aiVIP™ • AI Visibility Improvement Program
Frequently Asked Questions
Clear answers about the aiVIP Scanner, what it checks, how the V3.1.0 methodology scores a website, and what your results do — and do not — mean.
Most asked first
About your score and results
These are the questions most users are likely to ask immediately after running a scan.
1. What does my aiVIP score mean?
Your score is a diagnostic AI visibility readiness score. It shows how well your website currently meets the scanner’s defined technical, discoverability, machine-readable and business-context checks. It is not a guarantee that an AI system will cite, rank or recommend you.
2. How is the score calculated?
V3.1.0 uses an importance-weighted methodology. Checks that matter more to online visibility contribute more than minor supporting checks. Observable website evidence makes up most of the score, with a smaller contribution from your questionnaire answers.
3. What does “deterministic” mean?
It means the scanner follows predefined rules rather than asking an AI model to make a subjective judgement. The same evidence, under the same scoring rules, should produce the same result.
4. Why didn’t my website score 100?
A score below 100 means one or more checks were missing, incomplete, under review or could not be fully verified. The most important thing is not the missing points themselves, but which checks caused them.
5. What is a good aiVIP score?
The score is divided into readiness bands from Very Low through to Advanced. Higher scores mean more of the important foundations were detected, but even an Advanced score is not a promise of AI visibility.
6. Do my questionnaire answers affect the score?
Yes. In V3.1.0, your positive answers contribute a limited, clearly separated part of the final score. They support the assessment but do not override what the scanner actually found on your website.
Understanding the checks
What the scanner looks for
7. What does the scanner actually check?
It checks observable signals such as homepage availability, HTTPS, indexing controls, robots.txt, sitemap files, AI crawler access, titles, descriptions, headings, canonical URLs, language, structured data, business signals, mobile settings and selected accessibility indicators.
8. Are all checks worth the same number of points?
No. V3.1.0 is designed so that high-impact checks such as indexability and access carry more weight than lower-impact or experimental signals.
9. What does “Review” mean?
“Review” usually means the scanner found some evidence, but the condition is incomplete, ambiguous or worth checking manually. In V3.1.0, Review can receive partial credit rather than being treated exactly like Missing.
10. What is the confidence score?
Confidence shows how much of the important observable website evidence the scanner was able to assess reliably. It is separate from your readiness score.
11. Why does the scanner check llms.txt?
llms.txt is treated as a supporting or experimental signal rather than a major ranking factor. V3.1.0 deliberately gives it a low weighting compared with more established visibility foundations.
12. Why does AI crawler access matter?
If important crawlers are explicitly blocked from your site, they may be unable to retrieve content directly. The scanner therefore checks whether recognised AI/search crawlers appear to be allowed or blocked.
Using your results
What to do next
13. Will fixing the findings improve my score?
Usually, yes. If a finding changes from Missing or Review to Present, the next scan should reflect that improvement under the same methodology.
14. Can I scan my website again?
Yes. Rescanning is useful after making changes because the scanner is designed to provide a repeatable benchmark.
15. Which findings should I fix first?
Start with the highest-impact lost points and foundational issues — particularly access, indexability, discovery and machine-readable clarity — before spending time on minor supporting items.
16. Does a high score guarantee I will appear in ChatGPT, Google AI or other AI results?
No. The scanner measures detectable readiness signals. Actual AI citations and recommendations also depend on content quality, relevance, authority, corroboration, competition and the behaviour of each external AI/search system.
17. Is aiVIP the same as SEO?
No. There is overlap, but aiVIP focuses on how clearly a business and its content can be discovered, understood, attributed and referenced in an AI-first search environment.
18. Does the free scanner replace a manual AI visibility audit?
No. Automated checks are valuable, but they cannot fully judge topical authority, evidence quality, third-party corroboration, competitive visibility or whether your content answers the questions customers actually ask.
Methodology & interpretation
How the assessment should be understood
19. How are decimal scores rounded?
Under the V3.1.0 rule, a fractional result of .5 or less rounds down; only a value above .5 rounds up. For example, 64.50 becomes 64 and 64.51 becomes 65.
20. Why does the scoring methodology have a version number?
Versioning makes scores traceable. If the methodology changes, a historical result should still be identifiable by the exact rules that produced it.
21. Are my questionnaire answers independently verified?
No. They are treated as self-reported business context and kept separate from observed website evidence.
22. What does “Scan inconclusive” mean?
It means the scanner could not gather enough reliable observable evidence to publish a meaningful numerical score — for example, because the homepage could not be assessed or confidence was too low.
23. Can the scanner ever get something wrong?
Automated checks can occasionally miss unusual implementations or classify ambiguous evidence for review. That is why the report distinguishes detected evidence from items that may need manual confirmation.
24. Can I see how the scoring methodology works?
Yes. aiVIP is designed to explain the principles behind the score rather than present it as a mysterious AI judgement.
