Understanding KPIs

nonBot AI tracks eight key performance indicators to measure your brand's visibility across AI assistants. This guide explains what each metric means and how to interpret it.

Primary KPIs

Inclusion Rate

Inclusion rate measures the percentage of prompts where your brand was mentioned in the AI response, calculated as prompts with brand mention divided by total prompts. An 80-100% rate indicates excellent performance where your brand dominates relevant queries. A 50-79% rate shows strong presence with room for improvement. Below 50% suggests inconsistent visibility with significant opportunity for growth.

Average Position

Average position tracks your brand's ranking when mentioned alongside competitors, calculated as the mean of all positions where your brand appears in vendor lists. Position 1-2 is excellent, meaning you're typically mentioned first. Position 3-4 is good, frequently appearing in top recommendations. Position 5 or higher indicates you're listed but not prominently. Lower numbers are better—a position of 1 means you're mentioned first.

Top-3 Presence

This metric measures the percentage of prompts where your brand appears in the top 3 positions. A rate of 70% or higher indicates you're consistently a top recommendation. Between 40-69% means frequently prominent. Below 40% suggests opportunity to improve your prominence in AI responses.

Share of Voice

Share of voice represents your brand's share of total vendor mentions across all prompts. Higher share of voice indicates market dominance in AI responses. Compare your share of voice to competitors in the Competitors tab, and track growing share of voice over time as an indicator of improving visibility.

Sentiment Metrics

Dominant Sentiment

Dominant sentiment identifies the most common tone when your brand is mentioned. Categories include positive (brand mentioned favorably), neutral (factual mention without opinion), negative (brand mentioned unfavorably), and mixed (containing both positive and negative elements). Aim for predominantly positive or neutral sentiment, and investigate any negative mentions to understand the concerns being raised.

Sentiment Distribution

The full breakdown shows the percentage of mentions in each sentiment category. A table in your dashboard displays positive sentiment for favorable descriptions and recommendations, neutral for factual information without opinion, negative for criticism or unfavorable comparisons, and mixed for responses containing both positive and negative elements.

Citation Metrics

Citation Presence Rate

Citation presence rate measures how often your brand's website appears in AI response citations, particularly for providers like Perplexity that include source links. A high citation rate indicates your content is referenced as authoritative. Improving this rate can boost overall visibility, though it only applies when AI providers include source citations.

Composite Metrics

AI Visibility Index

The AI Visibility Index is a composite score from 0-100 representing your overall AI visibility. It's calculated by weighting mention rate at 30%, top-3 rate at 30%, share of voice at 20%, and position score at 20%. Scores of 80-100 indicate excellent visibility, 60-79 good visibility, 40-59 moderate visibility, and below 40 needs improvement. This single number helps track overall progress over time.

Average Vendor Count

Average vendor count shows how many vendors are typically mentioned per AI response. Higher counts indicate competitive categories while lower counts may suggest niche markets or dominant players. Use this to contextualize your share of voice—a 20% share in a category with 10 vendors is different from 20% in a category with 3.

Using KPIs Effectively

Individual KPI values matter less than their direction over time. Use trend charts to monitor whether metrics are improving or declining, and compare your KPIs to competitors using the Competitors tab.

Focus on KPIs most relevant to your goals: inclusion rate for brand awareness, average position and top-3 presence for market leadership, share of voice for market share, and sentiment for reputation. Establish baseline metrics from your first run, then set realistic improvement targets based on competitive benchmarks.

Next Steps

Track how your metrics change over time in Reading Trend Charts, or compare your performance to competitors in Competitor Analysis.