AI Visibility Check · For business and graduate programs
Prospective students are asking AI which program to choose. Are you in the answer?
We measure where your program surfaces when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI, and we tie your marketing to enrolled students. Start with your program below.
Pick a program to see its number
Prospective MBA and graduate students increasingly build their shortlist with help from AI, and in that channel the answer leans on GMAC, rankings sites, and forums far more than on the programs themselves. Arcalea measures where your program surfaces when students ask AI, on two layers (what the model remembers and what it retrieves live), and ties your marketing to enrolled students through your admissions CRM. You see, and close, the gap between being known and being chosen.
What our M7 index found
AI has already decided which programs it recommends. The question is where the answer comes from.
Our M7 AEO Index tracks how AI names and cites the top MBA programs every week across five engines, using entity-neutral prompts, so no school is named and the AI decides who to mention. The pattern is consistent: when AI discusses these programs, it rarely points to the programs themselves.
A program can lead its peers organically and still sit near the bottom of the AI answer. In the current index, the number one program in AI visibility holds well under one percent organic share of voice. Being known is not the same as being cited.
Two layers of AI visibility
Being remembered and being retrieved are two different tests. Most tools measure only one.
An AI answer draws from two places: the model's trained memory, and a live web fetch at the moment it answers. ChatGPT answers from memory by default and reaches for the live web only about 2 percent of the time, while Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot retrieve live 98 to 100 percent of the time. The two layers frequently disagree.
In one Arcalea measurement, an MBA program sat seventh of seven in memory but rose to fourth under live retrieval, a three-rank swing a single AI-visibility score would have hidden. That is why we report both rather than average them: memory rewards durable entity authority, and retrieval rewards fresh, well-structured, citable program pages. They call for different work, and only one is fixable this quarter.
Not just the measurement, the whole program
We run the enrollment program, and own the intelligence behind it.
Measurement vendors hand you a dashboard. Agencies hand you campaigns. Arcalea does both in one house, and builds every service on its own market intelligence and attribution, so the work gets sharper rather than just busier.
That means paid media across search and social, SEO, and the newer disciplines of AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) that decide whether AI cites your program at all. It means web design and development built to convert and to be cited, content engineered to rank and resonate, and go-to-market strategy grounded in real market sizing. Underneath all of it sits the intelligence layer: Galileo, Compass, QMA, and the AEO Index.
We execute as a Google Premier Partner, in the top 3 percent globally, across Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube, and connect to your admissions CRM and analytics.
See the full range of services → SEO, AEO, and GEO as one program → How the engagement works →
Prove what enrolls students
Which of your marketing actually produced enrolled students?
Enrollment is a long, multi-touch journey from first inquiry through application to matriculation, often many months, and last-click attribution misreads it badly. Galileo connects to your admissions CRM, including Slate and Salesforce, and keeps its own first-party record of every touch and conversion, independent of what any ad platform reports about itself, with no time-horizon limit and no sampling.
It runs six attribution models at once (Linear, First Touch, Last Touch, U-Shaped, Markov Chain, and Contains) so you can see which channels earned the enrollment, not just which ones claimed it. At one private research university MBA program, that clarity produced a 115 percent increase in qualified applications year over year and a 35 percent lower cost per enrolled student, on a flat paid budget.
The Galileo dashboard is the first tool where I can trace a dollar spent to a student enrolled. That changes every conversation I have with our provost about budget.VP, Enrollment Marketing, private research university (MBA program)
See the demand before you spend
Size the program market before you build the plan.
Before a new program launch or a reset, the Go-to-Market Assessment measures your competitive landscape across 20 dimensions, grounded in real data (700 or more survey respondents at 99 percent confidence, thousands of search results analyzed), and separates structural demand from event-driven spikes so you plan against the real market, not a spike.
Compass then maps the search demand for your programs and assigns each ranking term a dollar value, using machine learning trained on the specific factors that win in your space, so you prioritize the segments worth competing for before you commit spend. Arcalea has assessed more than 1.4 billion dollars in search value across client portfolios.
The intelligence layer, pointed at enrollment
The same platforms behind every Arcalea engagement, applied to your programs.
Galileo
Attributes marketing to enrolled students across the full inquiry-to-matriculation funnel, on your first-party admissions data.
Explore Galileo →Compass
Maps the search landscape for your programs: where the demand is, who owns it, and the gaps before you spend.
