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3RD measures your brand’s presence in AI answers with five core metrics. Each one answers a different question, and together they tell the whole story: are you in the conversation, is AI learning from your pages, how are you described, where do you land in the answer, and how do you stack up against competitors.

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The five core metrics

Visibility

Are you mentioned? The share of AI answers that name your brand — your headline number.

Citation Share

Are you cited? How often AI answers cite your own pages as sources — visibility you directly control.

Sentiment

How are you described? Whether AI portrays your brand positively, neutrally, or negatively.

Position

Where do you appear? Where your mentions land inside the answer compared to your competitors — number 1 often means you’re the model’s preferred choice.

Rank

How do you compare? Your standing against tracked competitors by visibility, expressed as “X of Y.”

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Quick reference

MetricAnswersCalculation
VisibilityAm I in the answer?(responses mentioning your brand ÷ total responses) × 100
Citation ShareIs AI learning from my pages?(citations to your owned pages ÷ total citations) × 100
SentimentHow am I framed?Each mention classified as positive, neutral, or negative — shown as the split across responses that mention you
PositionWhere in this answer?Your place among competitors within the answer’s list (or order of first mention) — lower is better
RankWhere overall?All tracked brands sorted by visibility score; your place is your rank (“2 of 5”)
Position vs. Rank — the distinction people mix up most. They’re two different comparisons against your competitors:
  • Rank is built on the visibility score — it measures how often you’re mentioned compared to your competitors, across everything you track.
  • Position measures where in the answer you’re mentioned compared to your competitors.
You can be mentioned often (a strong rank) but consistently show up as the 3rd or 4th option (a weak position). Being number 1 in the answer often means you’re the AI model’s preferred choice.

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Supporting measures

Beyond the core five, you’ll see these throughout the platform:
TermWhat it is
MentionA detected occurrence of your brand in an AI response — robust to spelling variations, possessives, and suffixes, with an AI fallback for ambiguous cases.
VolumeA 0–5 indicator of how commercially significant a question is likely to be — how many people are likely to ask something similar. Use it to weigh which prompts deserve attention first.
Prompt typeEach prompt’s commercial value tier: Must-Win (direct commercial impact — where market share shifts), Core (shapes preferences and shortlists), Foundational (builds AI understanding and category clarity).
Prompt targetsRecommended visibility targets per tier: Must-Win 75%, Core 50%, Foundational 35%.

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Every metric is filterable

Every number in 3RD can be sliced by model (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and more), market (a geography + language pairing), topic, and audience. The same brand can be at 70% visibility for branded prompts and 8% for unbranded “best X” prompts — always check which filter you’re looking at before drawing conclusions.
For the full vocabulary — brands, prompts, topics, markets, audiences, runs, and more — see the Glossary.