The questions below refer to Conductor's AI Search Performance features. You can learn about these features in the following articles:

• AI Search Performance
• Topic Details
• AI Search Setup

What is a brand in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting?

A "brand" refers to the presence and positioning of your organization's identity—or of its products and services—across the AI search landscape. This might include how the brand is cited, mentioned, and positioned across various topics and for various personas.

When you add a brand to track in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting, you are telling Conductor how to know what to look for and how to identify your presence in AI results.

The AI Search Performance report provides a view into the presence of each brand you track by monitoring mentions and citations over time, analyzing market share at the topic level, and providing insights into how the brand is surfaced and trusted by AI search systems.

What is a topic in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting?

A "topic" refers to a thematic area around which AI search engines organize information. Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting includes market share analysis based on mentions and citations at the topic level, and further exploration into the prompts that represent each topic.

When you add a topic to track in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting, you are telling Conductor how to classify the semantically relevant content that it should consider as being related under a single topical area.

Conductor designed AI Search Performance to help organizations position their brands at the center of how AI understands and presents information for the topics that matter to your business. This lets you quantify your share of voice for your topics—and to influence how your brands are surfaced, cited, and trusted by AI search systems.

By default, you can track up to 50 topics across the websites in your account. Contact Conductor if you need more than 50 topics.

What is a prompt in Conductors AI Search Performance reporting?

A "prompt" refers to the terms or phrases that users enter into AI search engines. Each prompt you track belongs to a tracked “topic”, and reflects how a user might signal their interest in that topic. Conductor analyzes your tracked prompts to understand how your brand performs for topics in terms of visibility in AI search results.

When you track a topic in Conductor’s AI Search Performance reporting, Conductor’s AI engine automatically creates a set of related prompts.

The data gathered for each of those prompts appears in AI Search Performance, and provide you with context about the kinds of ways your customers might be searching for information about your topic. You can use insights to track your brands' performance and discover opportunities for optimization.

Conductor will generate up to 100 prompts for a topic. Contact Conductor if you need more than 100 prompts for a topic.

What is a persona in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting?

A "persona" refers to an example of the type of person who might be searching for one of your topics.

enable us to generate popular prompts for your topics and categorize them. You will then be able to monitor your which will enable you to monitor your visibility in terms of the personas most valuable to your business

Don't already have personas defined at your organization? Start by identifying the key characteristics, goals, and challenges of your target audience based on research and data. Categorize these personas according to their relevance to your business goals, which allows you to generate targeted prompts and monitor visibility effectively.

What is a mention in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting?

A "mention" is when Conductor identifies one of your brands as appearing in the text of an AI search result.

How does Conductor handle brand mentions if I have multiple domains with different brand names?

Brand configurations, including brand names and associated domains, are managed at the web property level in Conductor's settings. This allows you to define specific brands for each web property you are tracking in AI Search.

For example, if you have two different domains with distinct brand identities, you would set them up as separate web properties with their respective brand names configured. Conductor will then track mentions for those specific configured brands in relation to that web property.

How are multiple mentions of the same brand counted for a single AI response?

If a specific brand is mentioned multiple times in a single AI response for a prompt, it is counted as one unique brand mention for that prompt. In other words, Conductor looks at the AI response and asks "Does this brand appear at all in this response?" If the answer is "Yes" then AI Search Performance considers it a mention.

However, note that if the same response includes multiple citations of your website, each distinct citation is counted.

What is a citation in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting?

A "citation" is when Conductor identifies a link to your website among the sources an AI search engine used to create an AI search result.

How are multiple citations of the same website counted for a single AI response?

If a specific website is cited multiple times in a single AI response for a prompt, each link is counted  as a citation for that prompt.

However, note that if the same response includes multiple mentions of one of your brands, those mentions will be counted as one, unique mention.

What does Conductor consider a "website" in AI Search Performance reporting?

A "website" includes all the web properties you have included in your configured web property groups. This means that your citations data will include any property you track with Conductor, including social channels or other off-site content. 

What is search intent in Conductor's AI Search Performance reporting?

"Search Intent" is a classification Conductor gives to prompts in AI Search Performance. This classification describes the underlying purpose or goal of the person performing a search with the prompt. Conductor evaluates each prompt with our AI engine to determine one of the following classifications for search intent:

• Brand/Service Navigation: User seeks a specific brand, site, or known service. Not all branded prompts are of this type.
• Comparison: User directly compares alternatives.
• Education: User seeks to learn or understand.
• Other: The prompt doesn't fit neatly into the other categories.
• Pricing: User seeks cost information.
• Purchase: User shows intent to buy or take conversion action.
• Recommendations: User seeks suggestions or options (not direct comparison).
• Support: User needs help or customer service.

How do you get data about AI search engine results?

We use official APIs provided by the AI search engines we support to get the content from responses, which provides more accurate, scalable, and richer data (like location-specific results).

How does Conductor generate suggested topics and prompts for AI Search Performance tracking?

Conductor's AI engine generates topic suggestions for AI Search by analyzing a combination of your existing tracked keyword data and AI analysis of your web property using large language models (LLMs).

When you track a topic in Conductor's AI Search Performance, the AI engine automatically generates a set of up to 100 prompts that represent the topic. These prompts are designed to reflect how users might signal their interest in that topic in AI search engines. The data collected from these prompts helps to understand how your brand performs in terms of visibility in AI search results, providing insights into user intents and behaviors.

How does Conductor differentiate brand mentions if I have multiple domains with different brand names?

Brand configuration, including brand names and associated domains, are managed at the web property level in Conductor's settings. This allows you to define specific brands for each web property you are tracking in AI Search.

For instance, if you have two different domains with distinct brand identities, you would set them up as separate web properties with their respective brand names configured for AI Search Performance.

Conductor will then track mentions for those specific configured brands in relation to that web property.

How does Conductor differentiate brand mentions when I track a primary brand and its sub-brands?

When tracking main brands and sub-brands (like "Nike" vs. "Air Max"), you can differentiate these with your topic configuration. When you add a topic, you can select the brands you want included for the particular topic or set of topics. So, if you know you want to track a topic where one of your sub-brands (like “Air Max”) would likely be relevant to that specific topic or group of topics, you could add that as a brand in the topic configuration process.

Which AI search engines does Conductor support for topic tracking in AI Search Performance?

 Currently, Conductor supports ChatGPT Search and Perplexity.

What locations does Conductor support for tracking topics with AI Search Performance?

Conductor supports the country-level locations that are available to gather data from the APIs provided by our supported AI search engines. If the search engine provides data for a particular country through their API, then you'll be able to see data for that location in Conductor. The list of current supported locations is listed below.

Note that if you do not see a particular location for which you want track results, you can add the location with the topic you want to track. This will provide our AI engine with some contextual guidance related to the location and help return prompts that are relevant to your location of interest.

How long will it take AI search engines to update their results based on our optimizations?

AI search engines are still relatively new, and our industry's understanding of how companies like OpenAI and Perplexity are crawling and creating AI responses is relatively limited. However, Conductor and its Community of marketing professionals can help guide you as we learn more together.

Want to find out how to use Conductor's products to help understand the AI search landscape and how your site is crawled? Refer to the Optimizing Your Site & Content for AI-Powered Search in the Conductor Community to learn more.