# Configuring AI Traffic
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/ai-traffic-setup

Connect Cloudflare or Vercel logs to Gauge to power the AI Traffic page.

## Configuring AI Traffic

[AI Traffic](/navigating/ai-traffic) is powered by your server logs. Forward them to Gauge from one of two sources:

* **Vercel** — requires a Vercel **Pro or Enterprise** plan. Use this if you host on Vercel without Cloudflare in front.
* **Cloudflare** — works on any Cloudflare plan, including Free. Use this if your site is behind Cloudflare, even if the origin is hosted elsewhere.

Both live under **Settings → Integrations**, on the **Vercel** and **Cloudflare** cards. You can connect both.

## Your Drain URL and Secret

Every setup path uses two values shown on the integration page:

* **Destination URL** (called **Endpoint URL** on the Vercel card) — where your host sends logs. Click **Copy**.
* **Secret** — authenticates those logs. Click **Show**, then **Copy**.

## Vercel Setup

Open **Settings → Integrations → Vercel** in Gauge — you'll copy the Endpoint URL and secret from it. The rest happens in the Vercel dashboard:

1. In your Vercel team, open **Settings → Drains** and click **Create Drain**.
2. Pick **Logs** as the data source.
3. Select the projects you want to track. Under source types, enable **Static Files**, **Function**, and **Edge Function** — all three together capture every incoming HTTP request. Under environments, enable **Production**.
4. For the destination, choose **Custom endpoint** and paste the **Endpoint URL** from the Gauge page. Pick either **JSON** or **NDJSON** as the format — Gauge accepts both.
5. Still on the destination step, click **Add header** and create a header named `Authorization` with the value `Bearer <your-secret>` — click **Show** on the Gauge page to reveal the secret.
6. Save the drain. Vercel runs a connectivity check, and traffic starts flowing within a few minutes. In Gauge, the card shows a **Receiving events** badge and a **View AI Traffic** button once events land.

<Warning>
  Without the `Authorization` header, Gauge rejects every event with a 403 and you'll see no traffic. The value must start with `Bearer ` followed by your secret.
</Warning>

## Cloudflare Setup

Open **Settings → Integrations → Cloudflare** and pick a tab:

* **Worker (any plan)** — Gauge forwards traffic through a small Cloudflare Worker. Right for almost everyone.
* **Logpush (Enterprise)** — Cloudflare streams logs directly to Gauge. Cloudflare Enterprise only.

### Option 1: Automatic Worker Setup (Recommended)

Gauge creates the Worker, uploads the secret, and attaches the routes. It needs a scoped Cloudflare API token:

1. Click **Connect Cloudflare**.
2. Click **Create the token on Cloudflare**. This opens Cloudflare's **Create Custom Token** form pre-filled with the three permissions Gauge needs: `Account.Workers Scripts: Edit`, `Zone.Workers Routes: Edit`, and `Zone.Zone: Read`.
3. In Cloudflare, click **Continue to summary**, then **Create Token**, and copy the token.
4. Back in Gauge, paste it into the **Paste the token** field and click **Connect**.
5. If the token can access more than one Cloudflare account, pick one and click **Use this account**.

The card now shows a **Cloudflare connected** badge and lists every zone (domain) on your account under **Your zones**.

#### Enable a Zone

Click **Enable** on a zone. Gauge deploys the Worker with a wildcard route covering the whole zone and forwards every request.

To change what gets forwarded, expand the zone with the chevron first. Two settings:

**Routes** — which parts of your site the Worker watches:

* **Apex** (`yourdomain.com/*`)
* **WWW subdomain** (`www.yourdomain.com/*`)
* **Docs subdomain** (`docs.yourdomain.com/*`)
* **Wildcard** (`*.yourdomain.com/*`) — all subdomains
* **Add route** for a custom pattern, like `app.yourdomain.com/*`

**Traffic to forward:**

* **All requests (recommended)** — forward everything; Gauge classifies bots downstream.
* **Bot requests only** — drop human traffic at the edge, forward only known AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.). Only use this if your security policy requires it — filtered traffic can't be backfilled.

Click **Enable** (or **Update** if the zone is already running).

#### Verify

The zone badge shows **Enabled, no events yet** right after deploying, then **Receiving events** once traffic lands — usually within a minute. If events never arrive, check that the zone's DNS records are proxied through Cloudflare (orange cloud on). The Worker only sees proxied traffic.

### Option 2: Manual Worker Setup

If you'd rather not give Gauge an API token, expand **Prefer to set up manually?** at the bottom of the Worker tab:

1. In the Cloudflare dashboard, go to **Workers & Pages → Create Application**, choose **Start with Hello World!**, and click **Deploy**.
2. Open the new Worker, go to **Settings → Variables and Secrets**, and add an encrypted **Secret** named `DRAIN_SECRET`. For the value, click **Show** on the Secret row in Gauge, copy it, paste it in, and select **Save Version**.
3. Click **Edit code**, replace the starter contents with the Worker code from the Gauge page (**Copy Worker code** button), and click **Save and deploy**.
4. Go to **Settings → Triggers → Routes** and add a route matching your zone — for example, `*.yourdomain.com/*`.
5. Traffic starts forwarding within a minute. Gauge shows **Manual setup detected** with per-zone event counts once payloads arrive.

### Option 3: Logpush (Cloudflare Enterprise)

1. In the Cloudflare dashboard, open your zone and add a **Logpush job** under **Analytics & Logs → Logs**.
2. Select dataset **HTTP requests** and destination **HTTP**.
3. Paste the **Destination URL** from the Gauge page.
4. Under **Advanced options**, add a header named `Authorization` with the value `Bearer <your-secret>`.
5. On the **Configure fields** step, select `ClientRequestUserAgent`. Also recommended: `EdgeStartTimestamp`, `ClientRequestPath`, `ClientRequestHost`, `EdgeResponseStatus`, `EdgeResponseBytes`, and `ClientCountry`.
6. Save the job. Cloudflare sends a test batch, and the badge in Gauge flips to **Receiving events** within a few minutes.

<Warning>
  If `ClientRequestUserAgent` isn't selected, the logs arrive without user agents and Gauge can't detect AI bots.
</Warning>

## Turning It Off

* **Vercel:** open **Settings → Drains** in Vercel, click into the drain, and select **Delete drain**.
* **Cloudflare (automatic):** click **Disable** on a zone, or **Disconnect** to drop the API token entirely.
* **Cloudflare (manual or Logpush):** delete the Worker route or Logpush job in the Cloudflare dashboard.

Historical data already in Gauge stays put.

