Reading Analytics
What to act on, what to watch, and what to treat as noise.
SurfacedBy produces a lot of numbers. This guide covers which ones deserve your attention and which ones are mostly noise until the next check lands.
Act on the trend, not the point
A single check's Visibility Score, Brand Coverage, or AI Mentions count is a snapshot. AI platforms are non-deterministic; the same Prompt can produce a different answer from one run to the next. Trust the trend across several Full Checks more than any one number.
Compare like with like. A Full Check is the weekly review of your Prompt set across your platforms, while a Daily Check covers a focused subset, so the dashboard compares each check with the previous check of the same kind. When a comparison has to cross the two, it is labelled "Trend only".
Know what counts as a real move
SurfacedBy's own alerts are a useful yardstick. At the default Standard sensitivity, an alert fires when Visibility Score drops by more than 5 points or Brand Coverage moves by 5% or more, and only when both checks being compared measured enough answers to trust the move. Smaller moves, or moves measured on only a handful of answers, are usually noise. See Alerts for every sensitivity level.
Focus on Brand Coverage before Visibility Score
Visibility Score combines four components. When you first open the dashboard, the temptation is to ask "how do I get this number up". The answer is usually one level down, in Brand Coverage.
Brand Coverage is the share of AI answers that mention you, by citing your site or naming your brand. If it is low, the question is "why do these specific Prompts not mention us", which is actionable. If it is high, the question is "how do we hold it on more platforms and Prompts", which is also actionable.
Pay attention to per-platform variance
It is common to be mentioned often on one AI platform and rarely on another, even for the same Prompts. The AI Visibility page breaks every metric out per platform. A platform where you are rarely mentioned usually points at content that platform does not find or use, or at a competitor that holds the spot. Open that platform's answers on the AI Responses page to see which sources it used instead.
Your pages is your action list
Citations & Sources > Your pages lists the pages on your site that AI platforms cite. The pages at the top of this list are the ones to protect and build on:
- Keep them accurate and current so they keep being cited.
- Link from them to other important pages so AI platforms discover those too.
- Check which topics are missing. If a key topic has no cited page, the gap is a content gap.
The Sources tab shows the third-party sites AI platforms cite for your Prompts, including the ones that never mention you.
Ignore noise
A few things that are mostly noise:
- Moves smaller than your alert threshold between two checks.
- A per-platform change from a single Daily Check. Daily Checks cover a focused subset of Prompts and platforms each day, so one day's number for one platform rests on few answers.
- "New Competitor Detected" alerts for domains that are not really competitors. Remove them from Competitors > Manage so they stop affecting Share of Voice and Market Position.