What the numbers mean
Every number you'll find in AnswerOrbit, how we work it out, and an example.
These are the numbers you'll find across AnswerOrbit. Every one of them covers the last seven days and shows how many answers it's based on. Click any number to read the answers behind it.
The examples below follow one made-up brand, Fernhill, which tracks 10 prompts. To keep the sums simple, we'll only use two platforms, so Fernhill gets 140 answers a week (10 prompts × 2 platforms × 7 days).
The basics
Answer
One platform's reply to one of your prompts on one day. We ask each prompt once a day on each platform, so every prompt adds one answer per platform per day.
If a platform doesn't answer on a given day, that day counts nothing for it. We never fill a missing day in with a guess.
Mention
An answer mentions you when it uses your brand's name, or another name you've given us, as a whole word. An answer that names you three times still counts as one mention.
If an answer is clearly talking about a different business with the same name as you, it doesn't count. If we can't tell which business it means, we mark it as "possibly another business" and leave it out.
Being named
Visibility
The share of answers that name you.
We take the answers that name you and divide them by all your answers. Every answer counts in the total, including answers that don't name any brand at all. A customer who asked and heard no brand didn't hear yours either.
If 49 of Fernhill's 140 answers name it, Fernhill's visibility is 35%.
Share of voice
Your share of all the mentions of the brands you track, meaning you and your competitors.
Say that in the same 140 answers, Fernhill is named 49 times, Kestrel 70 times and Harrow 35 times. That's 154 mentions in total, so Fernhill's share of voice is 49 out of 154, or 32%.
Share of voice depends on who you track. If you add a competitor, the total goes up and your share can drop, even though no answer has changed. Visibility doesn't have this problem, as it doesn't depend on your competitors.
Position
Where you're named in an answer. The first brand named is in position 1, the second in position 2, and the rest follow in order. We count every brand the answer names, whether you track it or not, and average your position over the answers that name you.
If Fernhill is named first in 20 answers and third in 29, its position is 2.2.
Lower is better. Position only looks at the answers that name you, so always read it next to your visibility. A position of 1 in two answers out of 140 isn't much to celebrate.
Ranks
Your place among the brands, by visibility, share of voice or citations.
Visibility rank counts every brand the answers name, including ones you don't track. That's where competitors you didn't know about show up. Share of voice rank and citation rank only count the brands you track. When you look at a single prompt or tag, visibility rank only counts the brands you track too.
Being cited
Citations
A source is any web page an answer used. An answer cites a page when it links to it. Citations is the share of answers that used a page from your website.
If 28 of Fernhill's 140 answers used a page from Fernhill's website, its citations is 20%.
Under citations you'll see two more numbers. Citation share is your website's share of all the links in the answers. Citations per answer is how many times your pages are linked in each answer that used them.
Cited, not named
The share of answers that used your website but didn't name you. The platform read your page and then recommended someone else, or nobody.
If 7 of the 28 answers that used Fernhill's website don't name Fernhill, its cited, not named is 25%.
Gap
A source whose answers name one of your competitors but not you. Each gap has a score out of 100. Half of it comes from how often answers use that source, and half from how many of your competitors it names. You'll find your gaps in Sources.
Changes
Marked change
We compare the last seven days with the seven days before, prompt by prompt. We mark a change when luck alone would make a difference that big less than 5 times in 100. Smaller changes still show, they just aren't marked.
In your first seven days nothing is marked, because there's no earlier week to compare with. How we count explains the test.