Question 1

What is Outercite?

Accepted Answer

Outercite shows you how AI answers questions about your market. It monitors what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews say when buyers ask, tells you where your brand is missing and which competitor is recommended instead, helps you decide what to change, and then checks whether the next answers moved. You can run it with your team or ask our Concierge team to run it with you.

Question 2

What is AI visibility, and why does it matter?

Accepted Answer

AI visibility is how often and how favourably AI engines mention and recommend your brand when people ask them questions. As buyers shift from searching to asking an assistant for a recommendation, being named in those answers increasingly decides who gets considered. If AI does not mention you, you are absent at the moment of decision.

Question 3

What is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)?

Accepted Answer

Answer Engine Optimisation, or AEO, is the practice of improving how often your brand is cited and recommended inside AI-generated answers. It is sometimes called generative engine optimisation (GEO). Where traditional SEO optimises for ranked links on a results page, AEO optimises for being the answer an AI gives directly.

Question 4

How is AEO different from SEO?

Accepted Answer

SEO improves your position in a list of links on a search results page. AEO improves whether an AI engine cites and recommends you inside a written answer, where there is often no list of links at all. The two overlap because clear, well-structured content helps both, but the measurement and the tactics differ: AEO is built around citations, not positions.

Question 5

Can I see real examples before I sign up?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We publish AI Visibility Leaderboard rounds in the open across Australian categories, so you can read the questions buyers ask, the brands AI recommends today and the sources behind those answers. You can also run a free check on your own brand without creating an account.

Question 6

What do I get from the free check?

Accepted Answer

A snapshot of how AI answers relevant questions about your business and market, including where your brand appears and which competitors are named. It runs without an account and without installing anything.

Question 7

Do I need to add code to my website?

Accepted Answer

No. Monitoring works by asking the AI engines the questions your buyers ask and reading the answers, so nothing needs to be installed to get started. There is an optional pixel if you later want to see visits that arrive from AI assistants.

Question 8

How long before I see something useful?

Accepted Answer

The free check returns answers straight away. Once monitoring is running, the first full comparison across your prompts and engines lands within the hour, and the picture gets more useful as checks accumulate and you have something to compare against.

Question 9

What is Brand Intelligence, and is it available?

Accepted Answer

Brand Intelligence is in development, bringing human brand research together with AI research. Explore the preview at /brand-intelligence and register pilot interest through Contact. Study scope, timing, availability and pricing will be agreed before research starts. It is not included in existing subscriptions today.

Question 10

Which AI engines does Outercite track?

Accepted Answer

Seven surfaces: the ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek assistants, plus Google AI Overviews, which is read from the search results page rather than asked a question. All seven are included on every plan, with up to 8 in use at once. New surfaces are added as buyers adopt them.

Question 11

What does the assistant do?

Accepted Answer

The assistant is how you work with your own monitored answers. Ask it where your brand is missing, which competitors are being recommended instead, or what to do next, and it answers from your stored answers rather than from general knowledge, opening the supporting evidence beside the conversation. It shows its working, so you can see which checks an answer was counted from.

Question 12

What is the Agency Desk?

Accepted Answer

The Desk is the agency home inside Outercite: your clients triaged worst first with the reason beside each name, the changes waiting on your approval, what went well, what is going out this week, and which seats need attention. Every row opens the client behind it, and its figures are counted from stored answers.

Question 13

Can I connect Outercite to ChatGPT or Claude?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Outercite ships a Model Context Protocol connector, so you can add it to ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor or any MCP client and ask about your own data in plain language. It is read-only by default and uses the same key as your API access. It is included on every plan.

Question 14

Does Outercite forecast what a change is worth?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and projections are always labelled as projections. Before you commit to a change, Outercite estimates what it could be worth so you can rank the work; afterwards it compares the later answers against a control captured when the change shipped. Projected and counted figures are never mixed. Scale runs full simulations with up to 500 agents; Starter includes lighter forecasts.

Question 15

Does Outercite make changes to my website?

Accepted Answer

No. Outercite proposes changes, shows the evidence behind each one and records what happened after you publish, but your team decides and publishes. If you would rather not carry that work yourself, Concierge is a named team that delivers agreed work with you, within a scope you approve.

Question 16

Is the citation data accurate?

Accepted Answer

Every citation runs an intent-screening and judging pipeline, and low-confidence verdicts are audited by a second, independent model before they reach your dashboard. Every figure carries its confidence, so you only ever report numbers you can defend.

Question 17

How do I know a reported improvement is real?

