Name matching
Name matching is how a tool decides which brand an AI answer means, counting your short names and spellings as you and leaving out other businesses.
Name matching is how an AI search tool decides that a name in an answer means your brand. Answers don't always use your full, official name. They shorten it, misspell it, or use what customers call you. And sometimes the same name belongs to a different business.
Get the matching wrong and your numbers are wrong too: too low if your other names don't count, too high if someone else's mentions are counted as yours.
The two ways it goes wrong
The first is missed names. If your brand is "Harrow & Pine Bakery" but answers say "Harrow and Pine" or "H&P," a tool that only looks for the full name won't count them.
The second is false matches. If your brand is called "Kestrel," every answer about kestrels the bird, or a drone company with the same name, could count as a mention of you.
For example, the word "Fernhill" appears in 30 answers this week. Twelve say "Fernhill Coffee," ten just say "Fernhill" while talking about coffee, and eight are about Fernhill Garden Centre. Looking only for "Fernhill Coffee" finds 12. Counting every "Fernhill" finds 30. The right number is 22.
How to set it up well
List every name and spelling your customers use, including abbreviations and common misspellings. If your name is a common word or shared with another business, tell the tool how to tell you apart, like matching exact capitals or only counting answers that mention coffee. Then check the answers it's unsure about.
Name matching in AnswerOrbit
An answer names you when it uses your brand's name, or another name you've given us, as a whole word. Add your names in Settings under Names, and use Matching to match exact capitals or only count your name in answers about certain words. Answers that might mean someone else with your name wait under Possibly another business for you to mark. Competitors work the same way, and the Unmatched tab in Competitors lists names we couldn't match. See Settings.