Intelligence Platform: AI Search Performance Workflows

• Navigate AI Search Performance
• Identify AI Content Gaps
• Analyze Competitors in AI Search
• Manage Your Brand’s Reputation in AI
• Build Your AI Search Performance Report (coming soon!)

• How to setup AI Search tracking
• AI Search tracking best practices

• Defining Topics, Prompts, Personas, and Search Intent
• Understanding Brand Mentions, Website Citations, Cited Pages, and Sentiment
• Navigating the report’s three core views: Overview, Competitive Landscape, and Your Performance
• Setting Global Filters and the Period-over-Period comparison
• Using Explore to go deeper on any widget

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Step-by-step

1. Go to theAI Search Performance ↗️ report (Performance > AI Search). You’ll land on the Overview tab.
2. Familiarize yourself with the five tabs: Overview, Competitive Landscape, Your Performance, Topics, and Prompts.
3. On the Overview, review your four Summary Cards — your headline KPIs:

• Your brand mentions — how often AI engines reference your brand by name.
• Your website citations — how often AI engines link to your site as an authoritative source.
• Your cited pages — the number of unique pages on your site currently being cited by AI engines.
• Your sentiment score (1–10) — the overall tone of how AI engines talk about your brand.

1. Review the Entire Market by Share of Voice and Tracked Competitors Share of Voice widgets to see how your brand stacks up competitively at a glance.
2. Review Your Performance by AI Search Engine to see how your visibility compares across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and others.
3. Review Featured Topics & Prompts to see mention coverage, citation coverage, and sentiment for your highest-investment tracking areas in one place.
4. Notice the Explore button available on most widgets throughout the report. Clicking it opens a deeper data view — use it whenever you want to go beyond the summary and dig into the underlying data.
5. Locate the Global Filters at the top of the report. These apply across every view simultaneously:

• Website — scopes the data to your selected property.
• AI Search Engines — filters by platform.
• Topics — narrows the report to specific tracked topic groups.
• Prompt Type (Branded / Unbranded) — filters for branded queries (users asking about you by name) vs. unbranded queries (general category questions).
• Intent and Persona — focus your entire analysis on a specific audience or need state.

1. Toggle on Period-over-Period (PoP) mode in the date selector to switch your Summary Cards from trend lines to a direct period comparison with Winners & Losers called out.
2. Navigate to Competitive Landscape — where you benchmark your Share of Voice and explore which brands are winning each topic across the market.
3. Navigate to Your Performance — where you diagnose your brand’s strengths and gaps through trended performance, a Personas and Intent Heatmap, Topic Coverage, Cited Pages, and Sentiment analysis.
4. Navigate to Topics and Prompts to explore the raw tracked data that powers every insight in the report.

• AI Search Performance Support Article
• How to Setup AI Search
• AI Search FAQs
• AI Search Fundamentals Enablement Course

• Using the KPI cards to choose your diagnostic lens
• When to focus on Brand Mentions vs. Website Citations — and what each tells you
• Reading the Personas and Intent Heatmap to find content gap white space
• Using Topic Coverage to identify your weakest topic areas
• Using Cited Pages to understand your content authority footprint
• Drilling down to specific prompts and taking action in Writing Assistant

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Step-by-step

1. Navigate to the Your Performance tab inAI Search Performance ↗️ (Performance > AI Search > Your Performance).
2. Review the three KPI cards at the top — Your Brand Mentions, Your Website Citations, and Your Sentiment Score. The active card determines which metric all the widgets below are displaying. Before diving in, decide which diagnostic question you’re answering today:

• “Is my brand showing up in AI conversations?” → Select Your Brand Mentions. Use this when you want to find where a specific audience isn’t hearing about your brand at all. Low mentions typically signal a need for new content to establish presence.
• “Is my content being treated as an authoritative source?” → Select Your Website Citations. Use this when you have some brand presence but AI engines aren’t linking to your site. Low citations typically signal a need to optimize existing content — improving structure, depth, and authority signals so AI treats it as citable.

1. With your chosen KPI selected, scroll to the Personas and Intent Heatmap. The grid shows your coverage at every intersection of a tracked Persona (rows) and Search Intent category (columns).

