METHODOLOGY · v1.0 · MAY 2026

The KLXIO Visibility Score™

A transparent, repeatable system for measuring whether a cybersecurity brand shows up when a CISO asks an AI assistant for recommendations. The score you can defend in a board meeting.

PROMPTS

100

AI ENGINES

PILLARS

REFRESH

MONTHLY

// THE 4 PILLARS

What we measure, and why each matters

Citation Share

35%

How often the brand is named, linked, or recommended in AI answers to 100 buyer-intent prompts — across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode, and Gemini. This is the headline number a CMO cares about.

›Direct link citation = 1.0
›Brand mention without link = 0.5
›Mentioned in comparison table = 0.7
›Positioned as primary recommendation = 1.5× multiplier

Source Authority

25%

The quality of the pages AI engines cite when they mention the brand. Owned content, G2 reviews, Reddit threads, and analyst reports each carry different weight — and most vendors over-invest in the wrong ones.

›Owned thought leadership: 1.0
›Independent review sites (G2, Gartner Peer): 1.2
›Analyst & press (Forrester, Dark Reading, CSO): 1.4
›Reddit & community threads: 1.1 (rising fast in 2026)

Answer Position

20%

Where the brand appears inside the AI's answer. Being mentioned first in a 5-vendor shortlist is worth ~3x being mentioned last. Most visibility tools ignore this entirely.

›Primary recommendation: 1.5×
›Top-3 shortlist: 1.0×
›Top-10 shortlist: 0.6×
›Mentioned but not shortlisted: 0.3×

Sentiment & Framing

20%

How the AI describes the brand. Being cited as 'the leader' is different from being cited as 'an older alternative.' Sentiment is scored via Claude 4 against a 12-point rubric we publish in full.

›Positive / leadership framing: +1.0
›Neutral / factual: 0
›Cautious / qualified ('expensive', 'legacy'): −0.5
›Negative / not recommended: −1.0

// THE 100 PROMPTS

Built from how CISOs actually research

Not made-up keyword lists. The 100 prompts are derived from interviews with 40+ CISOs and VP Security leaders, mapped to the 4 stages of a real buying journey:

STAGE 1 — Category education20 prompts

"What is CNAPP and how is it different from CSPM?"

STAGE 2 — Shortlist building35 prompts

"Best EDR for a 2,000-person company with cloud + on-prem workloads"

STAGE 3 — Head-to-head comparison30 prompts

"CrowdStrike vs SentinelOne vs Microsoft Defender for mid-market"

STAGE 4 — Buying validation15 prompts

"Has Wiz had any major security incidents or outages in 2025?"

The full prompt list is published in every monthly Index. No black box.

// THE PROCESS

How a score gets calculated

01On the 1st of each month, all 100 prompts are run on all 5 engines in fresh sessions, no memory, US locale.

02Every brand mention in every answer is captured with its surrounding context (the sentence + the 2 sentences around it).

03A scoring pipeline applies the 4 pillars: Citation Share, Source Authority, Answer Position, Sentiment.

04Per-engine sub-scores are normalized to 0–100, then weighted by 2026 B2B research traffic share.

05Final KLXIO Visibility Score™ is published in the public Cyber AI Visibility Index on the 5th of each month.

// WHY IT MATTERS

What the score actually predicts

Inbound demo requests from AI-originated traffic (we've seen +18% to +112% inside 90 days of moving a score by 20 points).

Inclusion in CISO shortlists when buyers use AI to compare 3–5 vendors before talking to sales.

Defensive moat against challengers who out-publish you in AI-indexed sources.

A board-presentable metric for the marketing org — the first one that ties content investment to AI search outcomes.

Want your own KLXIO Visibility Score™?

We score your brand vs 5 competitors across 100 buyer-intent prompts and 5 engines. Delivered in 5 business days as a PDF report.

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