Quantifying Uncertainty in AI Visibility: A Statistical Framework for Generative Search Measurement

A research study reveals that AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, SearchGPT, and Google Gemini produce highly variable citation results for identical queries, making single-run visibility metrics unreliable. The study demonstrates that citation distributions follow power-law patterns with substantial variability, and argues that uncertainty estimates are essential for accurate measurement of domain visibility in generative search.