• Dark cells = strong coverage.
• Light or empty cells = weak or zero coverage. These are your gaps.

1. Scroll down to Topic Coverage — a treemap showing your coverage across tracked topics. Lighter tiles = weaker coverage. Larger tiles = more prompts tracked, meaning bigger gaps have bigger stakes.
2. Identify a cell in either the Heatmap or Treemap with notably low coverage for an audience and intent or topic that matters to your business. That’s your target.
3. Click the cell to drill into the underlying prompt data. Filter further to build a targeted list of prompts to target with new or optimized content.
4. Click the three-dot menu and select Go to Writing Assistant to kick off the content creation process.

• AI Search Performance Support Article
• AI Search FAQs

• Setting the right filter context: Branded vs. Unbranded prompts
• Reading your Share of Voice KPI cards and benchmarking against the entire market vs. tracked competitors
• Using the Top Mentioned Brands table to understand who’s winning — and how they’re perceived
• Reading the Competitive Landscape by Top Topics to see who wins each specific topic
• Clicking into a competitor’s topic performance to explore the underlying prompts
• Using global Intent and Persona filters for audience-specific competitive intelligence
• Using Branded prompts to identify PR and partnership opportunities

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Step-by-step

1. Navigate to the Competitive Landscape tab inAI Search Performance ↗️ (Performance > AI Search > Competitive Landscape).
2. Set your Prompt Type filter to Unbranded before analyzing the competitive landscape. Unbranded prompts represent general category queries — the true competitive field where brands are competing purely on content authority, not brand recognition. This is the most meaningful context for head-to-head competitive analysis.
3. Use the Entire Market / Tracked Competitors toggle to control the scope of your analysis:

• Entire Market — shows every brand appearing in AI responses across your tracked topics, giving you a broad market view.
• Tracked Competitors — focuses the view on the specific brands you’ve configured as competitors, making for a cleaner head-to-head comparison.

1. Review the two KPI cards at the top — Brand Mentions and Website Citations — showing your Share of Voice as a percentage of the market, with period-over-period change.
2. Review the Your Brand Mention Share of Voice widget — a trend line of your SOV over time. Click Explore to drill into the data and customize the competitor view.
3. Review the Top Mentioned Brands table. This shows the brands most frequently mentioned in AI responses, alongside their Sentiment Score and Prompts with Mentions count. A competitor with high mentions but a lower sentiment score has a visibility advantage but a perception vulnerability — a useful signal for your positioning strategy.
4. Scroll to Competitive Landscape by Top Topics. This grid shows which brands are winning each of your tracked topics, ranked by frequency of mention. Scan across your priority topics to identify where you’re strong, where a specific competitor consistently dominates, and where you’re absent entirely.
5. Hover over any competitor’s logo in the grid to see a quick tooltip with their mention count and period-over-period change. Click the logo to open a Prompts with Mentions modal pre-filtered to that competitor and topic. In this modal you can see:

• The specific prompts where that competitor is mentioned
• Whether your brand is mentioned in those same prompts
• Period-over-period change for each prompt

1. In the modal, identify prompts where the competitor is mentioned but you are not. Click the three-dot menu on any prompt and select Go to Writing Assistant to kick off content creation targeting that gap.
2. Apply a Persona or Intent global filter to get audience-specific competitive intelligence. The competitive landscape can look very different depending on which audience or need state you’re analyzing — a relatively weak competitor overall may actually dominate with a specific persona you care about.
3. For a different type of competitive intelligence, switch the Prompt Type filter to Branded and toggle to view the Entire Market. This shows which third-party publishers and sites are most cited alongside your brand name in branded queries. These are potential PR and partnership targets — sites AI already trusts to discuss your brand category.

