The Sydney & Melbourne AI Visibility Index — 25 Brands Ranked by AI Search Presence
BrandCited audited 25 Sydney & Melbourne tech companies for AI search visibility. Average score: 37/100 — Employment Hero leads with 63/100.
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BrandCited Team
9 min read
April 21, 2026
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BrandCited scanned 25 Sydney & Melbourne tech brands across 9 AI search engines. 48% scored below 40 — the threshold below which AI platforms will not cite a brand regardless of traffic, funding, or market position. The average score was 37/100. Employment Hero led the index at 63/100.
AI visibility is not an extension of SEO. A brand can rank on page one of Google and score zero on BrandCited because AI platforms weight structured entity signals, crawler permissions, and content trust differently from keyword-based ranking algorithms.
How did BrandCited build the Sydney & Melbourne AI Visibility Index?#
BrandCited tested 25 Sydney & Melbourne brands across 9 AI platforms: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, You.com, Bing AI, Meta AI, and Google AI Overviews. Each brand received a score from 0 to 100 across five categories: crawler access, structured data, content quality, trust and authority signals, and technical implementation.
Brands were selected from Crunchbase regional listings, G2 category filters, and local tech media. No brand paid to appear. No scores were adjusted after scanning. The index reflects the state of AI visibility as of 2026-04-18.
Run a free AI visibility scan for any brand at BrandCited.
What did the Sydney & Melbourne AI Visibility Index reveal?#
BrandCited found that 48% of Sydney & Melbourne brands fall below the 40-point citation threshold — meaning AI platforms treat these brands as invisible sources, even on direct brand queries. The pattern is consistent: brands that skip structured data and entity clarity score below 40. Brands that invest in these foundations score above 70.
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Average score: 37/100 — below the 70-point threshold for consistent AI citation
48% of brands scored below 40 — placing them in the effectively invisible tier
100% scored below 70 — missing citations on the majority of relevant AI queries
Top score: 63/100 — Employment Hero showed strong crawler access signals across all tested engines
Lowest score: 10/100 — Envato scored in the effectively invisible tier, with llms.txt Presence flagged as the primary blocker
The average of 37/100 places Sydney & Melbourne below the global average of 54/100 tracked by BrandCited across all indexed cities. See how BrandCited tracks AI visibility across all cities.
What are the top Sydney & Melbourne brands doing right?#
The brands above 70 in the Sydney & Melbourne index share a consistent set of technical decisions. BrandCited's audit shows these are not brand recognition advantages — they are infrastructure decisions any brand can replicate.
Employment Hero — 63/100
Employment Hero leads the Sydney & Melbourne index with a score of 63/100. BrandCited found strong content quality and crawler access signals across all tested AI platforms. The remaining gap is organization schema.
Nitro — 58/100
Nitro leads the Sydney & Melbourne index with a score of 58/100. BrandCited found strong crawler access and content quality signals across all tested AI platforms. The remaining gap is product/service schema.
Deputy — 55/100
Deputy leads the Sydney & Melbourne index with a score of 55/100. BrandCited found strong crawler access and content quality signals across all tested AI platforms. The remaining gap is product/service schema.
What is holding most Sydney & Melbourne brands back from AI citations?#
Structured data was the worst-performing category across all 25 brands in the Sydney & Melbourne index. The three issues below appeared most across the dataset. BrandCited identifies all of these automatically in a free AI visibility scan.
Issue 1: Reviews & Ratings
What it is: This issue was found across multiple Sydney & Melbourne brands. AI platforms use this signal to decide whether a source is authoritative enough to cite.
Why it matters: Without fixing this, even well-known brands score below the 40-point citation threshold. BrandCited data shows brands that resolve this issue gain an average of 12 points on their next rescan.
How to fix it:
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See how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and 4 other AI platforms mention your brand.
