers research vendors with ChatGPT and Perplexity before they ever call sales. Most B2B brands don't appear. Here are five tactics that fix it.
- [How AI Engines Decide Which Brands to Cite](https://pondral.com/blog/how-ai-engines-cite-brands): Training data vs. live search, entity signals, and authority hierarchy: how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok decide which brands appear.
- [How We Score AI Visibility: Pondral's AEO Methodology Explained](https://pondral.com/blog/aeo-methodology-explained): Five measurable signals across five engines. How Pondral scores presence, prominence, context, citation links, and competitive presence, and why transparency beats a black box.
- [The five-factor rubric, explained slowly.](https://pondral.com/blog/rubric-explained): Five factors, each weighted, each public. Why they're weighted the way they are, and what edge cases we've learned to handle.
- [The Complete Guide to AI Visibility in 2026](https://pondral.com/blog/ai-visibility-guide): How AI engines decide which brands to cite, how to measure your presence, and what to do about the gaps.
- [10 Brands That Dominate AI Answers](https://pondral.com/blog/brands-that-dominate-ai-search): Ten brands that appear consistently across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok. What they have in common.
- [Why your About page is now SEO infrastructure.](https://pondral.com/blog/about-page-seo): Your About page is where AI engines learn who you are and what category you belong in. Here's what to put on it.
- [ChatGPT vs Perplexity vs Gemini](https://pondral.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-perplexity-vs-gemini): Each engine has different citation habits. Here's what that means for your brand's visibility strategy.
- [How We Built Pondral's Scoring Rubric](https://pondral.com/blog/how-pondral-scoring-works): The design decisions behind the five-factor rubric: what we built, what we changed, and what we got wrong.
- [Schema markup for the conversational web.](https://pondral.com/blog/schema-markup): Structured data is how you describe yourself to AI before it gets a question about you. Here's the schema that matters.
- [Schema Markup for AI: how structured data gets your brand cited](https://pondral.com/blog/schema-markup-for-ai): Structured data lets AI engines parse your brand before they answer a question about it. The playbook, with examples.
- [AI Visibility for E-Commerce](https://pondral.com/blog/ai-visibility-ecommerce): Product-intent queries route through AI now. Here's how e-commerce brands get cited instead of skipped.
- [What ChatGPT thinks "best CRM" means in 2026.](https://pondral.com/blog/best-crm-2026): Correction: the ninety-day study described in this post was never run. Our first measurement data of any kind dates from 2 May 2026, seven weeks after this was published.
- [5 Quick Wins to Improve Your AI Visibility This Week](https://pondral.com/blog/ai-visibility-quick-wins): Five changes you can make this week, ranked by effort and impact.
- [What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?](https://pondral.com/blog/what-is-aeo): AEO is the practice of optimizing for answers, not rankings. Here's the definition that actually holds up.
- [The death of brand-keyword search.](https://pondral.com/blog/death-of-keyword): People still look for brands. They just don't start with Google. Here's what that shift means for your visibility strategy.
- [AEO vs. SEO: what changes and what stays the same](https://pondral.com/blog/aeo-vs-seo): Content quality still matters. The signals AI engines weight have shifted. Here's exactly what changed and what didn't.
- [AEO Glossary: 25+ AI Visibility Terms Defined](https://pondral.com/blog/aeo-glossary): A working vocabulary: AI visibility, brand SOV, citation link, confidence interval, and 20-plus more terms defined.
- [Inter-rater reliability for AI answers.](https://pondral.com/blog/inter-rater-reliability): Why single-run scores have limits, what inter-rater reliability tools like Cohen's kappa offer, and where Pondral's methodology stands today vs. on the roadmap.

## Comparisons

- [Comparisons](https://pondral.com/compare): How Pondral differs from Semrush AI Visibility, Profound, Otterly, Peec, BrightEdge, Brand24, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Trakkr, AthenaHQ, Rankscale, and HubSpot AI Search Grader.
- [Comparison methodology](https://pondral.com/compare/methodology): How the comparison pages are researched: sourcing, dating, what an absence of published information means, and the standing rules to hedge and to concede.
- [Pondral vs Semrush AI Visibility](https://pondral.com/compare/semrush)
- [Pondral vs Profound](https://pondral.com/compare/profound)
- [Pondral vs Otterly](https://pondral.com/compare/otterly)
- [Pondral vs Peec](https://pondral.com/compare/peec)
- [Pondral vs BrightEdge](https://pondral.com/compare/brightedge)
- [Pondral vs Brand24](https://pondral.com/compare/brand24)
- [Pondral vs Scrunch](https://pondral.com/compare/scrunch)
- [Pondral vs Ahrefs Brand Radar](https://pondral.com/compare/ahrefs-brand-radar)
- [Pondral vs Trakkr](https://pondral.com/compare/trakkr)
- [Pondral vs AthenaHQ](https://pondral.com/compare/athenahq)
- [Pondral vs Rankscale](https://pondral.com/compare/rankscale)
- [Pondral vs HubSpot AI Search Grader](https://pondral.com/compare/hubspot)

## Help & docs

- [Help center](https://pondral.com/help): Customer how-to documentation for using the product.
- [API reference](https://pondral.com/docs/api): Endpoints, auth, and response shapes.
- [API overview](https://pondral.com/api): What the public API is for and which plans include it.
- [Getting started with Pondral](https://pondral.com/help/getting-started): Add your first brand, set the questions you want to track, and run your first audit, in about five minutes.
- [Running an audit](https://pondral.com/help/running-an-audit): On-demand runs, automatic weekly monitoring, and which engines run on your plan.
- [Reading your AI Visibility Score](https://pondral.com/help/reading-your-score): How the per-question score works, the 5-factor rubric, grades, and why you should read trends not single runs.
- [Managing brands and prompts](https://pondral.com/help/managing-brands-and-prompts): Switch brands, add or remove brands, and manage the questions you track.
- [Plans, engines, and billing](https://pondral.com/help/plans-engines-and-billing): What each plan includes, how engine coverage and audit limits work, and how to change plans.
- [Frequently asked questions](https://pondral.com/help/faq): Quick answers to the most common questions.

## Company

- [About](https://pondral.com/about): Company background.
- [Contact](https://pondral.com/contact): hello@pondral.com
- [Product changelog](https://pondral.com/changelog): What shipped, by date.
- [Careers](https://pondral.com/careers): Open roles, if any.
- [Press](https://pondral.com/press): Company facts and media contact.

## Trust & legal

- [Trust](https://pondral.com/trust): Current security, privacy and compliance posture, stated factually.
- [System status](https://pondral.com/status): Live platform and AI-engine health. No uptime SLA is claimed.
- [Security](https://pondral.com/security): Controls actually in place today.
- [Compliance](https://pondral.com/compliance): Which frameworks Pondral is built to support, and which it does not hold.
- [Compliance overview](https://pondral.com/compliance/trust): Summary of the compliance posture.
- [Penetration testing](https://pondral.com/compliance/pentest): Current penetration-test status.
- [Data Processing Agreement](https://pondral.com/dpa): The published DPA.
- [Sub-processors](https://pondral.com/sub-processors): The canonical sub-processor list.
- [Privacy policy](https://pondral.com/privacy): What is collected and why.
- [Terms of service](https://pondral.com/terms): The governing terms.
- [Training-data notice](https://pondral.com/legal/privacy/training-data): Whether customer data is used to train models, and where data is stored.