AI Search Performance Tracking Best Practices

The search landscape is shifting under our feet. For years, the goal was simple: rank for a link. But with the rise of AI Search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews, the goal has evolved. 

Today, it’s not just about the link; it’s about Owning the Answer. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up your AI Search Performance report in Conductor to monitor your brand’s visibility in this new landscape, track the conversations that matter, and protect your authority. 

The "Why": Tracking Conversations, Not Just Keywords

AI search engines don't just list websites; they provide answers. Even if an AI engine doesn't always drive direct click-through traffic the way a traditional blue link does, monitoring it is critical for two reasons: 

1. Brand Protection: You need to know if an AI is recommending a competitor when a user asks about your brand.

2. The Full Funnel: AI search covers the entire user journey, from broad inspiration ("living room ideas") to specific transactional comparisons ("Pottery Barn vs. Ikea delivery cost").

We aren't just tracking keywords anymore; we are tracking conversations and citations to ensure you are the authority. 

In this guide, we'll cover:

1️⃣ How to Choose Your Tracking Strategy 

2️⃣ How to Configure Your Prompts 

3️⃣ How to Optimize Your AI Credit Usage 

4️⃣ How to Interpret AI Search Data 

Before you start configuring your report, it helps to have a game plan. We recommend one of two strategies depending on your current needs. 

Strategy A: The "Category" Approach (Top-Down)

Best for: New users or establishing a broad baseline. 

Track broad product or service categories to see how AI handles general inquiries. 

Concept: Select 10–15 business critical categories (e.g., "Handbags," "CRM Software"). 

The Setup: 

• Personas: Use broad personas like "Price-conscious shopper" or "Luxury gifter" to see how answers change based on who is asking.

• Intents: Select all intents (Comparison, Recommendation, Pricing, etc.) to spot where you win or lose.

• Prompt Type: Aim for a mix of Unbranded and Branded topics. The real battleground is often unbranded queries (e.g., "Best leather sofa") where you want to ensure you are part of the conversation.

Strategy B: The "Data-Led" Approach (Bottom-Up)

Best for: Advanced users looking to optimize specific high-traffic pages. 

This method involves reverse-engineering prompts based on pages that are already getting attention from AI bots. 

• Check Log Files: Look at the ChatGPT-User bot hits in Conductor Monitoring. Which pages is it crawling?

• Check Analytics: Look for "AI Referral Traffic" in Google Analytics (often masked as direct/social).

• Action: If Page A (e.g., "Sofa Product Page") gets bot hits but no traffic, the AI is reading it but not citing it. Track topics related to Page A immediately.

Once you've chosen a strategy, it's time to set it up in Conductor. Head to Settings > Topics and Prompts and follow this workflow: 

1️⃣ Add Topics

Associate your topics with the brands most closely tied to your identity alongside product lines (e.g., "Conductor, Conductor Intelligence, Conductor Monitoring…") 

2️⃣ Select Engines

Choose your platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO, etc.). Review the comparison table below for more information on each engine choice. 

Note: Tracking multiple engines for a single topic will multiply credit usage, so choose strategically. 

3️⃣ Configure Locations

You can track across 160+ countries. Note that city-level tracking is available for most engines, but Google AI Mode is currently country-level only. 

4️⃣ Select Your Topics

Choose from the list auto-generated suggestions and/or add topics manually—aligning to the strategy you opted for in Step 1 (“Category Approach” or “Data-Led Approach”). 

5️⃣ Define Prompts

This is where the magic happens. You control the inputs Conductor uses to generate prompts: 

• Prompt Types: Toggle between Branded, Non-Branded, or Both.

• Search Intents: Select user goals like "Comparison" or "Pricing". 

  • Pro-Tip: Remove "Pricing" intents for Branded terms (e.g., "Is [Your Brand] expensive?") if you want to save credits on lower-value answers.

• Personas: Apply a "Broad Audience" or customize it to specific user types. 

  • Important note: Personas are used to generate persona-relevant prompts—and there’s no way to programmatically categorize prompts retroactively—so it’s a good idea to spend time setting up your personas before moving forward.

Power User Move: During the "Final Review" step, use the Download XLSX button. This allows you to edit hundreds of generated prompts in Excel, make custom tweaks, and Upload them back for bulk customization. 

Think of your AI Response Credits like a budget—you want to spend them where they have the highest impact. To do this, you need to understand not just what an engine costs, but how it generates answers and why you should use it.  

