RadRank / glossary
The category, defined

What an answer-engine scoreboard is

Plain definitions of the two ideas RadRank is built on: AI Answer Share-of-Voice, and the answer-engine scoreboard for businesses. We publish these because the terms get confused with something else entirely, and a confused category is an invisible one.

The confusion we're clearing up

Search "AI answer scoreboard" or "AI leaderboard" and you'll mostly find tools that rank the AI models — LMSYS Chatbot Arena, the HuggingFace Open LLM Leaderboard, Artificial Analysis. Those score the models. RadRank scores your business: does AI name you when a customer asks? Same-sounding words, opposite thing.

01AI Answer Share-of-Voice (AI-SoV)

AI Answer Share-of-Voice (AI-SoV)

The percentage of category prompts whose AI-assistant answers name your business, relative to all businesses named in those answers, measured per engine and averaged across the engines that actually answered. In plain terms: when a buyer asks an AI for the best option in your category, how often are you the answer?

Not a benchmark score for a language model. Not a leaderboard ranking LLMs like LMSYS Chatbot Arena or the HuggingFace Open LLM Leaderboard.

02Answer-engine scoreboard for businesses

Answer-engine scoreboard for businesses

A tool that measures a business's AI Answer Share-of-Voice and returns an inspectable receipt — the exact prompt asked, which engines answered, the verbatim answer text, and the competitor names extracted from it. RadRank is one. It measures; it does not sell the fix it grades (see the Neutrality Pledge).

Not a model leaderboard. A model leaderboard ranks how good the AIs are; an answer-engine scoreboard ranks how visible your business is inside the answers those AIs give.

03Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

The work of making a business easy for AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews — to confirm, understand, and name when a buyer asks for the best option in a category. Also called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). AEO improves your odds of being named; nobody controls AI output, and no honest tool guarantees a placement.

A model leaderboard tells you which AI is smartest. An answer-engine scoreboard tells you whether that AI names your business. RadRank is the second kind.

Next: how the number is made — read the Methodology →  ·  or check your RadRank →