Add an <Organization> schema block to your homepage with name, url, description, foundingDate, and sameAs pointing to your Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia profiles.
json
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Your Brand",
"url": "https://yourbrand.com",
"description": "One sentence that answers: what do you do and for whom.",
"foundingDate": "2020",
"sameAs": [
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourbrand",
"https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/yourbrand"
]
}
Issue 2: llms.txt Presence
What it is: This issue was found across multiple Sydney & Melbourne brands. AI platforms use this signal to decide whether a source is authoritative enough to cite.
Why it matters: Without fixing this, even well-known brands score below the 40-point citation threshold. BrandCited data shows brands that resolve this issue gain an average of 12 points on their next rescan.
How to fix it:
Add FAQ schema to your top 5 landing pages. Use question-answer pairs that mirror the prompts your buyers type into ChatGPT and Perplexity.
json
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "What is [Your Brand]?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Your brand is a [category] platform that [core value prop]."
}
}]
}
Issue 3: Product/Service Schema
What it is: This issue was found across multiple Sydney & Melbourne brands. AI platforms use this signal to decide whether a source is authoritative enough to cite.
Why it matters: Without fixing this, even well-known brands score below the 40-point citation threshold. BrandCited data shows brands that resolve this issue gain an average of 12 points on their next rescan.
How to fix it:
Create a dedicated "About" page with first-person language, a named founding team, a clear mission statement, and date-stamped content. AI engines weight author entity signals heavily when deciding whom to cite.
BrandCited tracks AI visibility across 9 platforms and flags every issue by impact score. If your brand appears in the Sydney & Melbourne index, you can claim your listing and get a full breakdown of where citations are being lost. If your brand is not in the index, run a free scan and get your score in under 30 seconds.
The brands at the top of this index did not get there by accident. They built structured signals that AI engines can read, parse, and trust. That work is repeatable for any brand in any market. See the full BrandCited methodology and pricing for continuous monitoring.
Run a free AI visibility scan at BrandCited — your score across 9 AI platforms, every issue ranked by impact, in under 30 seconds.
What is the Sydney & Melbourne AI Visibility Index?
The Sydney & Melbourne AI Visibility Index is a data report published by BrandCited that ranks 25 local tech brands by their visibility across 9 AI search engines. BrandCited scans each brand and scores them across five technical categories. The index is updated as new scans are completed.
How does BrandCited calculate an AI visibility score?
BrandCited tests each brand across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, You.com, Bing AI, Meta AI, and Google AI Overviews. It scores crawler access, structured data, content quality, trust and authority, and technical implementation. Each category contributes to a 0–100 score. Brands scoring above 70 are consistently cited. Brands below 40 are invisible to AI platforms regardless of their market presence.
Which Sydney & Melbourne brands score highest for AI search visibility?
1Employment Hero (63/100), 2. Nitro (58/100), 3. Deputy (55/100) lead the Sydney & Melbourne index. BrandCited found these brands have invested in structured data and entity signals that AI platforms rely on for citation decisions.
BrandCited vs traditional SEO tools — what is the difference?
Traditional SEO tools track keyword rankings and backlinks on Google. BrandCited tracks whether AI platforms cite your brand in generated responses. A brand can rank first on Google and score below 30 on BrandCited because AI engines weight structured data, entity clarity, and source trust differently from crawl-based ranking algorithms.
How do I improve my brand's AI visibility score?
BrandCited identifies your specific gaps and ranks them by impact. The most common starting points are adding Organization schema to your homepage, creating FAQ schema on key landing pages, and building author entity signals into your content. BrandCited shows you exactly which fixes will move your score the most. Run a free scan to see your current gaps.
Why do some well-known Sydney & Melbourne brands score poorly?
Brand recognition does not equal AI citation. AI platforms cite sources they can parse, verify, and trust — not sources they have heard of. BrandCited data shows that structured data quality and entity clarity are stronger predictors of AI citation than traffic, funding, or years in market.