## Troubleshooting

* **No events after Vercel setup** — check the `Authorization` header exists and starts with `Bearer `, and that **Production** is enabled under environments.
* **No events after Cloudflare Worker setup** — check the zone's DNS records are orange-cloud proxied and the route pattern matches your traffic (including the trailing `/*`).
* **Traffic stopped after regenerating the secret** — update the `DRAIN_SECRET` in your Worker, or the `Authorization` header in your Logpush job or Vercel drain, with the new value.
* **Bots missing from Logpush data** — make sure `ClientRequestUserAgent` is in the job's field list.

Still stuck? Email [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com).


# Billing & Plans
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/billing

Manage your Gauge subscription, understand the free trial, and see how usage limits and plan-gated features work.

## Billing & Plans

Your Gauge subscription is managed from the **Billing** tab, and payments run through Stripe. This page explains where billing lives, how to manage or upgrade your plan, what the free trial covers, and how usage limits and plan-gated features affect what you can do in the app.

## Managing Your Subscription

Billing lives under **Settings → Billing**. The tab opens with a **Current Plan** card showing your plan, a status badge (for example, **Active** or **Trialing**), and your next renewal date.

From here you can:

* **Billing Portal** — Opens the Stripe billing portal, where you manage payment methods, view invoices, and update or cancel your subscription. When you finish, you return to Gauge.
* **Activate Subscription** — Appears when your organization needs to start a paid plan. It opens a pricing table where you choose a plan and check out through Stripe.
* **Subscribe** — Agency organizations use this to start their subscription through a dedicated Stripe checkout.

If your organization has an active subscription but no billing record yet, you'll instead see a **Manage Billing** link that takes you to the Stripe portal.

<Warning>
  If a payment fails, the Billing tab shows a **Payment Past Due** notice. Update your payment method in the Billing Portal to avoid an interruption in service.
</Warning>

## Free Trial

When your organization is on a trial, a **Free Trial** banner appears at the top of the Billing tab. It shows how many days remain, a progress bar, and a reminder to **add a payment method to continue after your trial ends**. Your trial's end date is also listed on the Current Plan card as **Trial ends**.

To keep access after the trial, open the **Billing Portal** (or use **Activate Subscription**) and add a payment method before the end date.

<Note>
  Whether the free trial is offered on checkout is controlled per organization. If you don't see a trial option and expected one, contact your Gauge representative or [support](mailto:support@withgauge.com).
</Note>

## Usage Limits

Your plan determines how much of Gauge you can use. Limits apply at both the organization level and the individual topic (category) level, and cover:

* **Topics** — how many you can track.
* **Prompts** — how many you can add, either overall or per topic.
* **Content artifacts** — how many pieces of content you can create, counted per topic per month.
* **Chat messages** — how many messages you can send in an [Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge) conversation.

Some limits are capped and some are unlimited, depending on your plan. When you reach a cap, Gauge stops you from adding more of that resource and points you toward upgrading. Monthly limits reset at the start of each billing period.

## Feature Access

Higher-value areas of Gauge are gated by plan. If your plan doesn't include a feature, Gauge shows an upgrade screen ("Unlock the full power of Gauge") in place of that area, with a button to activate a subscription.

On the free plan, gated areas include the dashboard, [Action Center](/navigating/action-center), content, audits, research, prompts, topics, citations, and ads. Upgrading unlocks these areas and raises your usage limits.

<Tip>
  Not sure which plan fits your needs, or want to change plans? Open the **Billing Portal** from **Settings → Billing**, or reach out to [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com).
</Tip>


# Branded Prompts
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/branded-prompts

Track how AI talks about your brand specifically — and use those insights to influence your AI SEO content strategy.

<iframe title="Branded Prompts" />

## Branded Prompts

Branded prompts are a fundamentally different type of prompt from what Gauge has traditionally tracked. Non-branded prompts measure visibility — how often your brand gets mentioned when an AI is asked about a category. For example, "What are the best generative engine optimization platforms?" measures how often Gauge appears unprompted. Visibility is the core KPI there.

Branded prompts flip that model. Instead of seeing if AI thinks to mention your brand, you're giving AI a direct question about your brand and measuring what it says. A prompt like "How does Gauge help companies do AI SEO?" will always return 100% visibility — of course the model mentions Gauge. The question isn't whether you appear, it's what the AI actually says about you.

## How Branded Prompts Work in Gauge

Because branded prompts behave differently from non-branded prompts, they're treated differently in the product. Branded prompts are excluded by default from the Rankings page and Citations view, so they don't skew your visibility metrics.

Creating a branded prompt works the same way as any other prompt. When adding a prompt, toggle the **Branded** button and it will be saved and tracked as a branded prompt. Gauge's agent is also aware of the distinction — when you create prompts through the agent, it will generate both branded and non-branded prompts automatically.

## Why Branded Prompts Matter

Branded prompts are the foundation of Sentiment Analysis. By asking AI directly about your product, you get a clear picture of the lens AI takes when buyers are researching you — what it emphasizes, what it gets wrong, and how it frames your positioning.

This data is a direct input to your content roadmap. If AI is consistently describing your brand in a way that doesn't match how you want to be positioned, branded prompts surface exactly where that gap is and give you the information to close it.

<Card title="Next →" icon="arrow-right" href="/resources/glossary">
  AEO Glossary
</Card>


# Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/byok

Connect your own AI provider API key so Gauge runs that engine's nightly tracking through your account.

## Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)

Bring Your Own Key lets you connect your own AI provider API key so Gauge runs that engine's tracking through your account instead of its own. When you connect a key, Gauge uses it for the nightly prompt sampling that measures how you show up in that engine, and the provider bills you directly for those runs.

The main reason to use BYOK is to add an engine to your tracking. Connecting a key turns on Claude or Grok tracking for your prompts without Gauge having to run them on its shared key. Only the nightly prompt-sampling path uses your key. Everything else Gauge does with these providers (chat, agents, content, and insights) keeps running on Gauge's own key.

<Note>
  BYOK is enabled per organization. If you don't see the Anthropic or Grok card under Settings, reach out to us at [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com) to have it turned on.
</Note>

## Supported Providers

BYOK is available for two providers today:

* **Anthropic (Claude)** — adds Claude to your tracked [AI engines](/navigating/ai-engines).
* **Grok (xAI)** — adds Grok to your tracked [AI engines](/navigating/ai-engines).

Each provider has its own card under **Settings → Integrations**, and each is connected independently.

