Understanding results
Metrics explained
What visibility, share of voice, average position, citation rate and sentiment mean in aeotime, and exactly how each one is calculated.
Updated
On this page
Every metric is calculated from the answers aeotime collected in the date range you select (7, 30 or 90 days), optionally for one engine. Answers that failed to collect are excluded.
Visibility
The share of answers that mention your brand.
visibility = answers mentioning you ÷ all answers
If 40 prompts are asked on 8 engines (320 answers) and 96 mention you, visibility is 30%. A mention is a match on your brand name or any of your aliases.
Share of voice
Your share of all mentions of tracked brands.
share of voice = your mentions ÷ mentions of you + your tracked competitors
Only confirmed competitors count. If answers mention you 50 times and your competitors 150 times in total, your share of voice is 25%. Adding or removing competitors changes this number, so keep your competitor list stable when comparing periods.
Average position
Where you appear among tracked brands when you're mentioned. Position 1 means you were the first tracked brand named in the answer. Lower is better. Answers that don't mention you aren't counted here — check visibility alongside it.
Citation rate
The share of answers that link to your own domain as a source.
citation rate = answers citing your site ÷ all answers
A high visibility with a low citation rate means engines know your name but take their facts from other pages — often reviews, lists or forums. The action plan flags this.
Sentiment
When an answer mentions you, aeotime classifies the tone toward your brand as positive, neutral or negative. The overview shows the split; the Answers page can be filtered by sentiment so you can read the negative ones.
Changes vs previous period
Each stat card compares the selected range with the range right before it (for example the last 30 days vs the 30 days before). For average position, a drop is an improvement.
Per engine, market and persona
- By engine — the same metrics split per AI engine on the overview.
- Markets & personas — appears when you track prompts in more than one country or for personas. See Markets & personas.
Questions
Why does my visibility change between runs when nothing changed?
AI answers vary from run to run, even for the same prompt. Judge trends over several weeks and many prompts rather than one answer.
Which metric matters most?
Visibility is the headline number. Share of voice tells you whether you're winning against competitors, and citation rate tells you whether engines use your own pages as sources.
Are failed engine calls counted?
No. If an engine returns an error, that answer is excluded from every metric.
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