How NarraLoom Scores AI Search Visibility — The Full Methodology

Key Takeaways

Transparency matters when you're showing a business owner a score and a dollar figure attached to their brand. Here's exactly how NarraLoom's AI Search Visibility Audit works — every step, every assumption, every limitation. No black boxes.

Why 20 questions

Every audit analyzes 20 buyer questions. Not 5, not 50. Five questions isn't enough to surface meaningful patterns. Fifty creates noise — the questions start overlapping and the report becomes unreadable. Twenty gives enough coverage to identify real gaps while keeping the report focused and actionable.

The questions aren't generic. They're generated for your specific business, market, and location. A plumber in Houston gets different questions than a dentist in Portland or a SaaS company in New York.

The questions are buyer questions — not informational queries. "What is a kitchen remodel" is informational. "How much does a kitchen remodel cost in Orange County" is a buyer question — it signals someone ready to make a decision.

How questions are generated

When you submit your URL and location, NarraLoom scrapes your website to understand your business identity — what you do, where you operate, what services or products you offer. It also identifies linked external domains like review sites and directories.

From that analysis, AI generates 20 buyer questions that real people in your market are likely asking before they make a purchase decision. Each question includes an estimated monthly search volume — an AI-generated approximation of how often that question gets searched.

How coverage is verified

Generating questions is the easy part. Verifying who answers them is where the audit earns its credibility. The verification runs a 5-step pipeline.

Step 1 — Related brand discovery. The system identifies domains related to your business beyond just your primary URL — subdomains, sister brands, and linked properties. This prevents double-counting when related brands answer questions your primary site doesn't.

Step 2 — Primary search verification. For each question, the system searches to find which domains have published content that answers it.

Step 3 — Competitor identification. For questions your site doesn't answer, the system identifies which competitors do — with the specific URL, a content snippet, and the competitor's domain name.

Step 4 — AI verification. An AI model reviews the search results to determine whether each question is strongly answered, partially answered, or unanswered by your domain.

Step 5 — Safety net filter. A final pass removes false attributions — preventing a directory listing from being counted as your own published content, for example.

The result: each of the 20 questions gets a verified status with evidence.

How the score works

Your visibility score is simple: how many of the 20 questions does your website answer?

0–1 out of 20 is a critical gap. 2–4 needs work. 5–7 is moderate. 8–11 is strong. 12 or more is elite coverage.

The average score for a local service business is 5 out of 20. Most businesses are invisible for the majority of the questions their buyers are asking.

How the revenue estimate works

The revenue figure is an estimate — not a prediction, not a guarantee. The formula: total monthly searches across unanswered questions × close rate × average transaction value × 12 months.

Monthly searches is the sum of estimated monthly search volume for each unanswered question. These are AI-estimated approximations, not exact search engine data.

Close rate and average transaction value default by business type — but you can edit both. The label everywhere is Estimated Annual Gap.

You supply the inputs. You can question the search volume estimates, but you can't argue with your own close rate and transaction value — those are your numbers.

For businesses classified as weak fit or public institutions, the revenue figure is entirely.

Business type classifications

Every audit is classified into one of six types: Local Service Provider, B2B SaaS, Multi-Location Brand, Product (Consumer), Product (B2B), and Authority / Nonprofit. Each type has category-specific revenue defaults reflecting typical close rates and transaction values for that business model.

Fit assessment

Not every business is a strong fit for content-driven growth. The audit assesses fit on three tiers: Strong, Moderate, and Weak. Guardrails prevent strong business types from being misclassified as weak fit. Public institutions are always routed to custom review.

What the audit doesn't do

Search volumes are estimates. The audit is a point-in-time snapshot — competitor content changes, and scores should be re-run periodically. Competitor evidence is search-verified, not exhaustive. Revenue is directional, not guaranteed.

Every limitation is disclosed in the report — in the methodology section, in the FAQ, and in tooltips on the revenue figure.

Run your own

The methodology is the same for every business. The questions, competitors, and scores are unique to yours.

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