<Warning>
  A connected key incurs charges on your provider account. Gauge runs your prompts through the engine every night and the provider bills you directly. Anthropic runs typically cost about **\$2.50–\$3 per prompt per month**; xAI runs typically cost about **\$1–\$2 per prompt per month**. Each card shows an estimate based on how many prompts you have tracked.
</Warning>

## Connecting a Key

### Anthropic (Claude)

<Steps>
  <Step title="Generate a key">
    In the [Anthropic Console](https://console.anthropic.com/settings/keys), create an API key. The key needs Messages API access.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Paste it into Gauge">
    Go to **Settings → Integrations** and open the Anthropic card. Paste the key into the **Anthropic API Key** field. Anthropic keys start with `sk-ant-api03-`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Test and save">
    Click **Test & Save**. Gauge validates the key against Anthropic before storing it. If it works, the card shows a green **Connected** badge, the last four characters of the key, who connected it, and when it was last verified.
  </Step>
</Steps>

### Grok (xAI)

<Steps>
  <Step title="Generate a key">
    In the [xAI Console](https://console.x.ai), open **API Keys** and click **Create API key**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Paste it into Gauge">
    Go to **Settings → Integrations** and open the Grok card. Paste the key into the **xAI API Key** field. xAI keys start with `xai-`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Test and save">
    Click **Test & Save**. Gauge validates the key against xAI before storing it. If it works, the card shows a green **Connected** badge, the last four characters of the key, who connected it, and when it was last verified.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  If a saved key later stops working, the card shows a **Connection unhealthy** badge with the provider's error. Use **Re-test key** to re-validate the stored key after fixing the issue on the provider side.
</Tip>

## What Changes When Connected

Once a key is validated and saved, Gauge turns on tracking for that engine and starts running your prompts through it every night using your key. The results appear alongside your other [AI engines](/navigating/ai-engines), and the provider bills you directly for each run.

To stop, click **Disconnect** on the card. Gauge removes your stored key and turns off that engine's nightly tracking — sampling stops rather than continuing on a Gauge key. If you'd rather keep Claude or Grok tracking without using your own key, reach out at [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com).


# CMS Integrations
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/cms-integrations

Connect Webflow, Framer, GitHub, or Sanity to Gauge so you can pull in existing pages, edit them with the agent, and publish updates straight to your site.

## CMS Integrations

Most of the work you do in Gauge is about your owned content: finding the pages that need work, writing new pieces to win prompts, and keeping everything up to date. Linking your CMS lets you pull your existing pages into Gauge, edit them with the agent, and publish the changes back to your site.

## Why Link Your CMS

### Edit Existing Content

Gauge pulls your published pages out of your CMS so you can work on them directly. You can edit a page yourself or ask the agent to do it for you, for example refreshing it with new data, tightening sections, or rewriting it to target a specific prompt.

When the page is ready, you have two ways to publish it back:

* **Publish to your live website** to send the update straight to production.
* **Publish to staging** to review the changes before they go live.

<Frame>
  <img alt="Publish dialog with a destination list and Create Draft, Publish to Staging, and Publish Now options" />
</Frame>

### Publish New Content

The same options apply to new pieces. When you finish a draft in Ask Gauge, publish it to your live website or to staging for review. You can also update and republish a page later, or unpublish a piece to remove it from your site.

### Manage Content in Library

[Library](/navigating/library) is organized around your sitemap, pulled directly from your connected CMS. Importing your content brings every published post into one view, where you can see Google Search impressions and clicks, AI traffic, citation rate, and bot traffic side by side.

This shows which pages are working, which are being cited, and which need attention. From Library you can open any page to start editing it with the agent.

<Frame>
  <img alt="Library Pages view listing posts with impressions, clicks, and AI traffic" />
</Frame>

## Linking Your CMS

All of these integrations live under **Settings → Integrations**. Each one shows a connection status and the steps to get set up. During import, a field-mapping step lines up the fields in your CMS collection (like title and body) with Gauge.

### Webflow

Webflow connects through OAuth, so you authorize Gauge directly in Webflow.

1. Go to **Settings → Integrations** and find the Webflow card.
2. Click **Connect Webflow**.
3. Sign in to Webflow and approve the requested permissions. Gauge needs read and write access to your CMS, sites, and pages so it can import and publish content.
4. When you return to Gauge, the card shows a **Connected** badge.
5. Click **Import your Content** to choose a site, select the collections you want, map their fields, and bring your posts into Library.

To stop the connection, click **Disconnect**. Publishing to your Webflow CMS will stop working until you reconnect.

### Framer

Framer connects with an API key and your project URL, which you create inside Framer.

1. Open your Framer project and go to **Site Settings → General**.
2. Scroll to **API Keys** and create a new key.
3. Find your **Project URL**. This is the URL in your browser when the project is open in Framer (for example, `https://framer.com/projects/abc123`).
4. In Gauge, go to **Settings → Integrations**, find the Framer card, and click **Connect Framer**.
5. Paste in your API key and project URL, then connect.
6. Once connected, click **Import your Content** to select collections, map fields, and bring your posts into Library.

You can **Disconnect** at any time from the same panel.

### GitHub

The GitHub integration is for code-based blogs, such as a Next.js site where posts live as Markdown files in a repository. Instead of publishing through a hosted CMS, Gauge commits your posts as Markdown and opens a pull request, so publishing fits your normal code review and deploy flow.

1. In Gauge, go to **Settings → Integrations** and find the GitHub card.
2. Click **Connect** and install the Gauge GitHub App on the repository that holds your blog, approving the requested access.
3. When you return to Gauge, the card shows a **Connected** badge along with the connected account.
4. Point Gauge at the folder where your Markdown posts live and pick the branch to publish from. Gauge samples an existing post to map its frontmatter fields (like `title` and `date`), plus the Markdown body, to Gauge.

When you publish, Gauge commits the new or updated Markdown file and opens a pull request against your repository. Review and merge it like any other change, and your normal deploy takes it live.

<Note>
  Because publishing happens through a pull request, nothing goes live until you merge — this is the built-in review step for code-based blogs.
</Note>

### Sanity

Sanity connects with an API token, and Gauge publishes into your Sanity **Content Lake**.

1. In Sanity, create an API token with read and write access to the project you want to connect (**sanity.io/manage → your project → API → Tokens**).
2. In Gauge, go to **Settings → Integrations**, find the Sanity card, and paste in your API token.
3. Click **Connect**. Gauge looks up the projects and datasets your token can reach and connects straight through when there's only one — otherwise it asks you to pick the **project** and **dataset**.
4. Once connected, the card shows your project and dataset. Import your content, map the document fields, and your posts appear in Library.

You can **Disconnect** at any time from the same panel.

<Note>
  Sanity's schema lives in your Studio code rather than in a stable API, so Gauge infers a document type's fields by sampling existing documents. Connect a project that already has published posts so the field mapping has something to work from.
</Note>

## Posting to Other Platforms

If your site does not run on a CMS Gauge integrates with, you can use **Copy as Markdown** to put the full article on your clipboard. Paste it into any platform Gauge does not integrate with directly.


# Data Exports
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/exports

Export your Gauge visibility, citation, and prompt data as CSV files to analyze or share outside the platform.

## Data Exports

Gauge is built to surface AI visibility insights in-app, but sometimes you need the underlying numbers in your own tools — a spreadsheet, a BI dashboard, or a report for a client or stakeholder. Data Exports let you pull the data behind a table straight out of Gauge as a CSV, with your current filters already applied.

