How places are measured.
AIR APAC measures how AI answer engines represent a place when travellers ask about it. City and tourism teams can use it to see what AI assistants tell travellers about their place, and which official sources the assistants use or ignore. This page says what is measured, how a measurement runs and when results publish.
What is measured
Six things we read about every place
The same questions are put to the same set of AI answer engines for every place in a cohort. What is recorded is the representation itself, not a satisfaction score.
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01
Presence
Whether the place appears in AI answers at all, and in which answers.
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02
Identity
Which version of the place AI engines present: which attractions, which framing, whose description.
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03
Official assets
Which official tourism assets the engines reinforce, and which ones they ignore or replace.
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04
Cited sources
Which sources the engines cite when they answer, and who therefore shapes the representation.
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05
Language
How the representation changes across languages, where answers in a language can be reliably obtained.
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06
Engine variation
How the representation varies from one AI engine to another.
Every exhibit follows a stated rule. When a rule only matches words, we say so.
The measurement period
Frozen first, then measured
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The questions are published before the answers are collected
A measurement period opens when the question set, the engines queried and the scoring rules are frozen and published.
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The period closes when every result is published free
It closes when every result in the cohort has been published, free, to every place measured. The full rule, including what we will not sell while a period is open, is on the independence page.
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Each period is frozen and published from scratch
Each period starts with a newly published method. Places measured before do not influence the next method.
Publication
Free to the place measured, gated on language review
Every measured place receives its result free, in the same form and at the same time as every other place in its cohort, whether or not it has any relationship with AIR APAC.
Two publication rules are method, not preference. First, no per-place report is published for a place whose question set has not passed review by a native speaker of the query language and an expert reviewer. Second, where answers in a language cannot be reliably obtained, that is published as a finding about the representation, not corrected around: the systems answering travellers in that language are not currently auditable by this method, and the place is told so.
If a place finds an error in its result, we publish the correction.
The per-place artefact
What a measured place actually receives
The per-place artefact is the AI Representation Report. It is written to be read by the place's own team, not to be compared with another place's report.
AI Representation Report
- What it holds
- The place's own reading on the six measures: presence, identity, official assets, cited sources, language and engine variation, with the exhibits the instrument produced.
- What it is compared against
- The place's own prior measurement, where one exists, and the published method.
- What it costs
- Nothing. It is free to the place measured, in the same form and at the same time as every other place in its cohort.
- What gates it
- Review of the question set by a native speaker of the query language and an expert reviewer. Until that review passes, the report does not publish.
- What it never contains
- A rank, a league position, or any comparison with another place.
When a place receives its report
Each measured place receives its AI Representation Report when its measurement period closes. It is free, and every place in the group receives its report in the same form at the same time.
Ranking
Places are never ranked against each other
The company index and the place measure are different instruments with different units of analysis. The AI Readiness Index measures organisations and publishes company tiers. The place measure measures one place at a time and publishes no comparison between places, ever.
A place's report compares the place against its own prior measurement, where one exists, and against the published method. There is no public league table of cities and there will not be one. A league table of a small group of cities would reveal who took part. It would also read as a judgment on their governments, and it would reflect how deeply we searched more than the cities themselves.
A place result says nothing about the organisations located in it, and nothing about any individual.
The index reading
An organisation reading
Unit of analysis: the organisation. Built from public signals. Published as a company visibility score, an evidence confidence grade and a visibility tier, with the organisation named. Company scores are comparable within a market and a sector, and market means are not compared across markets.
The place reading
A place reading
Unit of analysis: the place. Built from what AI answer engines return when travellers ask. Published as the representation itself, free to the place measured. Compared only against that place's own prior measurement and against the published method.
The company Index and the place measure are separate tools. A result from one is never converted into the other.
Ask about measuring your city
Write to us to ask when the next measurement period opens and what your team would receive.