Gumshoe projects and audits are point-in-time diagnostics, not ongoing live tracking.
Why is a Visibility Audit a diagnostic test?
Visibility Audits (formerly known as reports) are not based on historical traffic or past user searches, because AI models don't share that data. Unlike traditional SEO tools, we don't have access to what users have asked AI tools in the past, and neither does anyone else.
Instead, a Visibility Audit is a real-time diagnostic. Each audit is a point-in-time test that shows how AI models respond right now to specific persona-driven prompts.
These prompts simulate the types of questions users might ask. The audit then shows:
- Which brands each model mentions
- How often they are mentioned
- What citations (formerly sources) the model referenced
- What context or reasoning it provides
So what does that mean?
You're not seeing data from the past week, month, or year.
- AI models don't share usage logs, so we can't report on what real users asked or clicked.
You are seeing how your brand ranks in AI responses right now.
- Gumshoe tests specific questions across personas and topics to simulate realistic user behavior.
Mentions reflect current results from that run.
- These are not tied to a specific historical time window, such as “last 30 days.” They show how many times your brand was mentioned during that particular run.
Why does this work?
AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are trained on a combination of public web content and inferred user behavior, but they don't expose that training data or activity. They do not share their user traffic or stats.
Gumshoe provides a method for testing how models behave based on their training, in a consistent and repeatable manner.