What the Flare score is
The Flare score is brandflare's headline 0–100 measure of how AI engines present a brand. It is deliberately not a single metric: it combines five separate measurements of the same set of judged answers into one trendable number, and always shows the breakdown behind it.
It is the default ranking on Explore and the headline number on every brand page. Mention rate is one of its five factors, not the whole story.
The five factors
| Factor | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Visibility | How often do engines name you at all? |
| Prominence | How early and how strongly are you recommended, and what's your share of mentions against rivals? |
| Accuracy | How much of what is said about you is true? |
| Consistency | How evenly do you appear across the five engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Google Search, Perplexity, and Claude? |
| Sentiment | How favourably are you described? |
Only questions that don't name your brand count. An engine naming you when the question was about you measures nothing.
What each factor covers, and how to read the breakdown, is in how the Flare score works.
The bands
| Score | Band |
|---|---|
| 80 and above | Very high |
| 65–79 | High |
| 50–64 | Moderate |
| 30–49 | Low |
| Under 30 | Very low |
Why not just use mention rate
Mention rate rewards being talked about, and nothing else. Two brands can post identical mention rates while being in entirely different positions: one named first and described correctly on all five engines, the other named last on one engine with a false claim attached. A single-metric leaderboard cannot tell them apart, which is the whole reason Flare exists.
Three properties worth knowing
It is absolute, not a percentile. A brand's Flare moves only when its own results move — never because a competitor improved. That is what makes the trend line mean something, and it is why the score is not a rank.
A factor that wasn't measured is left out, not guessed. Accuracy, for instance, can only be scored for a brand whose answers have been checked against a fact sheet. Where a factor wasn't measured, the score is built from the others, and the breakdown says so. A brand is never awarded points for a check nobody ran.
A new score says it's new. Until enough answers are in, a brand's score is labelled "Early score, still settling". Treat it as a first reading, not a verdict.
Reading it
Direction first, then the breakdown. A score falling from 78 to 71 matters less than which factor fell: losing ground on Accuracy is a fact-sheet and PR problem, while losing it on Consistency means one engine has stopped surfacing you and the others haven't. The composite tells you something changed; the factors tell you where to look.