## What You Can Export

Exports are available on most of the data tables throughout Gauge. Each export mirrors the table you're looking at and includes the same rows and metrics you see on screen. You can export from:

* **Visibility & prompts** — prompt-level visibility, competitor visibility, and keyword volume from the [Prompts](/navigating/prompts-citations) view, plus topic-level rollups from [Topics](/navigating/topics).
* **Citations** — cited URLs and domains with citation rates, brand mentions, and competitor coverage from [Prompts & Citations](/navigating/prompts-citations).
* **Reddit** — cited [Reddit](/navigating/reddit) URLs and subreddits driving AI citations in your space.
* **YouTube** — cited [YouTube](/navigating/youtube) videos and channels.
* **Library** — your [Library](/navigating/library) pages with impressions, clicks, AI traffic, citation rate, and health score.
* **Rankings** — brand [visibility and rank](/navigating/rankings-visibility) over time.
* **ChatGPT Ads** — ad appearances and brand-level ad activity from [ChatGPT Ads](/navigating/chatgpt-ads).

Every export respects the filters active when you trigger it — the selected time range, AI model, category, tags, and any search or table filters — so the file matches what's on screen.

## How to Export

1. Open the view you want to export and set your filters (time range, model, category, and any others).
2. Click the **download** icon above the table.
3. Gauge generates the CSV and your browser downloads it automatically.

The file arrives as a CSV named for the report type, category, and date range (for example, `citations_All Categories_2026-06-01_2026-06-30.csv`), ready to open in Excel, Google Sheets, or any tool that reads CSV.

<Note>
  Data Exports are plan-gated. If you don't see the download icon on your data tables, exports aren't included on your current plan — reach out to your Gauge contact or [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com) to enable them.
</Note>

<Tip>
  Need a larger, raw dump of every citation and answer over a date range rather than a single table? The Gauge team can generate a bulk data export and send you download links by email. Contact [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com) to request one.
</Tip>


# Google Integration (Search Console, Analytics & Ads)
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/google-integration

Connect Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4, and Google Ads so Gauge can measure organic search performance, AI referral traffic, and paid spend in one place.

## Google Integration

Connecting Google lets Gauge pull your Google Search Console (GSC), Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and Google Ads data so you can measure organic search performance, AI referral traffic, and paid spend in one place. A single Google sign-in authorizes all three, and the data powers cross-channel analysis in [Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge) and [Library](/navigating/library).

## What Connecting Unlocks

* **Search Console (GSC)** — impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position, broken down by query, page, country, and device. This is your organic search performance across Google's traditional results.
* **Analytics (GA4)** — session and traffic data, including AI referral traffic from assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity. This complements the server-log view on the [AI Traffic](/navigating/ai-traffic) page and helps you see where AI-driven visitors land and what they do.
* **Google Ads** — paid performance for the ad accounts you select: spend, clicks, impressions, conversions, conversion value, ROAS, and active campaign counts, down to the campaign and keyword level. This lets you weigh paid search alongside your organic and AI visibility, and see it broken out on the [Ads Monitoring](/navigating/ads-monitoring) page.

Once your properties are syncing, you can explore this data conversationally in Ask Gauge (there's an **Analyze my Traffic** button on the integration card that opens a starter prompt) and reference it alongside your content in Library.

## Connecting Google

The integration lives under **Settings → Integrations**.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Start the connection">
    Find the Google integration and click **Connect Google**. You'll be redirected to Google's sign-in and consent screen.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Approve the requested access">
    Sign in with a Google account that has access to your Analytics, Search Console, and Google Ads accounts, then approve the requested permissions. Grant all three so Gauge can sync each.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Confirm you're connected">
    When you return to Gauge, the card shows a green **Connected** badge, and the property, site, and Ads account selectors appear below it.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  If you connected before a given scope existed, the card shows an **Additional Authorization Needed** notice — for example an **Authorize Search Console** or **Authorize Google Ads** button. Click it to re-authorize and enable that data. If your Google authorization later expires or is revoked, the card prompts you to **Reconnect Google**.
</Note>

## Choosing Your Property/Site

After connecting, Gauge lists everything the Google account can access. You pick which to sync.

**GA4 Properties.** Under **GA4 Properties**, check the properties you want Gauge to sync analytics data from. Each is labeled with its display name, property ID, and parent account. Select your set and click **Save**.

**GSC Sites.** Under **GSC Sites**, check the Search Console properties to sync. Each site shows its permission level — **Owner**, **Full**, **Restricted**, or **Unverified**. Sites matching your organization's domain are selected automatically; adjust the selection and click **Save**.

**Google Ads.** Under **Google Ads**, check the ad accounts you want Gauge to pull reporting from. Each account is listed by its descriptive name and customer ID, and manager accounts are marked as such. Select the accounts you run campaigns in and click **Save**.

<Tip>
  Pick the property and site that cover the domain you actively track in Gauge. If you manage several domains, you can select multiple — but syncing only what you need keeps your data focused.
</Tip>

After you save, Gauge runs an initial sync. Each property or site shows a **Syncing...** badge that turns to **Synced** once complete, which usually takes a few minutes. A red **Error** badge means the last sync failed — the specific error is shown next to the item.

If no properties or sites appear, confirm the Google account you connected has access to at least one GA4 property and one Search Console property.

For the full picture of AI-driven visitors, pair this with server-log forwarding described in [Configuring AI Traffic](/help/ai-traffic-setup).

Still stuck? Email [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com).


# Gauge MCP
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/mcp

Connect Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and other AI clients to your Gauge data over the Model Context Protocol, using OAuth with no API key to manage.

## Gauge MCP

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI clients securely connect to outside tools and data. Gauge runs an MCP server, so any MCP-compatible client — Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini, Windsurf, Zed, or your own tooling — can query your Gauge data and take actions on your behalf, grounded in your organization's real numbers instead of guesses.

Gauge MCP authenticates with OAuth 2.0. You point your client at the server URL, it discovers the authorization endpoint automatically, and you approve access from inside Gauge. There is no API key to create or token to paste.

