Frequently asked questions.

GEO (also called AEO or AI visibility) is the practice of measuring and improving how AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini present your brand. RecommendHQ is the AI Recommendation Management platform, a GEO platform focused on the outcome: it tracks whether models mention, cite or actively recommend you for buying-intent queries, then prescribes actions to close the gaps.

Yes. RecommendHQ is the AI Recommendation Management platform, a GEO and AEO platform that uses the industry's standard vocabulary and metrics. What sets it apart is the focus on the recommendation outcome: not just whether AI engines mention or cite you (visibility), but whether they actually recommend you, why they recommend competitors instead, and what to do about it.

They're near-synonyms for the same discipline. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the umbrella term we lead with; AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) emphasizes structuring content so answer engines can extract it; 'AI visibility' and 'AI search' name the measurement layer. You'll also see LLM SEO, AI SEO, ChatGPT SEO and LLMO, all names for the same work. We use GEO as the primary term and treat the rest as equivalents.

It's what RecommendHQ does: manage how AI recommends your brand. ARM is the platform layer over GEO, AEO and AI visibility. It's one place to measure whether the AI recommends you (not just mentions you), diagnose why it prefers rivals (the citation gap), act on the highest-leverage sources, and prove the movement on the next scan. The metrics that run it are the R-Score, Recommendation Rate and the ARI.

SEO measures your ranking in blue-link search results. RecommendHQ measures whether AI assistants recommend you in their generated answers. That's a separate signal classic SEO metrics do not capture, and most brands need both.

The R-Score is a normalized 0–100 measure of how likely an AI model is to recommend your brand for a category query. It blends four signals (Presence, Prominence, Sentiment and Citation) across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.

Recommendation Rate is the share of AI answers that actively recommend you (name you as the pick) rather than merely mentioning or citing you. It's our headline outcome metric, and it's the gap most visibility tools miss: a brand can appear in most answers for its category (high AI Share of Voice) yet be recommended in almost none of them (low Recommendation Rate). Where Share of Voice counts appearances, Recommendation Rate counts endorsements.

AI Share of Voice counts how often you appear in AI answers versus competitors: appearances, regardless of tone. The R-Score weighs sentiment and prominence in their own right, so a caveated mention can never score like an endorsement, and the companion Recommendation Rate reports the share of answers that actively recommend you. Appearance metrics tell you that you showed up; the R-Score tells you whether the AI is on your side.

Most AI-visibility platforms center on monitoring: mentions, citations and share-of-voice dashboards. RecommendHQ measures the recommendation outcome (Recommendation Rate and the R-Score), diagnoses the citation gaps behind a competitor's lead, and turns them into an ROI-ranked action plan whose impact the next scan proves. See our dated comparison pages for detailed breakdowns: vs Profound, vs Peec AI and vs Otterly.

RecommendHQ tracks four grounded AI surfaces: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. We call each one a 'surface': a distinct place an AI answers a buying question. Google AI Overviews (the AI summary in Google Search results) is counted separately from the Gemini app, because the two retrieve and rank sources differently even though both use Google models.

We track the four surfaces where buyers actually ask 'what's the best…' and the model answers from live, cited sources. Claude and Grok don't drive comparable grounded buying-intent volume yet. Microsoft Copilot is built on the same models we already measure on ChatGPT, so it's largely covered there rather than counted twice. We add surfaces as their grounded recommendation share grows.

They are the four tiers of the Visibility Spectrum, worst to best: Ghosted (not surfaced at all), Mentioned (named as one option among several), Cited (your own domain appears among the sources the AI draws on) and Recommended (the answer explicitly names you as the pick). Your tier comes from what the AI actually did, not from your score: 'Cited' requires a real citation of your domain and 'Recommended' requires an explicit endorsement. Scores typically fall in these ranges (Ghosted 0–29, Mentioned 30–54, Cited 55–79, Recommended 80–100), but the evidence sets the label, so a high number can't buy a tier the answer doesn't support.

The free scan is a single point-in-time snapshot. On paid plans your tracked brands are re-scanned every week by default, with daily tracking on the Agency and Command plans, so your R-Score and citation graph reflect recent model behavior. The public AI Recommendation Index (ARI) leaderboard is refreshed weekly.

Find where competitors are cited and you are not, then earn legitimate Entity Authority (digital PR, original research, genuine reviews and community participation) on the exact sources each model relies on. The Action Engine prioritizes these moves by impact.

