Brand
In AI search tracking, a brand is a company, product or name whose place in AI answers you follow, yours or a competitor's.
In AI search tracking, a brand is a name whose place in AI answers you follow. Usually that's your own company, plus the competitors you want to compare yourself with. It can also be a product line you want to see separately.
Every number you track hangs off a brand. How often you're named, where you come, what's said about you: each of those is worked out for one brand at a time, so getting the brand right comes first.
A brand is more than one name
People don't always use your full, official name. They shorten it, misspell it, or call you by your best-known product. AI answers do the same, because they learned from what people write.
For example, Harrow & Pine might appear in answers as Harrow and Pine, as Harrow & Pine Furniture, or just as Harrow. If a tracking tool only looks for the full name, it misses the other three, and your numbers come out lower than they should.
So a brand in a tracking tool is really a set of names, plus the websites that belong to it. The names decide which answers count as naming you. The websites decide which sources count as yours.
When names get mixed up
Some names belong to more than one business, or are ordinary words. A brand called "Harbour" will turn up in answers about boats. Good tracking only counts the answers that are about you, and sets aside the ones it can't be sure of.
Brands in AnswerOrbit
Your brand's names and domains are in Names, in Settings. An answer counts as naming you when it uses one of those names as a whole word. If your name is a common word, Matching lets you narrow it down. Answers that might mean another business are set aside under Possibly another business for you to mark.
Your competitors are brands too, each with its own names and domains, in Competitors. If you want to track part of your brand on its own, add it as a product line.