Accepted Answer

A change is only described as confirmed once the later answers have been scored against a control captured when it shipped. Until then it carries the stage it has actually reached, such as approved or observed live. A missing measurement is shown as missing, never as a zero.

Question 18

How do you prevent hallucinated reports?

Accepted Answer

Every answer is judged by an AI model, and low-confidence verdicts are audited by a second, independent model before they reach your reports. Every citation is shown with its confidence, so a shaky mention never dresses up as a certain one. Figures in reports are counted from stored answers, not written by a model.

Question 19

Can you guarantee AI will recommend us?

Accepted Answer

No, and nobody can. The engines change their answers on their own schedule and nobody controls them. What Outercite gives you is the measurement, the evidence behind it, a ranked view of what to try, and an honest comparison afterwards, including when something did not move.

Question 20

Where does my data live?

Accepted Answer

Your primary application, database and cache run in Sydney, Australia, encrypted in transit and at rest. Outercite is built in Australia and served globally, with Australian data residency by default.

Question 21

Is my data used to train AI models?

Accepted Answer

No. Your data is never used to train third-party models. It is used only to power your own visibility tracking, forecasting and reporting.

Question 22

Does Outercite support SSO and role-based access?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Outercite supports single sign-on and granular role-based access control, with per-workspace isolation, so you control exactly who can see and act on each brand, business unit or client.

Question 23

Do agencies keep client data separate?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Each client workspace keeps its own questions, competitors, markets, monitoring cadence, evidence and team access separate from the rest of the roster, up to 50 workspaces. You choose who on your team, and at the client, can open which one.

Question 24

Is every action audited?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Agent actions are written to an auditable trail, so you can answer which agent did what, and when. Anything that leaves the platform, such as a client update or a report, is queued with a window to pull it back before it sends.

Question 25

How much does Outercite cost?

Accepted Answer

Outercite has three lanes, priced in AUD ex GST. Starter is A$99/mo and runs the full visibility loop for one brand on autopilot. Scale is A$599/mo, with no prompt cap and full control of coverage, engines and check cadence. Concierge means we run it for you: it is priced to your needs, invoiced and scoped with our team, so talk to us for a quote. Annual billing gives you two months free on the self-serve lanes.

Question 26

What is an answer?

Accepted Answer

An answer is the unit of coverage every plan includes. Each verified check of one prompt on one engine costs a published whole number of answers, and the dearer the engine is to ask, the more it costs, so the same question is priced differently on ChatGPT and Claude. One answer is A$0.03, the whole per-engine rate card is public at outercite.com/pricing/rate-card, and your invoice reconciles against it exactly.

Question 27

How does coverage work?

Accepted Answer

Your plan includes a monitoring allowance and a generation allowance. Monitoring covers verified checks; generation covers content briefs, AI report drafts and prediction simulations. Each pool uses its included allowance first. After that, both draw from one prepaid balance, so you only need to add credit once. Agencies share that balance across every client, and you can still see each type of usage separately.

Question 28

What happens when my coverage runs out?

Accepted Answer

Work pauses and we tell you, in the app and by email. Nothing is ever charged without you choosing it: you can add credit to the one balance that covers monitoring and generation, or wait for your next monthly allowance. Prepaid usage is 25% off the base rate for agencies and 15% off for brands. Included allowances are used first, and purchased credit never expires. Unspent answers roll over, capped at two months of your allocation, so a quiet month is never wasted.

Question 29

Do you offer agency pricing?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Scale partner is the full Scale allowance at A$499/mo, with up to 50 client workspaces, the Agency Desk, white-label reporting and dedicated support. You start it yourself like any other plan, with the same 7-day free trial, and manage billing from Settings. Agencies also pay 25% less on usage beyond the allowance.

Question 30

What if our agency is bigger than that?

Accepted Answer

Platinum Partner is the tier above, for agencies that need more client workspaces than the fair-use cap, multi-market structure, onboarding for a larger delivery team or custom commercial terms. It is scoped and priced with our team, so there is no published rate to quote.

Question 31

Is there a free trial?

Accepted Answer

Starter, Scale and Scale partner start with a 7-day free trial with full access, billed in AUD, and you can cancel anytime before it ends. Concierge is scoped with our team instead. There is no free-forever tier, but the brand check is free and needs no account.

Question 32

Can I cancel anytime?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The self-serve lanes are month to month, billed in AUD, and you can cancel anytime. Every self-serve plan also starts with a 7-day free trial.

Questions about AI visibility, answered.

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