AI Narratives checks how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Meta’s Muse, Google’s AI Overviews, and Google’s AI Mode answer questions voters might ask about your candidate. You get the saved answers, any sources they cite, and a plan for what to update.
AI SEO for campaigns — also called answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative engine optimization (GEO). We audit AI answers about your candidate, ballot measure, or cause and recommend changes to the sources they use.
AI assistants can confuse candidates with namesakes, repeat outdated information, or leave them out of a race. AI Narratives saves the answers from each check and any sources the services cite.
We test the questions voters actually type with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Meta’s Muse. These chatbot checks use selected models with live web search. The answers can differ from what voters see in the apps. We check Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode for those questions too. Every answer is graded helps neutral hurts for your race, with the grader’s full reasoning. Then we recommend pages and profiles to update and save the answers for comparison with later checks.
“Who is [candidate]?” · “What’s the latest news?” — does the AI know who they are, and what does it lead with?
“Who’s running?” · “Who should I vote for?” — is your candidate even on the list the model gives?
“Where do they stand on the economy, healthcare, abortion, immigration, guns?” — is the position right, and does it land?
“I care about working families — who should I vote for?” — how the AI frames your candidate to the voters you need most.
An illustrative example — a first-time U.S. Senate candidate in a crowded primary, graded across seven of the engines we check. Sample data, shown to illustrate the format and the kinds of findings an audit surfaces.
| A question your voter asks | ChatGPT | Gemini | Claude | Perplexity | Grok | Google AI Overviews | Google AI Mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who is the candidate? | neutral | helps | helps | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral |
| Latest news | hurts | hurts | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral | hurts |
| Who is running? | neutral | neutral | hurts | neutral | neutral | helps | neutral |
| Who should I vote for? | neutral | neutral | neutral | hurts | neutral | neutral | hurts |
| Progressive voter: who to back? | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral |
| Conservative voter: who to back? | neutral | hurts | neutral | hurts | hurts | neutral | hurts |
| Good candidate? | neutral | helps | helps | neutral | neutral | neutral | neutral |
| Economy & inflation | helps | helps | helps | helps | helps | helps | helps |
| Healthcare | helps | helps | helps | helps | helps | helps | helps |
| Abortion | hurts | hurts | helps | neutral | hurts | neutral | hurts |
| Immigration | neutral | helps | neutral | hurts | neutral | neutral | neutral |
| Guns | hurts | helps | neutral | hurts | hurts | neutral | hurts |
One engine confused him with three other public figures who share his name; another repeatedly named the wrong person as the race’s Democratic challenger and left him off the ballot entirely. For a candidate trying to break out of a crowded primary, being treated as a footnote — or the wrong person — was the most damaging finding. It was also the most fixable.
Economy and healthcare came back helps on all seven engines — working families, manufacturing, lowering costs, rural hospitals. When the models engaged with his actual platform, the message landed cleanly everywhere.
“Latest news” hurt him on three chatbot services, each leading with a single controversy instead of his platform. Abortion and guns read inconsistently — helping on one engine, hurting on another — because no authoritative page stated his position for the models to cite.
Two neutral reference sources did almost all the heavy lifting for the engines, and his entries there were thin or empty. His campaign site was nearly all biography with no issue pages — so the models had nothing authoritative to cite for where he stood.
Each audit grades the answers, shows any cited sources, and recommends pages and profiles to update first. It also includes a two-page memo with numbered recommendations.
When answers include citations, we rank the third-party sites cited most often and flag sites that block AI crawlers.
Separate from what the models already say, we scan the live web for freshly stood-up smear pages targeting your candidate and flag newly registered domains as likely new opponent infrastructure — so you see it before it reaches the answer.
A single 0–100 AI Visibility Score blends how favorable the answers are, how much of the cited sourcing you can influence, and how often the engines answer — so you can compare later checks after making updates.
We check whether your own site blocks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini’s crawlers in robots.txt — a silent blocker that keeps every fix you publish from ever reaching the answer until it’s lifted.
Our Civly audit found name confusion, missing pricing information, and an answer saying the company did not exist.
We added a Wikidata record and completed our Crunchbase profile to give the assistants clearer sources about Civly.
See the results: search for Civly.
How audits work, what to update, and how to compare later checks.
AI SEO — also called answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative engine optimization (GEO) — is shaping what AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Meta’s Muse, Google’s AI Overviews, and Google’s AI Mode say when voters ask about your race. Civly’s AI Narratives checks the six chatbots and two Google answer formats named above, grades each answer helps / neutral / hurts for your candidate, ballot measure, or cause, and recommends pages and profiles to update. A later check shows whether the answers changed.
Publish clear, current issue pages and complete candidate profiles. When an answer cites sources, AI Narratives shows them and points out thin or missing pages to update. A follow-up check shows whether those updates appear in later answers.
Traditional SEO focuses on search rankings. Answer engine optimization focuses on how AI assistants describe your candidate, using clear source pages, structured data, and accurate third-party profiles.
We check ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Meta’s Muse with live web search, using selected models. The chatbot answers come from provider APIs and may differ from the apps voters use. We also check Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode for the same voter questions.
We measure the answers and recommend what to update. Each audit includes a scorecard and a plan for updating issue pages and candidate profiles, including Ballotpedia, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Vote Smart, and voter guides. It ranks relevant outlets and uses a 0–100 AI Visibility Score to track changes.
Update times vary by service, source, and question. We save each check so you can compare later answers and citations after publishing an update.
We’ll check eight AI services, grade their answers about your candidate, and recommend source updates for the answers that hurt.
“If the AI can’t say who you are, your voters can’t either.”