Securing Your Retirement Future
SURS (surs.org) scores 84 out of 100 on Brand Analyzer, placing it in the Strong Brand tier among Finance brands, Government brands, Non-profit brands, in the 87th percentile of 13276 Finance brands.
SURS (State Universities Retirement System) is a state-administered pension system that provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to eligible employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges. It serves current and retired employees, annuitants, and survivors, offering benefit administration, account protection, and member education resources. SURS operates as a government-affiliated, non-profit retirement system within the finance and public-sector benefits category.
| Brand Name | SURS |
|---|---|
| Domain | surs.org |
| Industry | Finance, Government |
| Founded | 1944 |
| Headquarters | Ljubljana |
| Main Competitors | Teachers' Retirement System of Illinois (75/100), Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, CalPERS, CalSTRS (79/100), TIAA (75/100), Public Employees' Retirement System of Illinois |
Moz Domain Authority 38/100 vs category average 40 / leader 95 - limited third-party links, so AI systems rarely encounter mentions of the brand.
Ranked #628,714 on the Tranco list of most-visited sites - modest traffic makes the brand easy for AI models to overlook.
SURS appears on Wikipedia but without a dedicated company entity, so AI models can confuse it with similarly named subjects.
The homepage meta description reads "SURS provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to eligible employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges." (No meta description) - this is the summary AI engines are most likely to quote.
Structured data on the homepage: 1 JSON-LD block(s), Organization schema, Breadcrumb/Website schema, og:title, og:type, Twitter cards, canonical. Adding FAQ schema would further help AI crawlers parse the brand's identity.
AI-crawler access: robots.txt present, no AI bot restrictions - robots.txt controls whether engines like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can read the site at all.
Detected tech stack: Cloudflare, WordPress, Ghost.
Social footprint: verified profiles on Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, GitHub - consistent profiles reinforce the brand's identity across the web.
0 Reddit mentions - community discussion signals real-world reputation to AI models.
Live results from asking a general-purpose AI assistant about the brand, checked October 2026.
When asked "What is SURS?", Claude could identify the brand as of October 2026. SURS stands for the State Universities Retirement System of Illinois, a public pension fund that provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges. Best known for Managing retirement benefits for Illinois public higher education employees.
When asked "Best brands similar to SURS?", Claude would not surface SURS as of October 2026. It's a specific state pension system rather than a general financial brand or service, so it wouldn't come up unless someone asked specifically about Illinois public pension systems.
Common questions people ask in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines.
SURS's main competitors in Finance: Teachers' Retirement System of Illinois (75/100), CalSTRS (79/100), TIAA (75/100).
Sources: Brand Analyzer scan
SURS has limited AI-search visibility, scoring 49/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI visibility composite (visibility 40, trust 58, recommendation 54). This estimates how likely AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are to know, trust, and recommend the brand.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS was founded in 1944. SURS operates in the Finance category. It is analyzed by Brand Analyzer across seven brand dimensions and AI-search visibility.
Sources: Wikidata
SURS is headquartered in Ljubljana. SURS operates in the Finance category.
Sources: Wikidata
SURS offers retirement benefits, disability benefits, and survivor benefits for eligible employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges, along with member education and informational resources about these benefit programs.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS scores 54/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI recommendation signal, indicating it is reasonably likely to be surfaced when AI assistants like ChatGPT suggest Finance options. Recommendation depends on crawlability, structured data, and category authority; a Wikipedia presence helps.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS, the State Universities Retirement System, is a state-administered pension system in Illinois that provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to eligible employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS administers retirement, disability, and survivor benefit programs for eligible employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges. It manages member accounts, processes benefit payments, and provides educational resources to help members understand and plan for their retirement benefits.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS can improve AI discoverability by strengthening structured data (Organization and FAQ schema), maintaining an accurate Wikipedia/Wikidata entity, earning authoritative citations, and keeping content crawlable for AI bots. Brand Analyzer measures these as visibility, trust, and recommendation signals.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS is used by current and retired employees, annuitants, and survivors associated with Illinois public universities and community colleges.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS is known for administering pension and benefit programs specifically for employees of Illinois public universities and community colleges, acting as a trusted state retirement system for higher education staff.
Sources: SURS official site
SURS scores 49/100 for AI visibility - how well ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can discover, identify and cite the brand.
SURS has a limited AI-visibility profile at 49/100 - a proxy for how readily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can recognise and cite it. Its strongest area is trust (58/100) and its weakest is visibility (40/100). It benefits from a Wikidata knowledge-graph entry, a global traffic rank of #628,714 (Tranco) and open access for AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.). The main gaps holding it back: no clear Wikipedia entity to anchor it in LLM training data and a low Moz Domain Authority of 38/100. In a live check, Claude could already identify SURS from memory (October 2026) - a sign these signals are paying off.
The score combines seven dimensions - name quality, digital presence, visual identity, messaging clarity, trust foundation, AI discoverability, and brand authority - into a single objective benchmark.
Ranked closest to SURS: Surfly (84/100), Sui (84/100), ERM Sustainability Institute (84/100), SutiSoft (84/100).
A step up - brands to learn from: Yuga Labs (91/100), YNAB (91/100).
Category leader: Stripe (97/100).
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