AI visibility for B2B software: how to get named

The questions software buyers ask AI assistants, the measures that show whether you are on the shortlist, and a first month of work to be named more often.

Written by the BotSay team. Published 1 Oct 2026.

A software buyer can now ask an assistant which tools to look at and get back a short answer with a few names in it. Being on that list, and near the top, puts you on the shortlist before the buyer reaches your site.

Where software buyers meet AI answers

A buyer can put any question to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews or Google AI Mode and get back an answer that names products and links to pages. Start by finding out which names come back for the questions your buyers ask, and where your own name sits among them.

Three kinds of question to track

Category questions

The buyer knows the job, but not yet the vendors.

• "What is the best expense management software for a company of 200 people?"
• "Which field service scheduling tools suit a small heating and cooling firm?"
• "Recommend a contract management platform for an in-house legal team."

These show whether the engines place you in the category at all. Give them the largest share of your questions.

Comparison questions

The buyer has names and wants to choose between them.

• "What are the alternatives to [a rival] for expense management?"
• "How does [your product] compare with [a rival] for a mid-sized finance team?"
• "[Your product] or [a rival]: which is quicker to roll out?"

Track the ones that name a rival and leave you out: they show whether the engines offer you in its place. A question that names you nearly always gets you named, so read those answers for how you are described.

Problem questions

The buyer describes a problem and has no product in mind yet.

• "How do we shorten our month-end close?"
• "Our technicians keep missing appointments. What should we change?"
• "How can a small legal team keep track of contract renewals?"

The engines answer with advice and mention tools along the way. Named here, you are recommended before the buyer has settled on a category.

Write questions the way a buyer would say them, with their role, company size and the tools they use. Give each topic you want to win at least ten. Our guide How many questions do you need to track AI visibility? shows how the number you track sets how precise your figures are.

Start with how often and how early you are named

Five measures describe where you stand in AI answers: Mention rate, Share of voice, Average rank, Your pages cited and Sentiment. For a place on the shortlist, start with two.

Mention rate is the share of answers that name you. Read it by topic to see which parts of your category the engines already connect with you, and which you still have to win.

Average rank is how early you are named, when you are named. Lower is better.

Share of voice sets your mentions beside your rivals'. Sentiment is how favourably you are described; watch it on comparison questions. Your pages cited has its own section below.

Before you report a move in any of these, ask how many answers the figure rests on. An engine can answer the same question a little differently from day to day, so a figure built on a few answers can move on its own. BotSay shows Mention rate with its likely range and the number of answers behind it, and shows a change in Mention rate as real only once it clears both weeks' uncertainty. When this week's range sits clear of last week's, the change is real; BotSay runs the exact test, which also finds real changes whose ranges overlap a little. Our guide Is my AI visibility score real? shows how to check any number, whoever produced it.

Get your pages into the cited sources

Engines that search the web lean on pages to write their answers, and they link to many of those pages. Your pages cited is the share of those links that point at your sites, and a cited page means the engine wrote at least part of its answer from what you published.

In software, the cited pages tend to be comparison pages, docs and help centres, review sites, and articles from publishers and communities.

• Publish clear comparison pages for the comparison questions you track: "[your product] vs [a rival]", and "alternatives to [a rival]". State facts plainly and keep them current.
• Keep your docs public and easy to read. Integrations, limits, security and pricing answer the questions buyers ask late in a choice.
• Be present where the engines already look. If a review site or community is cited again and again in your category, be on it, and described well.

When a rival's page is cited for a question and yours is not, put that page near the top of your writing plan. For every answer, BotSay shows the searches the engine ran to write it, so you can see which wording led it to a rival's page.

A first month

Week one: pick your questions and your rivals. Take at least ten questions per topic, across the three kinds. For rivals, start with the brands your sales team meets in deals, and add any the engines name that you did not expect.

Weeks two to four: read weekly. Keep the questions and engines the same each week, so readings compare cleanly. Look at Mention rate and Average rank by topic first. Four topics of ten questions on six engines is 240 answers to read and count every week. A month by hand teaches you what the answers look like. After that it is a job for a tool, and we built BotSay to do it.

BotSay asks your questions on all six engines every week, through each provider's official developer access or a licensed search-data provider, and works out the five measures for you, with your rivals beside you. Your reading arrives by email every Wednesday.

Throughout: work the list. Start with the topic where rivals are named and you are not, write or fix the page that answers it, and note the day you publish. Then check the cited sources for places you could be mentioned. When there are more gaps than hours, rank each piece of work by how many of your questions it could win, and start at the top. That ranking is what our action list gives you each week.