Brand visibility in Claude web-search answers
AnswerRank runs your prompt set through the Anthropic Messages API with the server-side web search tool, then records the answer, the sources the tool returned, and how your brand was treated in it.
How this measurement is collected
Tracked using the Anthropic Messages API with the server-side web search tool. Citations come from the tool’s own search results.
- Surface we call
- Anthropic Messages API + web search tool
- Collection mode
- Official grounded API
- Collected from the provider’s own API with web grounding enabled. Citations are provider-attested.
- Label used in-product
- Claude web-search API
- The same label rides along with every metric collected this way, so a number can always be traced back to how it was obtained.
- One check is a single prompt × engine × market execution, sent to the Messages API with the server-side web search tool enabled.
- The model is a deployment setting rather than a fixed claim, and the exact model string is stored on every response we keep.
- Citations come from the search tool’s own results, so the source list is the provider’s rather than our reconstruction of it.
- The raw provider payload is retained with a SHA-256 digest, so a stored answer can be shown to be unmodified.
What AnswerRank reports for Claude
Every answer is normalised into the same structure across engines, so one prompt set can be compared across surfaces without blending collection methods.
- Whether the answer recommended, listed, merely mentioned, or omitted your brand.
- The competitor set that appears alongside you on the same question.
- Which of your own pages were cited, and which third-party sources were cited in your place.
- Sentiment of the surrounding context where your brand appears — positive, neutral or negative.
What this measurement does not support
The boundary is the point. A number is only defensible when the claim around it is narrower than the data behind it.
Reflects the web-search API surface. It is not a capture of a signed-in claude.ai conversation.
- Answers are non-deterministic. A single execution is a sample, not a ranking fact, so every figure is reported with its sample size and a confidence level.
- Search behaviour is decided by the provider’s tool, not by us. We report which sources came back, never why the tool chose them.
Only two execution outcomes enter a metric: a successful answer, and an answer where the engine responded and your brand genuinely was not there. Provider errors, timeouts, rate limits and unconfigured engines are excluded from both the numerator and the denominator, so a provider outage can never be displayed as a collapse in your visibility.
How a check becomes a metricThe other engines we track
Each engine is collected differently and labelled differently. Comparing them is useful; blending them without labels is not.
- OpenAIOpenAI web-grounded APITracked using OpenAI’s Responses API with the hosted web search tool enabled. Citations are the sources the API itself attributes.
- GeminiGemini + Google Search groundingTracked using the Gemini API with Google Search grounding. We store the grounding metadata, including the search queries Gemini issued.
- PerplexityPerplexity web-grounded APITracked using the Perplexity Sonar API, which is web-grounded by design and returns its search results alongside the answer.
- Google AI OverviewsObserved Google AI Overview SERP dataObserved through a licensed structured SERP provider that captures the AI Overview element for a given query, location and device.
See how Claude answers your category.
Run a visibility check on your site and read the result with its sample size, its collection method and its limits stated on the page.