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Chats are the AI responses generated when we run your prompts daily across different platforms. Understanding chat anatomy is crucial because these responses are the basis for all dashboard metrics, source data, and competitive analysis. Every visibility score, position ranking, and source classification starts with analyzing these individual conversations.

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Anatomy of a chat

You’ll find recent chats on your Overview dashboard, but you can view the last 100 chats for each prompt by clicking on the individual prompt. Each chat contains specific elements that we analyze to generate your metrics and insights:
  • Status: Shows if the prompt ran successfully.
  • Model: Which AI platform generated the response (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc.).
  • Location: Geographic location we prompted from (e.g., United States).
  • Sentiment: How the AI model talks about your brand — positively, neutrally, or negatively (measured as a score between 0–100).
Each chat response contains:
  • Main response: The actual AI-generated answer to your prompt.
  • Brands mentioned: Shows which brands (including yours) were mentioned and where in the response.
  • Sources sidebar: All URLs the AI model referenced or cited when creating the response.
For Gemini chats, we can only prompt from the United States for now. That’s why you won’t see a location indicator for Gemini responses.

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Sources vs citations

Not all sources are citations, but every citation is a source. Understanding this distinction helps you interpret your data correctly.
  • Citations: Sources explicitly referenced within the AI response text. These appear as direct mentions in-line in the response body. Citations indicate the AI used specific information from that URL to create particular sentences or sections.
  • Sources: All URLs the AI model accessed during response generation. This includes citations plus additional sources the AI considered but didn’t explicitly reference. Sources appear in the sidebar and often at the bottom of a chat, even if not directly cited in the response.
Example: An AI response might cite 5 sources directly in the text but show 8 sources in the sidebar. All 8 contributed to the response, but only 5 were explicitly referenced.When a URL is cited multiple times, it will only show up once in the sidebar.
Citations drive traffic to your website, while sources without citations still build your authority and influence the AI’s understanding. Both contribute to your AI visibility, but they require different optimization strategies. Track both metrics to get the complete picture of your performance.

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How AI platforms behave

Different AI models handle sources and citations differently, which affects your data patterns:
  • ChatGPT: Sometimes performs web searches and sometimes doesn’t. When ChatGPT doesn’t search the web, you’ll see responses with no sources listed. This is normal behavior, not a data issue.
  • Perplexity: Shows many sources in the sidebar but tends to cite fewer of them directly in the response text. You’ll often see higher source counts but lower citation numbers.
  • Claude and other models: Each has unique patterns for how they search, cite, and reference sources.
AI models have inherent randomness in source selection. A source might appear one day and be completely absent the next. Focus on trends over weeks rather than daily changes.

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Reading chat position rankings

When multiple brands appear in a chat, we calculate position based on mention order — but this includes all detected brands, not just your tracked competitors. Example: If a chat mentions Hyundai (1st), Chevrolet (2nd), BMW (3rd), BMW ranks in position 3. If tomorrow’s chat mentions Hyundai, Chevrolet, Ferrari, BMW — even though you haven’t added Ferrari as a competitor, BMW’s position becomes 4th. A higher position (closer to 1) indicates that AI models consider your brand to be:
  • The most authoritative source for the topic.
  • The go-to reference in your industry.
  • Highly relevant to the user’s query.
This gives you true competitive context by showing where you rank among all mentioned brands, not just your selected competitors.
Review chats regularly to understand how AI models reference your brand and competitors. This helps you spot patterns, discover new competitor names to track, and identify sources worth targeting for outreach.