Association
An association is a link AI platforms draw between your brand and a quality, like freshness or low prices, when they describe you.
An association is a link AI platforms draw between your brand and something else: a quality, a category, a kind of customer. If the answers keep calling you the cheap option, or great for offices, those are your associations.
They matter because people often ask AI platforms for a quality. "What's the freshest coffee subscription?" If the platforms tie you to freshness, you have a chance of being named. If they tie you to low prices instead, you may be left out, however fresh your coffee is.
Where associations come from
The platforms build them from what they read: your own pages, reviews, news, forums, comparison articles. The more often your name and a quality appear together, in sources the platforms trust, the stronger the link.
That also means associations can be out of date or simply wrong. If old reviews complain about slow delivery, the platforms may keep saying it long after you fixed it.
Association and standing
Being tied to a quality isn't the same as winning it. For example, say most answers describing Fernhill Coffee mention freshness. That's a strong association. But when someone asks for the freshest coffee subscription, the answers name four other brands first, and Fernhill fifth. The platforms say it about Fernhill. They just think of other brands first when someone asks for freshness.
So it's worth looking at both: what the platforms say about you, and where you come when someone asks for the thing itself.
In AnswerOrbit
Association is one of three numbers for each quality in the Qualities tab of Perception. It's how often the answers describing you bring up that quality. Next to it, Standing is your rank among every brand the platforms name for the quality, and Named in is how often those answers name you. We find the qualities in the answers, and you can add your own.