How to choose an AI visibility tool
The GEO measurement market filled up in under two years. Here are the six criteria that actually make a difference in practice, and the three things that change when the brand being measured is Swiss.
These tools do not all measure the same thing
Two tools queried on the same day about the same brand can return opposite results. That is not a glitch: they ask different questions, query different models, and do not call the same thing a "mention". Before comparing prices, compare methods.
Six criteria that matter in practice
Engine coverage, and granularity
How many engines are queried, and above all: do you get a score per model or one aggregated score? A brand can be well cited by Perplexity and completely absent from Gemini. A single figure hides exactly the information that drives action.
Where the questions come from
A tool that measures on overly polite phrasing measures a fictional reality: real users type short, lowercase, sometimes with a typo. Ask how the prompts are produced, and whether they reflect your market rather than a template copied from one client to the next.
Detection of false statements
AIs sometimes invent an address, a founding date or a staff member who does not exist. Few tools compare answers against factual reference data supplied by the brand. Yet that is where the commercial risk is most tangible: false information circulates with nobody correcting it.
The sources cited
Knowing you are not cited does not tell you what to do. Knowing which domains the models rely on does: those are the sources to work on. A tool that does not surface sources leaves you with a finding and no lever.
Hosting and compliance
Your prompts and reports describe your positioning, your competitors and your clients. Where is that data stored, and under which law? For a Swiss company the question is not theoretical: the nFADP and the GDPR are not satisfied by undetermined hosting.
Billing model
Monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go: the difference is structural. A subscription makes sense if you continuously measure a broad portfolio. Pay-as-you-go avoids paying during the months you do not measure, and keeps the cost readable line by line.
Observed demand or assumed demand
The second criterion deserves a clarification. Most tools, Periscop included, infer the questions to measure from what they know about a market. That is fast and often right, but it remains a hypothesis. Another approach starts from demand actually observed: the autocompletions engines really serve, the queries reported by Search Console, the questions clients ask on the phone.
That is what Sezam does, published like Periscop by Ergopix. The two tools remain technically independent: a file exported from Sezam is imported into a Periscop monitor, where observed prompts are kept distinct from inferred ones. You can then compare what each origin actually reveals.
Discover Sezam →Measuring from Switzerland changes three things
The market measured is local
The question "web agency" does not draw the same answers whether it is asked from Paris or from Lausanne. A tool that does not anchor its measurements geographically shows you a market that is not yours.
Multilingualism is the norm
A Swiss brand is often cited in French, German and English, with different results in each language. Measuring in a single language means ignoring part of your market.
The data stays sensitive
Swiss hosting and nFADP compliance are not decorative arguments for an accounting firm, a practice or an industrial SME: they are often contractual prerequisites.
When Periscop is not the right choice
A decision guide that never concludes "choose something else" is not a decision guide.
- You are looking for classic keyword SEO: Periscop does not replace traditional search tools, it measures something else.
- You want a free dashboard just to take a look: Periscop actually queries the models, which consumes paid API calls.
- You need real-time social media monitoring: that is the job of social listening tools, not ours.
- You do not yet have a website or an online presence: start there, there is nothing to measure before that.
See what the AIs say about a brand
A sample report is available without signing up.