• AI Search Performance Support Article
• AI Search FAQs

• Reading your Sentiment Score trend and drilling in to see positive vs. negative statement breakdowns
• Using the Top Influential Sources widget to identify which domains are shaping your narrative
• Using Explore to get the full source-level picture — including sentiment scores by domain
• Understanding “Unsourced” statements and what they mean for your strategy
• Using the Personas and Intent Heatmap in sentiment mode to spot audience-specific reputation risks
• Turning sentiment insights into PR, content, and outreach actions

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Step-by-step

1. Navigate to the Your Performance tab inAI Search Performance ↗️ (Performance > AI Search > Your Performance).
2. Click the Your Sentiment Score KPI card at the top. This activates the sentiment lens — the widgets below update to show sentiment data. The KPI card shows your overall Sentiment Score (1–10) and its period-over-period change. A score of 10 is most positive; 1 is most negative.
3. Review the Your Sentiment Score trend widget — a line chart showing your score over time. Click Explore to open a detailed view that breaks down Positive statements, Negative statements, and the overall Sentiment Score trend together, with statement counts and change data. This is your first diagnostic layer — use it to understand whether a change in your score is driven by rising negatives, declining positives, or both.
4. Scroll to the Top Influential Sources widget. This shows the domains most responsible for driving sentiment in AI responses about your brand. Use the three tabs to switch your view:

• All statements — all sources ranked by total statement volume
• Positive statements — sources driving positive perception
• Negative statements — sources driving negative perception

1. Click Explore on the Top Influential Sources widget to open the full source table. Here you can see each source’s statement count, period-over-period change, number of prompts, and the topics they’re most associated with. This gives you a complete picture of which publishers are your biggest allies — and which are your biggest reputation risks.

• 💡 Note on “Unsourced” statements: You’ll notice “Unsourced” as a row in both the widget and the Explore table. These are statements the AI generated from its training knowledge rather than a specific web page — meaning there’s no source URL to directly influence. Knowing the volume of unsourced statements helps you understand how much of your reputation narrative you can actually affect through direct outreach initiatives.

1. Scroll down to the Personas and Intent Heatmap — now in sentiment mode — to see how your brand’s reputation varies across different audiences and intent categories. Your overall score may look healthy while a specific persona or intent stage tells a different story.
2. Use your findings to take action:

• For negative sources: share the specific statements and source URLs with your PR or content team. If the source is a publisher, consider a direct outreach conversation. If the language appears on your own site, address it in your content.
• For positive sources: these are partnership and co-marketing opportunities — sites AI already trusts to speak positively about your brand.
• For unsourced negatives: the lever is increasing the volume and authority of your own content so that AI has better, more accurate sources to draw from.
• For persona/intent gaps in the heatmap: use these to prioritize which audience narratives need the most attention.

• AI Search Performance Support Article
• AI Search FAQs

• Setting the right filters before building
• Adding trended performance graphs from the KPI cards
• Adding Featured Topics & Prompts and Performance by Search Engine for both mentions and citations
• Building competitive widgets with the right filter setup — including Share of Voice Explore views and Competitive Landscape by Topic
• Organizing your Workspace with headers and scheduling recurring delivery

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Step-by-step

1. Navigate toAI Search Performance ↗️ (Performance > AI Search) and set your filters before building. For an executive report, include the full picture — your primary Website, all tracked AI Search Engines, all key Topics, and both Branded and Unbranded prompts. Leave Persona and Intent filters broad. Set your date range and enable Compare mode.
2. Navigate to the Your Performance tab. Click the Your Brand Mentions KPI card to open its trended performance graph. Add it to a new Workspace (three-dot icon → Add to Workspace). Name your Workspace something like “AI Search Executive Report.”
3. Click the Your Website Citations KPI card and add that trended graph. Click the Your Sentiment Score KPI card and add it if brand reputation is a leadership priority.
4. Navigate to the Overview tab. Add Featured Topics & Prompts — a one-stop read on your biggest AI Search investments. Then add Your Performance by AI Search Engine twice — once with the toggle set to mentions, once set to citations.
5. Now build your competitive widgets. Switch filters to: Prompt Type → Unbranded, Entire Market / Tracked Competitors → Tracked Competitors, Compare mode off.
6. Navigate to the Competitive Landscape tab. Click Explore on the Your Brand Mention Share of Voice widget, select your top business competitors, and add that view to your Workspace. Switch to Website Citations, click Explore again, re-select the same competitors, and add that view too.
7. Still on the Competitive Landscape tab, add the Competitive Landscape by Top Topics grid — this shows which competitor is winning each of your tracked topics, by mentions. Then switch the active metric to citations and add the Competitive Landscape by Top Topics grid again for the citations view.
8. Navigate toWorkspaces ↗️ to organize your report. Suggested layout:

