Benchmarks and baselines for evaluating AI search performance

To evaluate and improve AI search performance, start with a clear baseline and track a focused set of metrics over time. Scrunch recommends monitoring a representative set of prompts across multiple AI platforms and comparing your brand’s exposure and citations to competitors.

Baseline metrics to monitor

• Brand presence
• How often your brand is mentioned or included in AI responses, across platforms and by persona, country, topic, platform, funnel stage, or custom tag.
• Citations
• Frequency of your brand being cited in AI answers to business-relevant prompts, plus which third-party sources are most cited for your topics.
• Referral traffic
• Website traffic that comes from AI responses to your target prompts.
• AI agent traffic
• How often AI agents visit your site for training, indexing, and retrieval.
• Share of voice vs. competitors
• Your brand’s presence and citation share versus key competitors for the same prompts.

For a deeper dive on setting baselines, see the Scrunch blog on establishing initial benchmarks and baselines.

Measuring your brand’s performance over time

• Track trends in 2–3 week windows to separate real movement from one-off changes.
• Compare like-for-like periods (e.g., Q2 vs. Q1) by adjusting date ranges for brand presence, prompt placement, sentiment, and citations.
• Analyze side-by-side with competitors using line charts to see relative gains or losses over time.
• Review which sources AI models cite most for your priority topics and identify gaps you can fill.

If visibility declines: - Check Insights to spot issues with content relevance or metadata. - Identify citation gaps to see which sources are winning and why. - Prioritize fixes on one or two high-impact topics. - Verify AI agents can crawl your site (robots.txt and page rendering).

Learn more in the related FAQ on tracking visibility over time.

Comparing your visibility to competitors

• Measure AI share of voice by running the same prompt set across multiple AI platforms, then view results in aggregate and by platform to see where performance diverges.
• Track both presence and citation share to capture exposure and authority signals.
• Use filters (persona, country, topic, funnel stage) to understand where you win or lag.

Get step-by-step directions in the guide on how to measure AI share of voice.

How Scrunch measures AI visibility and trends

Scrunch focuses on exposure and authority signals that reflect how AI systems present your brand:

• Measures brand mentions, citations, prompt placement, and sentiment across a representative prompt panel and multiple AI platforms.
• Captures referral traffic from AI answers and AI agent traffic to your site.
• Surfaces issues and opportunities via Insights, and lets you drill down by persona, country, topic, platform, funnel stage, or custom tags.

How this differs from traditional keyword tools: - Traditional SEO tools estimate keyword search volume in web search engines. - AI platforms don’t publish comparable “search volumes,” so Scrunch tracks observable outcomes: how often and how prominently your brand appears and is cited for target prompts. - Think of it as a trend index of AI visibility—benchmark your current exposure, then monitor directional change over consistent 2–3 week intervals.

How Scrunch compares to other AEO platforms

When evaluating answer engine optimization (AEO) tools, consider: - Model and platform coverage - Data filtering and segmentation options - Ease of use and reporting - Competitive benchmarking capabilities - Citation/source analysis - Vendor experience, customer reviews, and pricing flexibility

With Scrunch, teams can: - Monitor the same prompts across AI platforms and segment results by persona, region, topic, funnel stage, and more. - Benchmark brand presence, citation share, sentiment, and prompt placement against competitors. - Use Insights to automatically flag content and metadata issues that may limit AI visibility. - Pair measurement with action via AXP to deliver AI-optimized content to AI agents visiting your website.

Quick example

An HR software company wants to know if Q2 beat Q1: - Set the date range to Q2 to view brand presence, competitive presence, prompt placement, sentiment, and citations. - Switch the date range to Q1 and compare the numbers. - Plot brand presence vs. competitors as a line chart to see relative movement. - If performance dropped, review Insights, check which sources were cited instead, address gaps, and confirm AI agents can crawl your pages.

Related resources

• FAQ: How can I see if my visibility in AI search is improving or declining over time?
• FAQ: How do I compare AI visibility across different models and platforms?
• FAQ: How many prompts should I track for AI search?
• How-to: How to measure AI share of voice