Platform
A platform is an AI product people ask questions, like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews, whose answers you track.
A platform is an AI product people put their questions to, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews or Google AI Mode. When we talk about tracking your AI visibility, the platforms are where we look.
Each platform answers in its own way, so it helps to read them one at a time. A brand can be named often on one and hardly at all on another.
A platform and a model aren't the same thing
A model is the AI system that writes the text, like one of OpenAI's GPT models. A platform is the product built around it: the app, the web search, the shopping cards, the way it picks sources and shows links.
One platform can use several models, and it decides which one answers. The same model can sit behind more than one product, too. That's why two products can give different answers even when the model underneath is similar: they search differently and read different pages.
Why platforms differ
The platforms don't search the web the same way. Perplexity searches for every answer and numbers its sources. Gemini decides for itself whether to search. AI Overviews only appear for some Google searches.
They also read different sites. For example, Fernhill Coffee might be named in half of ChatGPT's answers about coffee subscriptions and in a tenth of Perplexity's, because Perplexity leans on a review site that doesn't list Fernhill. Looking at one platform alone would give you the wrong picture.
Platforms in AnswerOrbit
We ask every prompt once a day on each of six platforms: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. We ask in each platform's own app, signed out, and let the platform choose the model. Every answer shows the model, market and language it came from. How we count shows what we keep from each platform, and the Platforms tab in Settings shows how each one is answering this week.