Topics

Topics is where a site’s measurement is set. Each topic is a cluster of questions a market asks AI, and the poll measures every active topic. Topics and AI demand explains what a topic is; this page is how to work with them.

The topic table

One row per topic: its AI demand (range and grade, or its tier), your Answer Share, the leader, the gap and the change. The lede says which weighting Answer Share uses, demand tiers or demand estimates. Beside the table, the market map plots demand against your share; the high-demand, low-share corner is labelled Opportunity.

A topic’s page

• Who is recommended: every brand with its share on the topic, and a cell per engine.
• Why: the reasons, then the Sources, Search and Memory tabs. See Why.
• Answers: the latest answers, brands highlighted. An answer opens in full, with its sources (cited first, then read), the brands it names and the searches the engine ran.
• Questions: every question in the topic, with where it came from and, for Search Console searches, who is asking. See Which questions count.
• AI demand: the range, the grade, the calibration status and every input with its source and date.
• Plays for this topic.

What we understood about your business

The description every topic is built from sits on the site’s Setup screen, under Business description, closed until you open it: what the business does, whom it serves and what it offers, with who wrote it: you, or the audit that read your site. Topics shows one line that links there, and says so in a banner when a build kept nothing or nobody has described the business. It wins in this order: your own words, then the audit’s reading, then what earlier runs remembered. The build is held to it and to what your home page says today: a topic the description does not fit is left out, and so is a search, a competitor or a tracked prompt about something else (an earlier use of the domain, a company with a similar name). A question you track on purpose is always kept. If nothing says what the site does, or none of the topics fit, nothing is built and the page says why. Edit (on Setup, or Describe the business in the banner) takes your own description (20 to 1,500 characters) and Save and rebuild topics applies it at once; topics a rebuild no longer has are retired with their history kept.

Changing topics

Analysts, admins and owners can change topics; everyone who can see the site can read them.

• Add topic: a name, and phrasings if you have them. Without phrasings, Vercatus writes them. A topic beyond the plan’s allowance is refused with the reason, and a name the site already has opens the existing topic.
• Add a question: on a topic’s page, a question in your own words joins the poll.
• Track word for word: a question you must follow exactly (one from sales calls, or a board member’s favourite). It is asked exactly as written on every engine at least weekly, a rebuild never rephrases, retires or moves it, and you are told when an engine’s answers start or stop naming or citing you (two answers in a row, so one odd answer is not a change). Tick it when you add a question, or switch it on any question of a topic. Your plan sets how many questions you can track word for word. This replaces the separate list of tracked prompts: each prompt you had is now a question tracked word for word in the topic it fits.
• Rename a topic, or set its demand tier by hand: high, medium or low. A tier set by hand is marked as yours and is not overwritten.
• Pause a topic to stop the poll asking about it, and resume it later. Retire a topic you no longer want: its history stays, and it no longer counts toward the plan.
• Rebuild topics writes the set again from what Vercatus knows now: the business as you described it or as the latest audit read it, what your home page says today, your markets, your admitted Search Console searches and the searches the engines ran. A rebuild keeps a topic’s identity and history when it names the same topic again; topics it drops are retired, not deleted. A rebuild already running is not started twice.

A change to a topic changes what the poll asks from the next batch. Answer Share over a window always reads the answers of that window, so a renamed topic keeps its history.

Demand you are not measuring

Under the table, Demand you are not measuring lists the searches the engines ran for your questions that belong to none of your topics, largest search volume first. Each one is a topic you can add. The coverage of demand above it is the share of your market’s estimated AI demand your topics cover; it reads “cannot tell yet” while too few searches have a volume. See Coverage of demand.

Markets

A topic belongs to one market. A site with several markets has topics in each, and the poll asks each topic’s questions from its own market.

Competitors on a topic

The brands on a topic come from its answers. To pin, hide or add a competitor, use the leaderboard on the Overview or the Competitors screen; see Competitors, Sources and Briefs.