geo-difficulty

name	geo-difficulty
description	Score how hard a keyword is to rank for in the AI-search era — page-level URL Rating of real competitors (not just domain DR), Ahrefs keyword difficulty, and whether a given site already ranks or is cited in Google's AI Overview. Use when the user asks 'how hard is <keyword> to rank', 'geo difficulty for <keyword>', or 'keyword difficulty for <domain>'.

GEO Difficulty

Score keyword ranking difficulty for the AI-search era. Unlike plain Ahrefs KD or domain DR, this:

• uses page-level URL Rating (UR) of the results that actually target the query — so a generic article on a huge domain (e.g. mckinsey.com) stops inflating the score;
• is client-relative — the same SERP is a wall for a no-name site but ~won for a site already ranking or cited in Google's AI Overview;
• folds in the AI Overview citation as a first-class signal.

Disclosure: contributed by Enception AI. Backed by the free public API behind https://www.enception.ai/tools/geo-difficulty (POST https://www.enception.ai/api/tools/geo-difficulty, no API key). Server-side data comes from Ahrefs and SerpAPI.

Usage

bash scripts/score.sh "ai form real estate" "ai slide legal" --client example.com

• Pass one or more keywords (quote each). Up to 10 per call.
• --client <domain> is optional; add it to get the client-relative verdict (WON / FOOTHOLD / NOT RANKING).
• GEO_DIFFICULTY_URL env var overrides the endpoint (rarely needed).

Or call the API directly:

curl -s -X POST https://www.enception.ai/api/tools/geo-difficulty \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"keywords":["ai presentation maker"],"client":"example.com"}' --max-time 150

Output columns

• absolute — difficulty 0–100 for a brand-new site (0.35·KD + 0.40·median competitor page-UR + 0.25·targeting%).
• client_verdict / client_diff — only with --client. WON (top-3 or AI-Overview cited), FOOTHOLD (ranks 4–10), NOT RANKING (with the gap to close, credited for the client's DR).
• KD — Ahrefs keyword difficulty; - for zero-volume long-tail.
• UR — median page-level URL Rating of the real competitors.
• tgt% — share of the top-10 that actually target the query.
• AIO — cited (client in the AI Overview), Nsrc (AIO shown, N sources), none, or n/a (AIO not available for this query).
• competitors — the targeting results with their UR.

Notes

• The AI Overview leg depends on Google actually showing an AIO for the query (intermittent); it degrades gracefully to none/n/a.
• Numbers shift day to day as SERPs and UR change — treat as a current snapshot, not a fixed grade.
• Each keyword takes a few seconds server-side; keep --max-time generous for batches.