Explore Compass →AEO Index
Tracks where your program surfaces, and where it does not, when prospective students ask AI engines, on both the memory and retrieval layers.
Explore the AEO Index →Go-to-Market Assessment
Sizes demand and prioritizes segments before you launch a new program or reset a struggling one.
Explore the assessment →Why Arcalea, not the usual higher-ed shop
Your agency can run the campaigns. We prove which ones enrolled students, and whether AI even mentions you.
Track record
A decade of turning marketing spend into measured outcomes.
Recognized by Fortune (America's Most Innovative Companies, 2024), the Financial Times (Americas' Fastest-Growing Companies), and Inc. (the fastest-growing advertising agency in Chicago). The work is built by a team where every client-facing analyst carries eight or more years of experience.
Proof
Trusted across higher education, and taught in it.
Galileo is the analytical foundation of a Harvard Business Publishing case study, co-authored with Kellogg professor Mohanbir Sawhney and now taught in business schools, on using multi-touch attribution to make marketing budget decisions under uncertainty. Our M7 AEO Index is the live benchmark behind the check at the top of this page.
Read about the Harvard Business Publishing case → See the full M7 AEO Index →
How we measure
How we make sure the read holds up.
AI answers are probabilistic, which is not the same as unmeasurable. The difference is method.
Repeated runs
We run each prompt multiple times, because a single query is unreliable. Across repeated ChatGPT runs, only about 2 percent of citations stay consistent.
Platforms kept separate
We never average the engines into one number. A three-rank swing between memory and retrieval hides inside an average, and the remedy differs by engine.
Weekly cadence
We refresh weekly, because answer sources churn fast. Google's AI Mode replaces more than half of its cited sources every week.
Entity-neutral prompts
No school is named in any prompt, so the AI, not us, decides who to mention. That is what makes the ranking a measurement rather than a claim.
Start on your own
Pressure-test your enrollment plan, free.
Before you talk to anyone, build the plan yourself. Our free planning tools walk you from goal to strategy to tactics to measurement, no login, no sales call.
FAQ
Questions higher-ed marketing teams ask us.
Does this work with our admissions CRM (Slate, Salesforce)?
Yes. Galileo attributes marketing to enrolled students by connecting to your first-party systems, including common admissions and enrollment platforms like Slate and Salesforce. We work within your existing data stack rather than replacing it.
We already rank well organically. Why does AI visibility matter?
Because ranking and being cited are now different outcomes. Prospective students increasingly ask AI first, and in that channel the answer leans on aggregators and forums, not program sites. Program-discovery queries alone draw more than a million searches a month, and even the strongest M7 school is cited for under 2 percent of it. Organic strength does not guarantee you are in the answer.
What is the difference between memory and retrieval visibility?
Memory visibility is whether a model names your program from what it was trained on. Retrieval visibility is whether it cites you after fetching the live web at answer time. ChatGPT leans on memory; Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot retrieve live. The two often disagree, so we measure and report them separately rather than blending them into one score.
How do you handle student data and privacy?
We work within each institution's privacy and security standards and use first-party, privacy-first data. Attribution runs on your systems and aggregated signals, not on exposing individual student records.
Can you work alongside our existing agency?
Yes. We are complementary, not a replacement. Your agency can run the campaigns; we bring the intelligence layer they do not have, attribution to enrolled students and AI-visibility measurement, so you can see what actually works.
Do you benchmark programs other than the M7 business schools?
Yes. The AEO Index runs weekly benchmarks across higher-education cohorts including business schools, law schools, nursing programs, and executive education. The M7 index is the one featured here; your program's read is generated on request.
How is the AI Visibility Check different from a rankings report?
Rankings measure reputation. The check measures whether AI engines actually surface and cite your program when prospective students ask, a different and increasingly decisive signal. A program can rank well and still be nearly invisible in AI answers.
Get started
See where your program stands in AI.
Tell us your program and our higher-ed team will follow up with your program's read across the five engines, and a short conversation about what it means for enrollment.
- M7 AEO Industry Index, Arcalea, July 2026 (five AI engines, entity-neutral prompts, updated weekly). Source of the citation-share and memory-versus-retrieval figures on this page. See the live M7 AEO Index.
- Harvard Business Publishing case study (2025), co-authored with Kellogg professor Mohanbir Sawhney, featuring Galileo. Read about the case.
- Engagement figures are anonymized and verified against approved results before publication.
Reviewed by Michael Stratta, Founder and CEO, Arcalea. Last updated August 2026.