How StarRise works

AI search optimization, from one URL to measured proof

You give StarRise your website. It asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews the questions your buyers ask, shows where competitors win, hands you a ranked plan, and measures what worked.

Get my free reportStart with Discover
Prompt Explorer listing buyer questions grouped by buyer stage, showing for each question whether the brand was mentioned and cited, its position, and which brands and sources the AI answers named.
Discover: every buyer question, every answer, and who it named. Demo data.
What you give us

One URL and ten minutes

StarRise needs your website address. Nothing to install, no tag on your site, no access to your analytics.

From your site and real search demand, StarRise works out what you sell, writes the questions your buyers ask, and finds who you compete with. You check its work before anything runs.

  • Enter your website. StarRise reads your public pages the same way an AI crawler would. It never changes your site.
  • Choose the scope. Pick the AI engines to test, the buyer stages to cover from first awareness to final decision, the markets you sell in, and whether to include your social channels.
  • Review the questions. Each buyer question comes with how many people search for it each month. Remove any, or add and pin your own.
  • Confirm your competitors. Keep the ones StarRise found, drop the ones that don't fit, add the ones you lose deals to.
  • Press run. Your first results arrive in minutes. Re-run any time on the same questions and engines.
Competitor selector showing five tracked competitors with visibility, mention rate, share of voice and rank, and the demo brand ranked second of six, six points behind the leader.
The competitors every analysis measures you against. Demo data.
What happens in a run

Every engine, every question, three times

AI answers change from one ask to the next. So each run samples them the way a pollster samples opinion, then reads every answer for the same few things.

01

Ask

On paid plans, each buyer question goes to each AI engine on your plan three times, and Google AI Overviews is captured once per keyword. Alongside the official APIs, StarRise checks the answers buyers actually see in the consumer ChatGPT app, because the app and the API don't always agree.

02

Read

In every answer, StarRise records whether you were named, how prominently, and whether the engine linked to your site. A citation counts only when it is verified. Every competitor is read the same way.

03

Check your site

It tests whether AI crawlers can reach and read your pages: crawler access, readability, schema and sitemap. Then it scores your pages, and your competitors', on the content factors AI engines reward.

04

Ask about you

Each engine is asked directly how it sees your brand and each competitor. You get the strengths, weaknesses and terms it attaches to your name, in its own words.

05

Score

Results roll up into your AI Readiness Score, a competitor ranking and a breakdown by engine and by buyer question.

06

Plan

Every gap becomes a ranked fix with a projected lift and an hour estimate, so your team knows what to do first.

The loop

Five stages, one loop

Many tools stop at the report. StarRise carries you from the first check to proof that the fixes worked, then starts again. Projected is the plan. Measured is the proof: after you ship a fix, the next run measures the result on the same questions and the same engines, so the before and after compare like for like.

  1. StarRise AI readiness overview for a demo brand: an AI Readiness Score of 51 out of 100, split into Brand Visibility 51 and Technical Readiness 50, with the brand named in 92% of answers, cited in 50%, and ranked second of six tracked brands.

    01 · Am I visible?

    Discover

    Your AI Readiness Score, your rank against competitors, and your results on each engine.

    Discover
  2. Gap analysis showing one critical gap, three high-impact gaps and five gaps in total, a per-engine breakdown of mention, share of voice and citation, and a crawler access panel showing which AI crawlers can reach the site.

    02 · What's wrong?

    Diagnose

    The buyer questions you lose, who wins them, and why the AI preferred their pages.

    Diagnose
  3. Weekly action plan showing the AI Readiness Score today at 51 and 77 projected when the plan ships, with the projected lift split across content coverage, content quality, citation authority and bot access.

    03 · How do I fix it?

    Prescribe

    Ranked fixes for your website and social channels, each with a projected lift and hours.

    Prescribe
  4. Execution workspace with six tasks grouped by status (in progress, in review, to do and completed), each with a due date and its expected score lift.

    04 · Get it done.

    Execute

    Content briefs, tasks, drafts in your voice, or our GEO team doing the work.

    Execute
  5. Score tracking chart of the AI Readiness Score rising from 11 to 51 across six weekly runs, with changes against the prior run for brand visibility, mention rate, share of voice, citation quality and competitive rank, and a proof-of-value panel per AI engine.

    05 · Did it work?

    Measure

    The change since your last run, on the same questions and engines.

    Measure
What you get each run

A regular read on the AI channel

Paid plans include a weekly analysis. Every run uses the same questions and engines, so each one compares fairly with the last.

  • Your AI Readiness Score and the change since your last run
  • Your rank against the competitors you track, engine by engine
  • How each engine describes you, in its own words
  • The buyer questions you won and lost, and who took them
  • An updated ranked plan, with finished fixes measured
  • Every raw answer in Prompt Explorer, run by run
How Measure works
Brand visibility trend over six weekly runs, with the demo brand rising from 10% to 51%, next to a leaderboard of six brands showing visibility, mention rate, share of voice and citation rate for each.
Brand Visibility: six weeks of trend and the competitor leaderboard. Demo data.
Plans

Start free, grow into the full loop

A short summary. Full details, add-ons and the price calculator are on the pricing page.

$0

Free

  • ChatGPT, 4 prompts, 1 competitor
  • One run a month
  • AI Readiness Score and competitor ranking
  • How ChatGPT describes you

$125 / month

Starter

  • ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
  • 20 prompts, 5 competitors, weekly
  • Three samples per prompt per engine
  • Top Recommendations

$400 / month · Full loop

Pro

  • Everything in Starter; Claude available as an add-on
  • From 30 prompts and 10 competitors
  • Weekly deep analysis, AI diagnosis of your website and social channels
  • Competitor social benchmarking; Content Studio add-on

Custom

White Glove

  • Annual, from 50 prompts and 20 competitors
  • Claude and Content Studio included
  • Our GEO team helps execute the fixes
White-glove service
See full pricing
FAQ

How it works, in plain answers

What do you need from us to start?

Your website address. StarRise finds your competitors and buyer questions from it. There is nothing to install and no tag on your site. You review the questions and competitors, then press run.

Does StarRise change anything on my website?

No. It reads your public pages the way an AI crawler would, to score them. The plan tells you what to change. You, your agency or our GEO team make the changes.

How much of my time does it need?

About ten minutes to set up: enter your website and confirm the competitors and questions. After that, re-run whenever you like; paid plans include a weekly analysis. The real work is the fixes, and the plan sizes each one in hours so you can decide what's worth doing.

How is this different from my SEO tools?

Rank trackers measure where you sit in a list of links. StarRise asks AI engines real buyer questions, three times each on paid plans, and records whether you are named, how prominently, and whether your page is cited. Keep your SEO stack. StarRise covers the answer that sits above it.

How long until a change shows up in AI answers?

Fixes on your own site show up as the engines re-read your site, typically within a few weeks. Wider citation authority, on review sites, Reddit and other people's articles, builds over a couple of months. Re-run on the same questions and engines to see each step.

Do you train AI models on our data?

No. StarRise sends questions about your category to the AI engines and stores their answers so you can see and score them. Your answers stay in your workspace. More on the security page.

Where are the numbers behind the score?

On the methodology page.