Retrieved, Cited, Recommended — three layers, not one score

Most early AI-visibility tools ship one percentage. The problem is not the percentage — it is that three different failures look the same when you collapse them. Your pages may never enter retrieval. Or they enter and never get cited. Or they get cited and you still never appear as a recommendation.

Retrieved

Can the engine find your owned pages when someone asks a real category question? If not, nothing downstream matters. This is where crawl access, clear structure, and schema often decide the outcome.

Cited

Does the answer use your content as evidence? Citation is how engines borrow your facts — and how readers get a path back to you. Owned-territory share is the competitive reading of this layer.

Recommended

Does the answer name you as an option worth choosing? This is the shortlist. Being mentioned in a footnote is not the same as being listed among the agencies, clinics or tools the AI suggests.

Act on the layer that is blocked

Diagnosis without delivery is a report that gathers dust. Besaid measures each layer, then does the work that moves the blocked one — and proves the change with verbatim before-and-after answers.