No. The Action Engine only ever prescribes legitimate improvements: earning genuine citations on the sources AI already trusts, through digital PR, original research, real reviews and community participation. It hard-blocks anything resembling astroturfing, fake reviews or forum spam, so the moves we recommend build your authority rather than risk it. See the Guardrails section of our methodology page for how this is enforced.

Yes. The free scan checks a single domain on Gemini and returns your headline R-Score, with no credit card required. The blended R-Score across all four surfaces is part of the paid plans.

Gemini answers are grounded in live Google Search, the same index behind Google's AI answers, so the free snapshot anchors on the retrieval footprint most buyers already touch, fully grounded, with citations. Querying all four surfaces (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) has a real per-scan cost, so the full blended R-Score lives on the paid plans.

Not exactly. Your free R-Score is a single run on Gemini, scored on your presence, your prominence and how the answer frames you. A paid R-Score is blended across all four surfaces and smoothed over repeated runs using all four signals and surface-level weights, so the number will usually differ. It's a fuller, more stable picture of how AI recommends you, not just one engine's one-off view.

We derive a category buying-intent question from your domain server-side, one that never names your brand, so your presence can't be inflated by the question itself. On the free scan the question isn't editable. Choosing your own tracked prompts (20 to 100 per brand, depending on plan) is a paid-plan feature.

The free scan is a one-off snapshot on Gemini. Paid plans add the blended R-Score across all four surfaces, the full citation graph, Action Engine playbooks, history and alerts, and scheduled weekly re-scans (daily tracking on the Agency and Command plans), starting at $49/mo with a 14-day free trial.

Your headline R-Score is shown free with no account. The full breakdown (the sources the AI cited, your ROI-ranked citation-gap plan, and a shareable PDF) is delivered to your inbox, so we ask for an email to send it. We only email your report; free-scan leads are auto-deleted after 90 days and we never sell your data or send marketing without a separate opt-in.

Not always. Free results are cached for a short window, so an immediate re-scan usually returns the same snapshot. Past the cache, a single run can vary a little from run to run, because model answers do. Paid plans smooth that noise out by re-scanning on a schedule and averaging repeated runs, so the movement you see there is real signal.

Delivery can take a few minutes. Check your spam or promotions folder for mail from recommendhq.com; strict corporate filters sometimes hold PDF reports. If it still hasn't arrived, re-run the scan on the same domain with the same email, or reach us via the contact page and we'll resend it.

Yes. The free scan works on any public domain. That's exactly how agencies prep a pitch: scan the prospect, see who AI recommends instead of them, and open the conversation with the gap. Scans query the public AI surfaces about the domain; nothing touches the site itself, and the owner isn't notified.

The dashboard is launching soon. Joining the waitlist creates no account and costs nothing. It puts you first in line for the 14-day free trial the moment sign-in opens. You can already run the free scan on any domain right now.

Soon — we're finishing the dashboard now and haven't pinned a public date, because we'd rather ship it right than name a day and slip. Join the waitlist and you'll be first in line the moment sign-in opens, with the 14-day free trial (no credit card). Nothing is charged in the meantime, and you can run the free scan on any domain today.

The trial runs the full product, limited to one brand: you see every feature of the plan you picked, with trial-level usage caps, so you can evaluate everything before you pay. Your plan's full brand allowance and volumes unlock when you subscribe. No credit card is needed for the trial.

Nothing is charged automatically. The trial needs no credit card, and we'll email you before it ends. To keep going, add a payment method and your chosen plan begins; if you don't, your account simply pauses. We never charge a card you didn't enter.

Yes. Agencies are who we build for. Plans scale from one tracked brand to forty (Starter 1, Growth 3, Agency 10, Command 40), and the Agency plan adds white-label PDF reports, full dashboard white-label and API access so you can report on AI recommendation visibility across your whole client roster under your own brand. For pitching new prospects before you sign them, the Pitch Pack sells one-off audits without a subscription; see the agencies page.

Yes. You don't need to be an agency or a marketing team: the Starter plan tracks one brand with 20 prompts, the free scan needs no account, and every plan starts with a 14-day trial. If your buyers ask AI assistants what to choose, the same loop applies at any size. Measure whether you're recommended, close the citation gaps, and check the movement on the next scan.