<Note>
  MCP exposes the same data and actions you already have in the app, scoped to the organization you authorize. Connecting a client does not grant it anything you cannot do yourself.
</Note>

## What You Can Do With It

Once connected, your client can reach across Gauge's tools. The main categories are:

* **AI visibility and citations.** Read how often your brand and competitors are mentioned or cited across AI answers, track visibility and performance over time, and see which sources and pages drive citations.
* **Topics and prompts.** Browse the prompt library Gauge tracks, read individual AI answers, and curate prompts — create, generate, move, and tag them.
* **SEO and keyword reporting.** Pull organic rankings, search volume and difficulty, and the keywords any domain or page ranks for, including competitors.
* **GA4, Search Console, and PostHog reporting.** Run GA4 and Google Search Console reports and query PostHog where those integrations are connected.
* **Ads reporting.** Read Google Ads and OpenAI Ads account summaries, campaigns, ad groups, and keyword performance.
* **Content pipeline.** Run the full content workflow — create a brief, research topics, generate an outline, write and review the article, manage images, and publish to a connected CMS as a draft, to staging, or live.
* **Memory.** List, read, and edit the memory files Gauge keeps about your organization.
* **Action Center.** List and open recommended actions, create and assign them, set due dates, and update their status.
* **Ask Gauge.** Send a natural-language question to [Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge) and get an answer grounded in your data.

## Connecting Gauge MCP

The MCP integration lives under **Settings → Integrations → MCP**. That page has setup details for the most common clients, plus generic connection details for anything else.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the MCP integration">
    Go to **Settings → Integrations** and open the **MCP** card. Pick the client you use, or scroll to the generic instructions if it is not listed.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add Gauge to your client">
    For CLI clients, copy the ready-made command. **Claude Code** uses **Copy install command** to add the server, and **Codex** does the same. For **Claude.ai**, a Claude organization admin adds Gauge as a custom connector once using **Copy connector URL**, and members then click **Connect** next to Gauge.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Connect any other client">
    For anything else, point your client at the server URL `https://app.withgauge.com/mcp` over HTTP (Streamable HTTP or SSE). Use **Copy server URL** to grab it.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Authorize with OAuth">
    The first time you use the connection, your client redirects you to Gauge in the browser. Select the organization you want and approve access. No API key or manual token is required.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  If you work across multiple client organizations, choose the right one during the OAuth step — the client's access is scoped to what you authorize.
</Tip>

## MCP vs API Keys

MCP is the recommended way to connect an AI client. It authorizes through OAuth, keeps you signed in without a token to store, and exposes Gauge's tools in the structured form clients expect.

API keys are meant for scripts and server-to-server automation that talk to the Gauge API directly. They require you to create and safeguard a secret and pass it on every request, which is a poor fit for interactive AI clients. Reach for an API key when you are writing your own code, and use MCP when you are connecting a client like Claude or Cursor. You can generate keys under **Settings → Integrations → API Keys**.


# Notifications & Email Digests
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/notifications

Understand the alerts Gauge sends, where they show up, and how to tune your email preferences under Settings → Email.

## Notifications & Email Digests

Gauge keeps you posted when something worth acting on happens — a new recommended action, one of your pages getting cited in an AI answer, or the results of an action you already shipped. Notifications reach you through the in-app bell, Slack, and a weekly digest email, so you can stay on top of your AI visibility without living in the dashboard.

## What Gauge Notifies You About

### New recommended actions

When Gauge finds new high-impact actions to improve your visibility, it lets you know the same day. These land as a bell notification and, if Slack is connected, as a post in your alert channel. They also roll up into the weekly digest. Each alert links to the [Action Center](/navigating/action-center), where you can accept, dismiss, or execute the recommendation.

### A new page was cited

When a page from your domain is cited in an AI answer for the first time, Gauge sends a "new page cited" alert. This arrives as a bell notification and, if enabled, a daily email summarizing the newly cited pages with deep links to where each one appeared.

### Action evaluation results

After a completed action has had time to take effect, Gauge measures its impact and sends an "Impact analysis" notification. This shows up in the bell and as an email, both linking to the action's results so you can see what changed.

### Workflow action auto-completed

When Gauge detects that a newly cited page matches an open content action, it marks that action complete for you and posts a bell notification for transparency. This one is in-app only — no email. If the match was wrong, you can reopen the action from the link in the notification.

## Where Notifications Show Up

* **In-app bell.** The bell in the top navigation shows an unread count and lists your recent notifications for the active company. Click one to jump to the relevant page, and mark items read individually or all at once. Every event type above surfaces here.
* **Slack.** With Slack connected, new recommended actions post to the channel you choose, with buttons to accept, dismiss, or execute right from Slack. See [Slack Integration](/help/slack-integration) for setup and channel configuration.
* **Weekly digest email.** A once-a-week summary of activity across the markets your company has enabled, so the whole team gets a regular pulse on visibility.

## Managing Email Preferences

Email settings live under **Settings → Email**. There are two areas:

**Per-person email toggles.** For each member of your company, you can turn individual emails on or off:

* **Weekly Digest** — the weekly summary of activity for your enabled markets.
* **New Page Alerts** — the daily email when one of your pages is cited in an AI answer for the first time.
* **Action Alerts** — an email with the highest-impact new actions, plus action evaluation results.
* **Product Updates** — occasional announcements about new Gauge features.

**Email Digests (markets).** Choose which markets your company should receive the weekly digest for. This is a company-wide setting that applies to everyone, whereas the toggles above are per person.

<Note>
  New Page Alert emails are being rolled out gradually. If you don't see them for your organization yet, reach out to [support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com) to have them enabled.
</Note>

<Tip>
  The in-app bell always shows every event type regardless of your email settings, so turning off an email never means you'll miss the notification entirely.
</Tip>


# Sitemap Import
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/sitemap-import

Pull your site's pages into Gauge from your sitemap so their citations are tracked and they show up in Library.

## Sitemap Import

Sitemap import is the fastest way to get your existing pages into Gauge without a CMS connection. Gauge reads your sitemap, groups the URLs by section, and lets you choose which parts of the site to bring in. Imported pages land in [Library](/navigating/library), where Gauge starts tracking their citations alongside your other performance signals.

Use it when you want coverage of your whole site quickly, or when your site doesn't run on a CMS Gauge integrates with directly. If you're on Webflow or Framer, see [CMS Integrations](/help/cms-integrations) for a connection that also lets you edit and publish pages.

## What Gets Imported

Gauge imports the page URLs listed in your sitemap. It automatically skips non-page assets such as images, PDFs, fonts, and other binary files, so you end up with real pages rather than clutter.

URLs are grouped by their first path segment, which becomes a **section**. For example, `/blog/...` URLs form a `blog` section and `/guides/...` form a `guides` section. During the preview you'll see, for each section:

* The total number of URLs in that section
* How many are new versus already in your Library
* A sample of the URLs so you can tell what the section contains

You choose which sections to import, so you can bring in your blog and guides while leaving out low-value paths.

<Note>
  Pages already in your Library are detected and skipped, so re-running an import never creates duplicates. The preview's "new" count reflects only the pages that would actually be added.
</Note>

## How It Works

1. In Library, click **Import sitemap**.
2. Enter your website or a sitemap URL, or use your organization's website. Gauge auto-detects the sitemap from your `robots.txt` or common paths like `sitemap.xml`.
3. Click **Preview** to scan the sitemap and see the sections Gauge found.
4. Pick the sections you want. By default, every section with new pages is selected.
5. Click **Import** to queue the job.

