Scans

A scan, called a check in the dashboard, is one run of your prompts against the AI platforms your workspace has. Checks produce every metric in SurfacedBy. The dashboard does not show one check in isolation: it shows the latest known answer for every tracked prompt, platform, and country, built from your checks over time.

Two measurement scopes

SurfacedBy runs two kinds of check:

Full Check - weekly. Reviews your tracked prompt set across your AI platforms. It is the official baseline for Market Position, reports, and durable competitor comparisons.
Daily Check - every day except a day when a Full Check is due. Reviews a focused set of your active prompts across your platforms, so you see movement between Full Checks.

Both scopes feed one scoreboard: each prompt, platform, and country cell shows its latest known answer, with the most recent Full Check as the base and later Daily Checks replacing the cells they recheck. See Measurement scope for how the scoreboard is assembled and how each scope runs.

Cadence by plan

Every paid plan (Starter, Professional, and Agency) runs a Full Check every week and a Daily Check on the days in between. Your first Full Check runs as soon as setup is complete, and Daily Checks also run during the trial. What differs between plans is the number of prompts and the set of AI platforms each check covers. See Plan limits.

The Free plan does not run checks. The free audit is a separate one-time check of 10 prompts on each of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

What gets updated

After a Full Check:

Visibility Score, Brand Coverage, and AI Mentions (overall and per platform)
Market Position and Share of Voice versus your tracked competitors
Sentiment and, on Professional and Agency, Brand Themes
Recommendations
New prompt suggestions under Suggested by AI, when SurfacedBy finds new prompts for your category

After a Daily Check:

Scoreboard values such as Visibility Score, Brand Coverage, and AI Mentions, for the cells the check covered
Alerts, compared with the previous Daily Check

Brand Themes and recommendations change only with a Full Check. Market Position is set by the Full Check and is re-ranked between Full Checks only when you change your tracked competitors. Sentiment is analyzed only during a Full Check, so answers a Daily Check rechecks drop out of the sentiment summary until the next Full Check.

Comparisons across scopes

Changes are compared with the previous check of the same scope. Where a comparison does have to cross scopes (for example, a Daily Check value against a Full Check), the dashboard shows a "Trend only" chip so the change is read as directional rather than exact. See Measurement scope.

Triggering checks

Checks in the dashboard are scheduled, not on demand: there is no "run a check now" button in the dashboard or the Data API. The one exception is the Retry scan button shown when a new domain's first check fails; see Checks. On-demand checks paid with credits are available through the Console API; see Scan triggering.

Check history

Every check is stored. The Data API exposes the check list (GET https://api.surfacedby.com/api/v1/ext/domains/{domain_id}/scans) and a single check (GET https://api.surfacedby.com/api/v1/ext/scans/{scan_id}), and the analytics endpoint accepts a scan_id to read a past check's analytics. See the API reference.