The Pitch Pack is 10 one-off AI Recommendation Audits for $99. Each audit blends ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini into one R-Score per prospect, with a white-label-ready PDF and no subscription. It's built for the agency pitch: one audit covers one prospect domain, so you can show a prospect exactly where AI recommends their competitor before you've signed them. Track the clients you win on any paid plan. Pitch Packs go on sale soon; join the early-access list now.

It's the time-limited launch offer for agencies: the Agency plan at $299/mo, locked for 12 months (40% off the standard $499 Agency rate), and we build your first month of white-label client reports with you. Applying is not a checkout; nothing is charged until the dashboard opens and you choose to start. Full details are on the agencies page.

A brand is one tracked domain or workspace, usually a single company or product you're monitoring. Plans include a set number of brands (Starter 1, Growth 3, Agency 10, Command 40), and you can add more beyond your allowance at a flat per-brand rate: $39 on Growth, $29 on Agency and $19 on Command.

A prompt is a buying-intent question we run against the AI surfaces on your behalf, the kind of thing a real buyer asks, like 'best payment processing platform'. Each plan includes a set number of tracked prompts per brand (Starter 20, Growth 50, Agency 60, Command 100), and you choose the category queries that matter most to your buyers.

A locale is a market-and-language combination we run a prompt in, for example us-en for the United States in English. AI assistants tailor their answers to a buyer's region, so the same query can recommend different brands from one market to the next. Add locales when you sell into more than one region and those answers differ.

On Growth, Agency and Command you don't have to jump a whole tier for one more client: add extra brands at a flat per-brand rate ($39 on Growth, $29 on Agency, $19 on Command), so your bill grows smoothly as you win clients. Starter has no per-brand add-on; when you need a second brand, step up to Growth. When the math favors the next tier, we'll tell you.

Yes. Every paid plan can be billed monthly or annually. Paying annually saves roughly two months a year versus monthly billing. You can switch billing cadence at any time from your account.

You can upgrade at any time and we prorate the difference, so you only pay for what's left of the cycle. Downgrading lowers the number of brands your plan includes. If you're tracking more than the new tier allows, you can either keep the extras as billable per-brand overage ($39 on Growth, $29 on Agency, $19 on Command) or remove brands to fit. Either way, nothing disappears without your say-so.

You can cancel yourself at any time from your billing settings. No email or phone call required. Your access continues until the end of the period you've already paid for, and your scan history stays intact for as long as your subscription is active. After you cancel, we prune that history in line with our Privacy Policy. Change your mind later? You can reactivate and pick up where you left off.

The 14-day free trial (no credit card required) is your risk-free way to evaluate RecommendHQ before you pay anything. Once you're on a monthly plan you can cancel any time to stop all future billing. We don't offer pro-rata refunds for partial months, but if something has gone wrong with a charge, contact us and we'll make it right.

Buy a Pitch Pack when you want a handful of one-off, white-label audits to win pitches, with no subscription — one audit per prospect domain. Subscribe to a paid plan once you've won clients and need ongoing tracking, the full four-surface blend, history and dashboard white-label. Many agencies start with a Pitch Pack and subscribe for the clients they close. See the agencies page.

Each Pitch Pack audit blends ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini into one R-Score, with Google AI Overviews as diagnostic context. Google AI Overviews joins the scored blend on the subscription plans; the Pitch Pack is the fast, no-subscription audit you take into a pitch.

No. Your audits stay in your pack until you use them — there's no expiry date and no subscription ticking in the background. Redeem them across as many pitches as you like, whenever you need them.

No. We never use your domain, prompts, results or email to train or fine-tune AI models, and we don't share your data with model providers for training. Data is used only to run your scan and send your report. See our Privacy Policy for detail.

We store your email only to send your report and service updates, never marketing email unless you explicitly opt in. Every marketing email carries a one-click unsubscribe link, and you can ask us to delete your data at any time via our contact page; free-scan leads are auto-deleted after 90 days regardless.

We use Google Cloud (hosting, EU region), Stripe (payments), Amazon SES (transactional email, EU region) and Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise (abuse protection on our forms), plus the AI query surfaces and a search-results data provider for scan analysis. Only the domain and category query reach the AI surfaces, never your email or IP. Full detail is in our Privacy Policy.

Yes. Data handled by us is processed and stored in the EU. Some of our processors (Stripe for payments, OpenAI for scan analysis, Google reCAPTCHA for abuse protection) operate in the US under standard safeguards, and the full list of sub-processors is published in our Privacy Policy. If you need a Data Processing Agreement (DPA), contact us and we'll arrange one.