Answer engine
An answer engine is an AI system that responds to a question with a synthesized answer instead of a list of links — for example ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot. It may name brands in the answer and cite sources beneath it.
Answer engines ground on the open web you do not control and rewrite what they retrieve into one confident voice. Two facts fall out of every answer and matter for a brand: is the brand named in the prose, and is the brand’s own domain among the cited sources.
Because these are different systems retrieving and phrasing independently, the same brand can be a stronghold in one engine and absent in another. That is why measurement runs the same prompt set across all six engines, not just ChatGPT.
Start with the free audit
Send us one brand. We’ll run it through the engines and send back the answers, citations, and sources — so the first report your client sees is already backed by evidence.
Free audit: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, run by hand. Paid work covers all six engines.