QUEST is Search Atlas's AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) product — it tracks how often your brand is mentioned, cited, and ranked by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Grok. This article answers the most common questions.

## What does AI Visibility track?

For each analysis run, AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) measures:

- **Mentions** — how many times your brand appears in AI-generated responses
- **Rank** — your position within each response (1st mention, 2nd, 3rd…)
- **Visibility Score** — position-weighted score (earlier mention = higher score)
- **Share of Voice** — your brand's mentions as a % of all brands mentioned
- **Citations** — whether AI platforms link to your domain (URL-level)
- **Sentiment** — positive, neutral, or negative tone of your mentions

Platforms tracked: OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Grok.

## How do I set up AI Visibility tracking for my domain?

1. 1. Go to **AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility)** in the left sidebar and click **New Project**
2. 2. Enter your domain name
3. 3. Select which AI platforms to track
4. 4. Set your analysis frequency (daily, every 3 days, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly)
5. 5. Add competitor domains to benchmark against
6. 6. Optionally set a country for location-specific analysis
7. 7. Save — the first analysis snapshot starts immediately

✅ The first snapshot begins automatically after saving your project settings.

## What is an analysis snapshot?

A snapshot is a point-in-time record of your brand's AI visibility. Each time AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) runs (based on your cadence), it creates a new snapshot by sending a set of prompts to each AI platform, collecting responses, and calculating your visibility metrics. Snapshots accumulate over time to give you a trend line.

## Why does my dashboard show 0 usage for tracked projects?

If a project shows 0 usage, the most common causes are: (1) the project was just created and the first snapshot hasn't completed yet — wait 5–10 minutes; (2) no AI platforms were selected in project settings; or (3) a snapshot failed silently. Open the project's analysis history and check the snapshot status. ⚠️ If all snapshots show "failed," contact support with your project ID.

## My AI Visibility quota shows more projects used than I actually have. What's wrong?

OTTO can auto-create AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) projects for your connected domains (marked `is_otto_project = True`). These auto-created projects count against your quota alongside the projects you create manually. To free up quota, review your project list and delete any auto-created OTTO projects you don't need to track. If you believe the count is incorrect, contact support.

## What does it mean when a snapshot is in "deferred" status?

Deferred states happen when a specific AI platform was temporarily unavailable when the snapshot tried to run:

- `deferred_provider_down` — An AI platform (e.g., OpenAI via OpenRouter) was down; the snapshot will retry automatically
- `skipped_no_platforms` — No platforms were selected in the project — go to project settings and add at least one
- `skipped_no_queries` — The topic generation stage produced no active prompts — try rerunning the analysis

## The Prompt Simulator is spinning and never returning a result. What do I do?

Prompt Simulator (which lets you test a specific prompt against live AI platforms) can timeout at 90 seconds during high-queue periods. This is a backend queue congestion issue, not a configuration problem. ⚠️ Wait 2–5 minutes and retry. If timeouts are consistent across multiple attempts over an hour, contact support.

## My AI Visibility top-up purchase failed. What should I do?

If a credit top-up fails silently (no error shown, credits not added), try: (1) refreshing the billing page and attempting the purchase again, (2) checking that your payment method on file is current, (3) contacting support — include the date and time of the attempted purchase so they can check for a payment processing failure on the backend.

## Why does Prompt Simulation fail with a Grok error?

Prompt Simulation for Grok can fail due to Grok's API restrictions and rate limits at the provider level. If you see a "Grok didn't allow it" message, this means Grok's API rejected the request — retry once, and if it continues failing, consider removing Grok from that specific project's platform list while the issue is investigated.

## How does the competitor benchmark work?

When you add competitor domains to your AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) project, each analysis snapshot collects their visibility metrics alongside yours using the same set of prompts. Your dashboard then shows a side-by-side comparison of mentions, rank, and share of voice. ✅ You can add or remove competitors in project settings at any time without losing your historical data.

## What is the difference between Visibility Score and Share of Voice?

**Visibility Score** measures how early your brand appears in AI responses — an earlier mention scores higher. It reflects position quality.

**Share of Voice** measures how often your brand appears relative to all brands mentioned — it reflects mention frequency and volume relative to competitors.

💡 Both matter: high Share of Voice with low Visibility Score means you're mentioned frequently but late in responses; high Visibility Score with low Share of Voice means you rank early when mentioned but aren't mentioned as often as competitors.

## How do I improve my AI Visibility score?

AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) correlates with your overall authority signals: strong backlink profile (Link Lab), consistent brand mentions across the web (press releases via Signal Genesys), high-quality authored content (Content Genius), and citation-worthy data or statistics on your site. AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) tracks your progress — the other Search Atlas tools are the instruments for improving it.

## My AI Visibility quota shows more projects used than I actually have. What's happening?

This is a display sync issue where the quota counter doesn't immediately reflect project deletions or plan changes. Try refreshing the QUEST dashboard — in most cases the correct count loads on reload. ⚠️ If the discrepancy persists after several hours, contact support with your account email. They can verify the actual project count against your plan and manually sync the quota display.

## My Prompt Simulation is failing with a Grok error. What should I do?

Grok (xAI) has intermittent availability on the OpenRouter routing layer that QUEST uses to query AI platforms. If Prompt Simulation fails specifically with a Grok error: (1) wait 5–10 minutes and retry, (2) run your simulation **excluding Grok** — the other platforms (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) should still work, (3) if Grok consistently fails over more than an hour, contact support so they can check the OpenRouter/Grok provider status. ⚠️ A Grok-specific failure does not affect your other AI Visibility (formerly LLM Visibility) data.