The import runs in the background, so you can close the dialog and keep working. Each imported page is filed into a folder for its section, and a matching tag is applied so you can filter by section later. To refresh after publishing new content, just run the import again; only new URLs are added.

## Where Imported Pages Appear

Imported pages show up in [Library](/navigating/library), organized into folders by section. They populate as the job processes, so a large site may fill in over a minute or two.

Once a page is in Library, Gauge links it to the AI answers that cite it and begins tracking its citation rate, so imported pages feed directly into your [Prompts & Citations](/navigating/prompts-citations) reporting. From Library you can open any imported page to see its metrics or start editing it.

<Tip>
  Connecting a CMS after importing is complementary: Gauge matches your CMS articles onto the pages already imported from your sitemap, so you get editing and publishing on top of the pages you're already tracking.
</Tip>


# Slack Integration
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/slack-integration

Connect Gauge to Slack so your team can ask Gauge questions without leaving Slack and get new recommended actions posted to a channel.

## Slack Integration

Connecting Slack does two things: it lets your team ask Gauge questions right inside Slack, and it posts new recommended actions to a channel as Gauge finds them. Your team can check on AI visibility and act on what Gauge surfaces without opening the app.

## What You Can Do

### Ask Gauge in Slack

Mention **@Gauge** in any channel it belongs to and ask a question about your data, the same questions you'd ask [Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge) in the app. While Gauge works on your answer, it adds an emoji reaction to your message so you know it's thinking, then removes it and replies in the thread. Answers come back as text, so charts and visualizations are not included in Slack.

### Proactive Action Alerts

When Gauge generates new recommended actions, it posts them to a channel you choose, linking back to the [Action Center](/navigating/action-center). Posts arrive the morning after the actions are found, and Gauge sends at most one post per day.

## Connecting Slack

The Slack integration lives under **Settings → Integrations → Slack**.

1. Go to **Settings → Integrations** and find the Slack card.
2. Click **Add to Slack**.
3. Sign in to your Slack workspace and approve the requested permissions.
4. When you return to Gauge, the card shows a **Connected** badge along with your workspace name.

If Gauge later needs additional Slack permissions, the card shows an **Update needed** badge. Click **Reinstall** to keep mentions and alerts working.

## Setting the Alert Channel

Once connected, a **Proactive action alerts** panel appears below the card.

1. Use the toggle to turn proactive action alerts on or off. You can also mute them from within Slack.
2. In **Notification channel**, enter the ID of the channel where you want alerts posted, then click **Save**.
3. Invite **@Gauge** to that channel first, or posts will fail.

<Tip>
  To find a channel ID, click the channel name at the top of the channel, then copy the **Channel ID** at the bottom of the About tab (for example, `C0A3A4J31NJ`).
</Tip>

## Disconnecting

To disconnect, remove the Gauge app from your Slack workspace under **Settings & administration → Manage apps** in Slack. This stops both the in-Slack questions and the action alerts.


# Tags
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/tags

Label prompts with custom categories to slice your visibility and citation data along any dimension.

<iframe title="Introducing Tags in Gauge" />

## Tags

Tags let you label prompts with custom categories so you can break down visibility and citation data along the dimensions that matter to you, like funnel stage, product line, audience, or use case. Any prompt can have multiple tags, and every tag becomes a filter across the rest of Gauge.

## Creating Tags

Tags are simple labels you define yourself. You can create them directly on the Prompts page, or ask Ask Gauge to create them for you.

## Applying Tags to Prompts

A prompt can carry several tags at once. A single prompt might be tagged "City Commuter" and "Family Buyer" if it touches both.

You can apply tags manually on the Prompts page, or have Ask Gauge apply them in bulk.

<Frame>
  <img alt="List of prompts showing applied tags" />
</Frame>

## Slicing Visibility and Citations by Tag

Once your prompts are tagged, you can filter the Rankings and Citations pages by tag. This lets you take a precise view of the data for any slice you care about, for example your bottom-of-funnel prompts only, or your enterprise prompts only.

Tag filters combine with the existing topic and LLM filters, so you can stack them to narrow down further. Use "Match any" to see prompts with at least one of the selected tags, or "Match all" to see only prompts that carry every selected tag.

<Frame>
  <img alt="Tag filter dropdown on the Rankings page" />
</Frame>

## Setting Up Tags with Ask Gauge

Ask Gauge has built-in tools for creating tags and applying them to prompts. You can ask it to read every prompt you're tracking, analyze them, and tag them automatically based on a structure you describe.

For example, you can ask Ask Gauge to tag every prompt by funnel stage, or by which product line it relates to. The agent reads through your prompts and applies the tags across your entire prompt set without you having to label them one by one.


# Team Members
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/help/team-members

Invite teammates to your Gauge workspace, manage their access, and let people with your company email domain join automatically.

## Team Members

Gauge is built for teams. Adding your teammates lets everyone see the same AI search visibility data, work the [Action Center](/navigating/action-center) together, and collaborate on content without sharing a single login. This page covers how to invite people, remove them, and let anyone with your company email domain join on their own.

Everything here lives under **Settings → People → Team**.

## Inviting Team Members

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the Team page">
    Go to **Settings → People** and select the **Team** tab.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Enter their email">
    Type the person's email address into the field at the top of the page.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add them">
    Click **Add to Workspace**. Gauge emails them an invitation with a link to set a password and sign in.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Everyone you've added appears in the team table with their email, status, and join date:

* **Pending** means they've been invited but haven't logged in yet.
* **Active** means they've signed in at least once.

<Note>
  You can invite people before they've ever used Gauge. The invitation email walks them through setting a password, so there's nothing they need to do ahead of time.
</Note>

### Removing a Team Member

To remove someone, click the **X** next to their row and confirm in the dialog. They immediately lose access to your company's data in Gauge, and the action can't be undone. You can always re-invite them later if you need to.

## Roles & Access

Gauge keeps access simple: everyone you add to the workspace is a member with the same access to your organization's data, actions, and content. There are no separate permission tiers to configure, so anyone you invite can view reports and work alongside the rest of your team.

<Tip>
  Because every member has full access, only invite people who should see your organization's data. To take access away, remove them from the team table.
</Tip>

## Auto-Join by Email Domain

Auto-join lets anyone who signs up with an email address at your company's domain be added to your workspace automatically, so you don't have to invite colleagues one at a time. You'll find it in the **Same-domain auto-join** section on the same **Team** page.

Flip the toggle on to enable it. Once it's on, the label shows the domain it applies to (for example, **Anyone with @yourcompany.com**), and new signups from that domain join as members automatically.

