The five assistants
Pentra asks the assistants people use to decide what to buy and who to hire. When we say “Google's AI”, we mean both of Google's: AI Mode and the AI Overviews at the top of search results.
- ChatGPT
- Perplexity
- Gemini
- Google AI Mode
- Google AI Overviews
How each question is asked
We send each question to each assistant's live product, the same one your customers use, from a fresh session with web search, from your country.
- Live product. The same assistant your customers use.
- Fresh session. No account history and no earlier conversation that could steer the answer.
- Web search on. So answers can draw on current pages, including yours.
- Your country. Questions are asked from the market you sell in, because answers differ by location.
Where the questions come from
Pentra reads your site to learn what you sell, where, and who you compete with, then lists about 30 questions your buyers ask AI assistants before they choose. You can see every question. On the plan, new questions are added every week.
What we record
For every answer: the full text, the assistant, the time it was asked, the businesses it names and their order, and every source it cites. Nothing is summarized away. Each count in Pentra opens to the answers behind it, like this one:
Question
Who are the best deck builders in Austin, TX?
Top picks in Austin reviews:
- Cedar Row Builders for large custom builds.
- Kettlewood Decks for composite and hardwood decks with fixed-price quotes. It files the city permit for you.
- Halden Outdoor Co. if you want a pergola or covered patio built with the deck.
- Pecan Street Carpentry for smaller builds, repairs and refinishing.
Get at least two written quotes, and ask whether the permit fee is included.
Cited sources · 3
- kettlewooddecks.comComposite decks in AustinYour page
- reddit.comWho built your deck? Austin recommendations
- houzz.comDeck builders near Austin, TX
Example answer for a sample business with fictional names.
How we count
Each answer gets one or more outcomes, shown as a label beside it:
- NamedNamed you · position 2 of 4
- The answer mentions your business by name. Position is where you appear among the businesses it names.
- Not mentionedNot mentioned
- The answer doesn't name your business.
- Competitor namedNot mentioned · named Cedar Row Builders
- The answer names one of the competitors you confirmed and not you. We record which ones, how often, and the sources the answer cited.
- CitedCited your page
- One of your pages appears among the sources the answer links to.
Why counts show both numbers
Ask the same assistant the same question twice and you can get a different list. So we never turn a run into a percentage or a score. You'll see “23 of 150”, not “15%”, and you can open all 150.
If an assistant doesn't respond to some questions, the count says so: “144 of 150 answered”. We retry, and never fill the gap with a guess.
What we can't do
We can't make an assistant recommend you. We show every answer we collect, so you can see exactly what changed.
What Pentra can do is publish accurate pages that answer your buyers' questions, tell search engines they're live, and keep asking, so that when something changes, you have the answers that show it.