Brand perception
Brand perception in AI search is how AI answers characterize your brand: the qualities, category and uses they tie to you.
Brand perception in AI search is how the AI platforms characterize your brand. Which qualities do they tie to you? Which kind of customer do they say you suit? What reasons do they give for choosing someone else?
It goes further than whether the tone is positive. An answer can be warm about you and still describe a brand you don't recognize. It can call you "a solid budget option" when you've spent years becoming the premium one.
What makes up a perception
When you read what the platforms say about you, look for:
- The qualities they connect with you, like price, freshness or delivery
- The category they put you in
- The customers and uses they recommend you for
- The objections they raise against you
- The tone they take
For example, ask a few platforms to describe Fernhill Coffee and they keep describing it as fresh, small-batch and based in London. Ask them for the freshest coffee subscription, though, and Fernhill comes fourth. The platforms tie Fernhill to freshness, but they don't yet rank it first for it.
Why it matters
People who ask an AI assistant to compare brands often take its summary as the verdict. If the platforms think of you as the expensive choice, every comparison starts with that.
Perception also changes more slowly than visibility. It's built from years of reviews, articles and posts, so shifting it takes steady work on what's written about you.
In AnswerOrbit
Perception asks the platforms a set of questions about you and your competitors every week. The Qualities tab shows how strongly each quality is tied to you, which we call association, and where you rank when people ask about the quality itself, which we call standing. The Objections and Sentiment tabs show the reasons given against you and the tone of your mentions.