<Note>
  To turn auto-join on, you need to be signed in with a work email so Gauge knows which domain to open up. If you signed up with a personal email address (like Gmail), the toggle stays disabled and prompts you to sign in with a work email first.
</Note>

To stop new people from joining this way, switch the toggle back off. Turning auto-join off doesn't remove anyone who has already joined — remove those members individually from the team table if needed.


# Core AEO Metrics
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/introduction/core-aeo-metrics

Learn the key metrics Gauge tracks to measure your brand's visibility and performance in AI-generated answers.

<iframe title="Core AEO Metrics" />

## Core AEO Metrics

AEO metrics fall into three categories:

1. **AI response metrics** — what AI says about your brand
2. **Website metrics** — the traffic and leads AI answers send you
3. **AI bot traffic** — which AI crawlers are reading your site

<Note>
  AEO, GEO, AI SEO, and LLMO all refer to the same thing. This course uses AEO.
</Note>

## Category 1: AI Response Metrics

These matter most. They measure what AI says when someone asks a question about your category.

### Brand Visibility

The percentage of AI answers that mention your brand.

```
Brand visibility = (answers mentioning your brand / total answers) × 100
```

This is the headline metric. If you track one number, track this one.

**Where to find it:** Gauge runs every prompt through every engine you track, every day. Manual spot-checks aren't a substitute — answers vary between sessions, and your own logged-in account returns personalized results.

### URL Citation Rate

The percentage of AI answers that cite a specific URL from your domain as a source.

```
URL citation rate = (answers citing the URL / total answers) × 100
```

Citations drive visibility. Models cite content first, then mention brands. Citation rate shows which of your pages are doing that work.

**Where to find it:** The URL view on the [Citations page](/navigating/prompts-citations), along with the prompts each URL appeared in.

### Domain Citation Rate

How often any page from your domain is cited. Use it to compare your domain against competitors.

**Where to find it:** The domain view on the Citations page. It also shows how many distinct URLs from each domain are cited.

<Note>
  A high domain citation rate spread across hundreds of URLs (common for YouTube and Reddit) means something different than a high rate from a few pages. Per URL, a focused article often carries more weight than a social platform.
</Note>

### Mention Rate

The percentage of time a brand is mentioned in the answer, conditional on a given page being cited.

```
Mention rate = (answers citing the page that mention the brand / answers citing the page) × 100
```

Mention rate is measured per page and per brand, so it applies to any page AI cites, not just yours. On your own pages, a high citation rate with a low mention rate means AI is using your content without naming you — fix it in the content by making the case for your brand explicitly. On third-party pages, mention rate shows which brands a cited page carries into the answer.

**Where to find it:** Next to citation rate for each URL on the Citations page.

## Category 2: Website Metrics

### AI Referral Traffic

Visitors who clicked a link inside an AI answer and landed on your site.

**Where to find it:** [Library](/navigating/library) shows AI traffic per page once GA4 is connected. In GA4 directly, look for referrals from `chatgpt.com`, `perplexity.ai`, and `gemini.google.com`.

<Note>
  Referral traffic undercounts your AEO impact. Most AI answers are read without a click.
</Note>

### Leads from AI Search

Leads where an AI answer was the first touchpoint. This is the metric that connects AEO to revenue.

**How to measure:** Add a "How did you first hear about us?" field to your forms, with ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity as options. Ask the same question on sales calls.

Discovery and conversion are usually days or weeks apart. Someone reads about you in ChatGPT, then arrives later through direct or branded search, so analytics credits the wrong channel. Asking is the only reliable way to catch it.

## Category 3: AI Bot Traffic

How often AI crawlers fetch pages on your site. A crawler has to read a page before a model can cite it, so crawl activity is the earliest signal you have.

**How it's tracked:** Every AI crawler identifies itself in the user agent of its request, so your server logs record each visit. The main ones are `GPTBot` and `OAI-SearchBot` (OpenAI), `ClaudeBot` (Anthropic), `PerplexityBot`, `Google-Extended`, and `CCBot`.

**How Gauge tracks it:** The [AI Traffic](/navigating/ai-traffic) page reads your logs from Cloudflare or Vercel and classifies the requests for you, split into AI bots and coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor, sliced by host and by path. See [Configuring AI Traffic](/help/ai-traffic-setup) to connect your logs.

Also check that `robots.txt` isn't blocking crawlers you want.

## How the Metrics Connect

To be mentioned, you need to be cited. To be cited, you need content AI finds clear, specific, and authoritative.

> **Citations drive mentions. If you want AI to talk about you, you have to give AI something to cite.**

Use the metrics together to find the problem:

| What you see                   | What to fix                                                                 |
| ------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Few crawls                     | AI can't read your site — check `robots.txt`, rendering, and site structure |
| Crawls but no citations        | Your content isn't specific enough for the queries AI is running            |
| Citations but low mention rate | Your content doesn't make the case for your brand                           |
| Visibility but no leads        | Your attribution, not your AEO — ask new customers how they found you       |

## Common Questions

***

### Which metric should I start with?

Brand visibility. It gives you a baseline, and citation rate tells you how to move it.

***

### How is this different from SEO metrics?

SEO measures rankings, click-through rate, and sessions. AEO measures whether your brand is mentioned and whether your content is cited inside the answer.

***

### Can I track all of this in Google Analytics?

Only referral traffic. Analytics can't see inside an AI answer, so it can't tell you whether you were mentioned, cited, or compared against a competitor. That requires running prompts against the models, which Gauge does daily.

***

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/introduction/how-to-improve-ai-visibility">
  How to Improve AI Visibility
</Card>


# How do AI Models Search?
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/introduction/how-do-ai-models-search

Learn how large language models retrieve and synthesize information to generate answers and what that means for your brand's visibility.

<iframe title="How do AI Models Search?" />

## How AI Models Search

To improve your visibility in AI answers, you first need to understand how AI models actually find and use information. The process is fundamentally different from traditional search, and understanding it changes how you think about content.

## The 5 Steps of an AI Answer

Every time a user asks an AI a question, it goes through five steps:

1. **User Query:** The user asks a question
2. **Search:** The model decides whether to search the web for new information
3. **Reference:** It reads through the sources it finds
4. **Citation:** It selects the most relevant content to cite
5. **Final Answer:** It synthesizes everything into a response

## Does the AI Always Search the Web?

Not always. The model first decides whether it already has enough information to answer.

* **Historical or factual questions** the model was trained on don't require a web search
* **Recent or evolving topics** like new products, current rankings, or recent events require the model to go find new information

For most brand and category queries, AI models will search the web before answering.

## How AI Models Write Search Queries

When an AI model searches the web, it writes its own queries, and they look nothing like how humans search.

**Human search queries** are typically 2-3 words.

**AI model search queries** average around 11 words. They're longer, more specific, and often include words like *list*, *comparison*, *best*, *tools*, and *2026*. The model is specifically looking for roundups, rankings, and up-to-date information.