The "Exchange Rate"

Not all engines "cost" the same to track. Understanding this helps you maximize your coverage. 

The "Golden Ratio" Approach

A recommended expert approach for balancing insight with budget is: 

• 80-90% of credits on ChatGPT Auto (The market leader).

• 10-20% spread across Perplexity & Google AIO for insights and diversity.

Advisor Note: Don't be afraid to use Google AIO or Perplexity. Because they are highly efficient (low credit cost), they are excellent "add-ons" to your core strategy to help you spot early trends. 

Now that your tracking is live, you need to know what the numbers are actually telling you. We break interpretation down into two categories: Visibility Metrics (what you see in the AI Search Performance report) and Impact Metrics (how you correlate that visibility with technical health and traffic). 

A. The "Scoreboard": Visibility Metrics

These metrics live directly inside your AI Search Performance report and measure your market presence. 

Mentions

A Brand Mention occurs when an AI tool, such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, references your brand in the text of its response. 

💡 The Insight: This answers, "Are we part of the conversation?". High mentions on key topics confirm you are visible in the context of the AI's answer. It measures your brand awareness and sentiment within AI engines. 

Citations

An AI Citation refers to an instance where an AI response explicitly cites your website as a source for its information, often including a direct link to your content. 

💡 The Insight: This answers, "Are we seen as the authority?". Citations are the currency of AI search. They validate your content as a primary source for the AI model and are the primary mechanism for driving valuable referral traffic back to your site. 

Intent Performance Over Time

This metric tracks how often your brand was mentioned or cited for prompts grouped by search intent (e.g., Education, Comparison, Purchase). 

💡 The Insight: Tracking intent allows you to move from a volume-based content strategy to a value-based one. By understanding if a user's goal is to learn or to buy, you can create targeted content that guides them through the buyer's journey and boosts conversion rates. 

Persona Performance Over Time

This tracks how often your brand was mentioned or cited for prompts grouped by audience persona12. 

💡 The Insight: This ensures your message resonates with the right people. An "IT Director" searches with different language and needs than a "Small Business Owner". Analyzing visibility by persona helps you tailor your content's tone and technical depth to win the specific audience that matters most to you. 

A Note on Market Share:

If your Market Share looks lower in AI Search than in traditional search, don't panic. In AI, you aren't just fighting competitors; you are fighting Publishers (like Reddit, YouTube, or niche blogs) that LLMs love to cite. 

Pro-Tip: Use the Market Share Filter to remove Branded prompts. This reveals who really owns the category for unbranded queries—often uncovering publisher partnerships you should pursue. 

B. The "Bigger Picture": Validating Cause & Effect

While the following metrics live outside the AI Search Performance report, checking them helps you validate the "Why" (technical causes) and the "So What" (traffic outcomes) behind your visibility. 

AI Bot Crawl Frequency (The Prerequisite)

🛠️ Where to look: Conductor Monitoring (Log File Analysis) 

• High Frequency: Crawl frequency shows importance. AI engines crawl pages they deem important more frequently. A high or increased crawl frequency suggests the AI is refreshing its understanding of your content and that those pages are highly relevant to potential AI prompts.

• Low or No Frequency: If you see little to no crawl activity from bots like GPTBot, the AI likely does not view your page as authoritative or relevant enough to index regularly. It can also indicate a technical blocker (like a robots.txt disallow) preventing the AI from accessing your content at all.

AI Referral Traffic (The Outcome)

🛠️ Where to look: Your Web Analytics (e.g., GA4) or Conductor’s new Pages Reporting (Alpha Program).  

• The Insight: This measures the traffic driven directly from a click-through link within an AI response.

• What to do with this data: Analyze the pages receiving this traffic to understand what follow-up information users seek after viewing an AI response. Since these users have already engaged with an answer about you, they are likely high-intent; ensure these pages are optimized for conversion rather than just awareness.

✅ Conclusion

Tracking performance in the era of AI Search is no longer just about ranking for a link; it’s about owning the answer. By setting up your AI Search Performance tracking strategically, you aren't just monitoring metrics—you are building a map of your brand's authority in the most advanced digital environments. 

Whether you are protecting your brand from competitor citations or optimizing content to win the next conversation, the data is your compass. Use these insights to refine your strategy, validate your authority, and ensure that when an AI answers, it answers with you.