Conductor AI: Understanding Your Brand's Visibility in AI Search

The world of search is undergoing a significant transformation. Users are increasingly turning to AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, moving beyond simple keywords to ask complex questions and seek comprehensive answers. This shift means that understanding your brand's visibility requires a new approach—one that focuses on how AI engines interpret and present your brand in this evolving landscape. 

Conductor's new AI Search Performance report is here to help you navigate this new frontier. This powerful tool allows you to monitor your brand's presence and authority within these AI-driven search platforms, providing crucial insights to adapt your strategy and maintain your competitive edge. Watch the video below to see it in action! 

🚨 The AI Search Performance report is evolving fast! Click here to learn about the latest improvements—including tracking Google AIO & AI Mode, ChatGPT updates and more. 🚨

Traditional SEO metrics, while still important, don't tell the whole story in the age of AI search. AI engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT and Google AIO organize information around topics, user intent, and personas, not just keywords. They aim to provide direct, contextual answers, often summarizing information and citing sources. 

To thrive in this new environment, you need to understand: 

• How AI Perceives Your Brand: Is your brand being mentioned positively, negatively, or neutrally in AI-generated responses?

• Your Topical Authority: Does AI see your brand as a credible source for the topics that matter to your business?

• User Intent Alignment: Is your content satisfying the underlying goals of users searching with AI?

• Citation Worthiness: Are your website pages being referenced as authoritative sources by AI engines?

The AI Search Performance report helps you answer these questions, shifting the focus from isolated keywords to a more holistic view of your brand's influence in the AI search ecosystem. 

The AI Search Performance report is designed to provide end-to-end visibility into how your brand is faring across AI search platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. It moves beyond traditional rank tracking to offer insights into: 

• Brand Mentions: Understand how often your brand name (and variations you define) appears directly within the text of AI-generated responses. This indicates if AI considers your brand relevant to the query.

• Website Citations: Identify which of your website pages are being cited as sources by AI engines. Citations are a powerful signal of authority and trust in the AI's "eyes."

• Brand Sentiment: Investigate the tone of your brand mentions—are they positive or negative—to understand your reputation at a glance.

By tracking these key metrics—along with performance by persona, performance by intent, and market share analysis—you can gain a clear understanding of your visibility and how it compares to competitors within specific topics. 

To begin harnessing these insights, you'll first need to configure your tracking within Conductor. This setup ensures that the data collected is tailored and relevant to your business. Setting up your Conductor account for AI Search involves configuring your: 

• Brands

• Topics

• Prompts

• Personas

Reference this Knowledge Base article for everything you need to know to get started: 

🧠 Which AI Search Engines are currently supported?

ChatGPT (Auto) 

• Tracks ChatGPT's default setting. This mode dynamically switches between using its internal knowledge and live web search. Select this to measure visibility within the most common ChatGPT user experience.

ChatGPT (Search) 

• Tracks ChatGPT's mode that exclusively uses live web search for all responses. While less common, this is valuable for monitoring your brand's real-time visibility and may signal how the default model will evolve.

Google Gemini 

• Tracks visibility in Gemini. Depending on the prompt, it strategically uses live search only when it determines that external, current information is necessary to provide an accurate and relevant answer.

Google AI Mode 

• Tracks prompts in Google's conversational AI mode. Use this to measure your brand's visibility in direct, chat-based interactions, separate from traditional search.

Google AI Overview 

• Tracks the AI-generated summary at the top of Google's search results page (SERP). Monitoring this is crucial for understanding visibility in the most prominent AI-integrated search feature.

Perplexity 

• Tracks prompts in Perplexity, a conversational "answer engine." Perplexity heavily emphasizes citing its sources, making this essential for understanding how your content is being surfaced and referenced.

🤔 Two Ways to Track Google's AI Overviews: Which Report Should You Use?

You can track Google's AI Overview (AIO) performance in two different places in our product: the traditional search Keywords report and the new AI Search Performance report. Each one answers a different question. 

1. Tracking AIOs in the Keywords Report 

Think of this as a quick, high-level check. It's designed to fit AI data into the familiar world of keyword ranking. 

• What it tells you:

  • Did an AI Overview appear for my keyword? (Yes/No)

  • Where did it rank? (e.g., Position #1)

• What it doesn't tell you:

  • It does not capture the actual text inside the AI Overview. This means you can't see brand mentions, sentiment, or sources cited within the AI's answer.

• Use this report when you want to:

  • Quickly see if AI Overviews are showing up for your core keywords.

  • View AIO presence alongside your other traditional ranking data for consistency.

2. Tracking AIOs in the AI Search Performance Report 

Think of this as the deep, strategic analysis. This report is built for the new era of AI search and tells you what the AI is actually saying. 

• What it tells you:

  • It captures the full text of the AI-generated response.

  • From that text, it analyzes crucial details like:

    • Brand Mentions: Is your brand (or a competitor's) mentioned?

    • Sentiment: Is the tone of the response positive, negative, or neutral?

    • Citations: Which websites are being used as sources?

• Use this report when you want to:

  • Understand the narrative the AI is creating around your brand and topics.

  • Develop a specific strategy to influence AI responses.

  • Track performance on broad topics and long-form conversational prompts, not just individual keywords.

With your tracking configured, you can dive into the AI Search Performance report to uncover valuable insights: 

1️⃣ Overview Trends: 

• The main dashboard will show you your overall Brand Mentions and Website Citations over time (daily, weekly, or monthly depending on your tracking frequency). This gives you a high-level view of your AI search visibility.

2️⃣ Audience Insights: 

• Monitor trends in your visibility over time by persona and intent. Track how often your brand was mentioned or website was cited in AI search results for prompts, grouped by search intent and by persona.

3️⃣ Brand Sentiment Analysis: 

• See your brand sentiment over time and pinpoint primary sources for negative and positive brand mentions. Understand your overall reputation and primary sentiment influencers at a glance.

3️⃣ Market Share Analysis: 

• Understand your brand's presence compared to competitors for the topics you're tracking. See which brands are being mentioned and cited, helping you benchmark your performance.

4️⃣ Topic Drill-Down: 

• Investigate performance for specific topics. You can see your citation coverage for each topic and identify your top-cited pages.

5️⃣ Prompt-Level Analysis: 

• Drill down further to see the specific AI-generated prompts associated with each topic.

• For each prompt, you'll see the identified search intent and key metrics.

• You'll also be able to view the actual AI response snippet, providing full context for your performance.

The AI Search Performance report is more than just data; it's a strategic tool to: 

• Understand Brand Perception: See how your brand is being portrayed and referenced in AI-generated narratives.

• Identify Content Strengths and Gaps: Pinpoint which topics and content pieces are resonating with AI engines and where you have opportunities to improve.

• Refine Your Content Strategy: Use these insights to create and optimize content that directly addresses user intents, builds topical authority, and earns valuable citations in AI search results.

By embracing these new visibility metrics and leveraging the power of the AI Search Performance report, you can proactively adapt your organic strategy, ensuring your brand remains a relevant and authoritative voice in the rapidly evolving world of AI-driven search. 

Have questions about AI Search concepts, data or configuration? Check out answers to frequently asked questions here: