Gemini is not in our counted set
Our published protocol counts three surfaces: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity. Gemini is not one of them.
That is a deliberate scoping decision, not an oversight, and stating it plainly is the point of this page. A protocol that never names what it excludes is a claim rather than a protocol.
Why it is excluded
Deterministic, repeatable sampling under controlled conditions is what makes an X/12 figure mean anything. Where we cannot hold conditions steady enough for a repeat run to be comparable, a score would look like measurement while being closer to anecdote.
We would rather report three surfaces honestly than four surfaces where one number is doing decorative work.
What we do instead
We look at it. Where a client's presence in Gemini is visibly different from the counted surfaces, that shows up in the report as an observation with the evidence attached, described, dated, and not scored.
The underlying work is the same regardless. Entity clarity, citation surfaces and citable content are what move every one of these systems, and none of them are Gemini-specific tactics.
If this changes
The protocol is versioned and dated. If sampling conditions become stable enough to count Gemini properly, it goes into the counted set, the version increments, and the report says which version produced the number.
Read in order, or jump
Twelve chapters, in the order the work has to happen. The first four are the spine; the platform chapters at the end include two surfaces we deliberately do not score, and say why.
01 How AI search picks local businesses 02 Eligibility: can AI even see your site? 03 Robots.txt: block AI crawlers or allow them? 04 Measuring AI visibility honestly 05 Entity foundations for local businesses 06 Reviews as AI input 07 Citation surfaces: where AI engines look 08 Getting ChatGPT to recommend your business 09 Showing up in Perplexity 10 Showing up in Google AI Overviews 11 Showing up in Gemini 12 Copilot, and why we don't sample itSee where you actually stand
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