• Performance Overview — Brand Mentions + Website Citations + Sentiment trend graphs
• Performance by Topic — Featured Topics & Prompts
• Performance by AI Engine — Performance by Search Engine (mentions + citations)
• Competitive Snapshot (unbranded prompts) — Share of Voice Explore views (mentions + citations) + Competitive Landscape by Top Topics (mentions + citations)

1. Enable the Scheduled E-Mail toggle and set a recurring cadence.

• AI Search Performance Support Article ↗️
• Workspaces Support Article ↗️
• Creating and Maintaining Workspaces ↗️

• Setting filters and choosing branded vs. unbranded prompts for your team’s use case
• Building a Brand Mentions section: Competitive Landscape by Topic, Personas and Intent Heatmap, Topic Coverage, and Topics table
• Building a parallel Website Citations section with the same four widgets
• Organizing and scheduling the board for weekly team delivery

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Step-by-step

1. Navigate toAI Search Performance ↗️ (Performance > AI Search) and set your filters before building. Tactical dashboards can be scoped more narrowly than executive ones — filter by the specific Topics, Personas, and Intent stages your team is responsible for. Then make a key decision on Prompt Type:

• Unbranded — for teams designing content and website strategy to increase brand awareness. Shows how you compete in category-level conversations where users aren’t searching for your brand by name — and where you need to earn your place in the answer.
• Branded — for teams designing content and website strategy to shape the narrative about their brand online. Shows how your brand appears when users specifically search for you, and what topics and sources are defining that perception.

1. Set your date range and enable Compare mode.
2. Build your eight widgets, adding each one twice — once for mentions, once for citations. Add them to a new Workspace (three-dot icon → Add to Workspace) named something like “AEO Team Action Board.”

• Widget 1 & 2: Competitive Landscape by Top Topics — Navigate to the Competitive Landscape tab. Add the Competitive Landscape by Top Topics grid for mentions. Switch the active metric to citations and add it again. This widget shows which competitors are winning each topic — surfacing your most actionable competitive opportunities.
• Widget 3 & 4: Personas and Intent Heatmap — Navigate to the Your Performance tab. Click the Your Brand Mentions KPI card and scroll to the Personas and Intent Heatmap. Add it. (You’ll add the citations version after Widget 5.) This widget spots opportunities across the buyer’s journey — showing exactly which audience and intent combinations have coverage gaps.
• Widget 5 & 6: Topic Coverage — Still on Your Performance with Brand Mentions active, scroll to the Topic Coverage treemap and add it. Now click the Your Website Citations KPI card and add both the heatmap and the treemap again for the citations view — completing widgets 4 and 6. This widget spots topical opportunities — lighter tiles reveal which topic areas have the weakest coverage and most room to grow.
• Widget 7 & 8: Topics table — Navigate to the Topics tab with Compare mode on. Sort by Mentions Coverage from high to low and add the table — title it “Topics by Highest Mention Coverage”. Re-sort by Citations Coverage from high to low and add it again — title it “Topics by Highest Citation Coverage”. This widget gives the team full performance monitoring — the complete topic list with period-over-period movement, so they can track gains and flag declines across everything they’re tracking.

1. Navigate toWorkspaces ↗️ to organize. Arrange the eight widgets into two sections:

• Header: Brand Mentions — Competitive Landscape by Topic (mentions) + Heatmap (mentions) + Topic Coverage (mentions) + Topics table (mentions)
• Header: Website Citations — Competitive Landscape by Topic (citations) + Heatmap (citations) + Topic Coverage (citations) + Topics table (citations)

1. Enable the Scheduled E-Mail toggle and set delivery for Monday morning.

• AI Search Performance Support Article ↗️
• Workspaces Support Article ↗️
• Creating and Maintaining Workspaces ↗️