How ReachKit works

What we measure

We run 12 searches in Google that buyers in your market make, and record who is on the first page of each.

Every Monday we ask Google AI Mode and ChatGPT the 25 questions a buyer in your market would ask. We ask each one 2 times, because AI answers change from one run to the next.

An answer can name you without linking to you. We count being named and being linked separately.

What this does not tell you

• Answers vary from run to run, so a week's figure is a sample.
• Perplexity is not measured.
• Each site is measured in one country and one language.

How we find your market and rivals

We read your site to learn what you sell and who buys it. From that we choose up to 10 search terms for your market and look up how often each one is searched.

Rivals come from what we saw in those results. We track up to 5. The first 2 places go to the companies that hold the most first-page results on your searches. The others are brands people search for at least 100 times a month.

Some sites block automated readers. For those we read the market from how the site appears in Google: the searches it ranks for, and the title and snippet shown for each page.

How a page is chosen

Each topic is weighed on four things: how many people search for it, how hard it is to rank for at your site's size, whether a rival answers it today, and whether you already cover it.

A topic you already cover becomes an update to that page.

The pace is a page every day, new or updated. At most 4 in a week are new pages. The other days update pages that are already live.

What a page is written from

Facts about you come from your own site, word for word. Each one links to the page it came from.

Facts about the market come from the top 3 results for the search and from the pages of up to 4 rivals.

A page cites at most 2 studies, and no statistic older than 3 years.

A new page has to add at least 3 things the top results do not say. At least 1 of them is a fact about your business.

The checks

Before a page goes live it is read against 20 checks. Code runs 19 of them, with no AI involved.

• Every fact and every figure matches a source.3 checks
• No invented people, reviews, tests or origins.4 checks
• Comparisons are fair, and the page claims nothing you told us to leave out.3 checks
• No hidden text, placeholder or leftover example.4 checks
• The page answers the question first, and its title and headings hold up.5 checks
• The page does not repeat one you already have.1 check

The remaining check is a judgement an AI model makes: whether the page says you serve a case your site does not support.

A page that fails gets one rewrite. If it fails again it is held, and nothing is published.

Links

Each page carries 3 to 6 links into your own site, chosen by what the page is about, and links to up to 5 earlier pages on the same subject.

• The words of a link say what you find at the other end.
• When a page goes out, every link on it is asked once. A link to a page of yours that is gone is taken out, and a source that is gone takes its claim with it.
• When a new page goes live, up to 2 of your earlier pages are updated with one sentence that links to it.

Your control

A page goes live on its own 24 hours after it is written. You can set that window anywhere from 1 to 7 days.

Until then you can edit the page or stop it. You do not have to do either.

Every Monday

On Monday we run the 12 searches again and ask the 25 questions again.

Then we send one email. It opens with your numbers and how they changed since the Monday before. Below that are the pages that moved and what is being written this week.

What we never do

• Invent people, reviews, tests or numbers.
• Hide text on a page.
• Promise a ranking.

Live examples

A real report:podia.com

A real published page:How to rank in AI Overview for your business

Every free report is listed in the open.