A small AI visibility report can still be useful. It can tell you which question to inspect and which product fact to check. It cannot support a sweeping claim that your brand has won or lost visibility.
Put the denominator beside every percentage
Imagine five completed, illustrative probes for the same engine and fixed question set. If your store appears in three answers, the mention rate is 3 ÷ 5 = 60%. If it appears in four next time, the rate is 4 ÷ 5 = 80%. That 20-point change is one answer, not proof of a durable gain.
| Illustrative period | Completed probes | Store mentions | Mention rate | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week A | 5 | 3 | 60% | Starting sample |
| Week B | 5 | 4 | 80% | One additional answer named the store |
Show the count as well as the rate. “4 of 5” lets a teammate judge uncertainty much faster than “80%.” The download below uses fictional brands and results only to demonstrate the arithmetic.
Mention rate, tracked share and position answer different questions
- Mention rate: completed answers naming a tracked brand ÷ completed probes. It answers: how often did this fixed brand appear?
- Tracked share: that brand's mentions ÷ all mentions among the brands you chose to track. It answers: what share of the fixed comparison set did it receive? It is not market share.
- First appearance: where the brand first appeared among your tracked names in an answer. It is not an overall ranking of every product or brand.
For example, suppose your store has 3 mentions and two tracked competitors have 2 and 1. Your tracked share is 3 ÷ 6 = 50%. It can fall even while your mention rate stays the same, because another tracked brand appeared more often. That is why the report's Share of Voice and mention rate should not be collapsed into one score.
Do not turn failures into zeros
A failed probe has no answer to count. It belongs in a separate failure total, not in a denominator as a zero mention. If four probes complete and one fails, calculate the rate from four completed probes and report the failure beside it: “3 of 4 completed probes mentioned us; 1 probe failed.”
Cuebase saves a result after a successful probe. Its report and CSV use saved results for their denominators. The CSV contains run time, question, category, engine, brand, whether it was mentioned or cited, and first appearance among tracked names. It does not contain raw answer text, a product-link field or a causal explanation.
Keep the comparison like for like
Compare periods only when the question set, active engines and tracked brands are unchanged. Adding a new question changes the denominator. Adding a competitor changes the tracked-share denominator. Switching engines changes the source of answers. Each can be a sensible operational choice, but it breaks a simple week-over-week comparison.
When you must change the setup, label the next period as a new baseline. Keep the old export; do not calculate a percentage change as if both periods measured the same thing.
Choose one next action
- Open Share of Voice and keep the questions, engines and tracked competitors fixed for the next run.
- Choose Run probe now, then use Export CSV to save the completed metrics.
- Write one plain-language observation with its denominator.
- Inspect one relevant product page for a documented gap. Record what you changed and the date. Do not claim the change caused a later answer to change.
Read what mentions, citations and product links mean before diagnosing a source pattern, then use the AI share-of-voice guide to set up the report. Download the illustrative small-sample worksheet (CSV). See Cuebase's paid AI visibility tracking →