AI models also run multiple searches per question, typically around three, to build a more complete picture before generating an answer.

## Which Search Engine Does Each AI Use?

Different AI models rely on different search engines under the hood:

| AI Model          | Search Engine |
| ----------------- | ------------- |
| ChatGPT           | Google        |
| Claude            | Brave         |
| Microsoft Copilot | Bing          |

## How Citations Shape the Final Answer

After running its searches, the model reads through the results, selects specific articles, and pulls relevant passages. These become the **citations**, the sources that directly informed what the AI said.

> **Citations are what drive AI answers. If your content is cited, it shapes what the AI says. If it isn't, you don't exist in that answer.**

Optimizing for citations, not just keywords, is the foundation of AEO. That's what the rest of this course is about.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/introduction/core-aeo-metrics">
  Core AEO Metrics
</Card>


# How to Improve AI Visibility
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/introduction/how-to-improve-ai-visibility

Discover the highest-leverage actions you can take to increase your brand's presence in AI-generated answers.

<iframe title="How to Improve AI Visibility" />

## How to Improve AI Visibility

Now that you understand how AI searches the web, the strategy becomes straightforward: reverse engineer that process.

AI has to find and read your content when it runs a web search. Your job is to make sure it does.

## Start With How AI Searches

AI search queries are specific, long, and unlike anything a human would type. That means your content needs to be just as specific to show up when those queries run.

Write content that directly answers the long, detailed questions AI models are actually searching for. Generic content won't cut it. The more precisely your content matches the query, the more likely it gets pulled as a source.

## Tell AI What Opinion to Have

AI forms its opinions based on the content it reads. So be prescriptive. Write content that makes a clear, convincing argument for why your product is the right choice.

Think of it like writing a legal brief: lay out the problem, present the evidence, and conclude with your brand as the answer. The more direct and persuasive your content is, the more likely AI will repeat that framing back to buyers.

## The Highest ROI Strategy: Write Listicles

The content format that consistently ranks best in AI search is the listicle.

Listicles like "Best B2B SaaS billing automation software: 10 platforms ranked" perform extremely well because they match the way AI searches for information: looking for roundups, comparisons, and ranked lists.

The brands winning in AI search are writing educational content about their category, talking about their space, and positioning themselves in the most favorable light possible. They're writing about their competitors' pain points and showing how they solve them, as convincingly as possible.

## What High-Performing Content Looks Like

The top-ranking content in AI search follows a clear pattern:

* It names the problem a buyer is trying to solve
* It presents a list of solutions in the space
* It gives the brand's own product prominent, well-argued placement
* It reads as helpful and educational, not promotional

The goal is to write content where you outline exactly why your product is a great fit for buyers who have a specific problem. That's the argument AI will carry forward into its answers.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/setup/integrations-and-settings">
  Integrations & Settings
</Card>


# Welcome to Gauge
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/introduction/welcome

Get oriented with the Gauge platform and understand what you'll learn in this course.

<iframe title="Welcome to Gauge" />

## Welcome to Gauge

The world of search is changing. Every day, more and more people turn to AI for answers, and the brands that show up in those answers win.

Gauge is here to help you be the answer for AI.

## What Gauge Does

Gauge tracks hundreds to thousands of prompts across every major large language model. From there, it helps you understand exactly where you're mentioned, where you're cited, and how you stack up against your competitors.

Once you understand your position, Gauge finds your gaps, gives you your next course of action, and helps you execute on content.

**Track. Understand. Act.** That's Gauge.

## What You'll Learn in This Course

This course covers the fundamentals of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and shows you how to make the most of the platform.

### Section 1: Introduction

Understand how AI models search, what metrics matter, and how to think about improving your visibility in AI-generated answers.

### Section 2: Setup

Connect your integrations and configure your workspace so Gauge has everything it needs to work for you.

### Section 3: Navigating Gauge

A full walkthrough of every feature in the platform, from Rankings and Prompts to Ask Gauge and ChatGPT Ads.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/introduction/how-do-ai-models-search">
  How do AI Models Search?
</Card>


# Ads Monitoring
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/ads-monitoring

See your paid advertising across ChatGPT, Meta, and Google in one place, and correlate spend with the AI answers where your ads actually surface.

## Ads Monitoring

Paid advertising no longer lives only in search engines and social feeds — it increasingly runs inside AI assistants too. Ads Monitoring brings your advertising data together across ChatGPT/OpenAI, Meta, and Google so you can see what you're spending, where it's showing up, and how it connects to the AI answers Gauge already tracks for your brand.

Connect the ad accounts you run, and Gauge pulls in your campaigns, ad groups, creatives, and performance metrics — then lines them up against the prompts and answers being monitored across your category.

<Note>
  This page gives you the cross-platform overview. For a deep dive on ads observed inside ChatGPT specifically — including competitor ad tracking and ad-level prompt matching — see [ChatGPT Ads](/navigating/chatgpt-ads).
</Note>

## What You Can Track

### ChatGPT / OpenAI

Gauge observes sponsored ads that appear in ChatGPT answers for the prompts you track, broken out three ways:

* **Brands** — every advertiser running ads against your monitored prompts, with **Appearances** (how many times their ads showed up) and **Ads** (the number of distinct creatives).
* **Ads** — individual creatives with their **Appearances** and the number of **Prompts** each one has been found running against.
* **Your Campaigns** — if you connect an OpenAI Ads key, Gauge pulls in your own ChatGPT campaigns, ad groups, and ads. You'll see **Budget**, **Spend**, **Impressions**, **Clicks**, **CTR**, and **CPC**, alongside **Appearances** so you can tie campaign spend to the answers where your ads actually surfaced.

Individual ads that Gauge matches to observed placements are flagged as **Matched** with an appearance count; ads that haven't been seen in monitored answers show as **Not observed**.

### Meta

Once your Meta account is connected, Gauge can query the Meta Marketing API for your ad accounts and pull insights at the account, campaign, or ad set level. Reported fields include **spend**, **impressions**, **clicks**, **CTR**, **CPC**, conversion actions, and **purchase ROAS** over the date range you choose.

### Google

For connected Google Ads accounts, Gauge reports live performance directly from the Google Ads API. You can pull an account summary and run campaign, ad group, keyword, and search term reports covering **impressions**, **clicks**, **cost**, **conversions**, **conversion value**, **CTR**, **average CPC**, **cost per conversion**, and **ROAS**.

<Tip>
  Google Ads reporting runs at the client account level. If you connect a manager (MCC) account, point reports at a specific non-manager client account to return metrics.
</Tip>

## Connecting Your Ad Accounts

Ad data appears once the relevant account is connected under **Settings > Integrations**:

* **OpenAI Ads** — add your OpenAI Ads API key to unlock the **Your Campaigns** view. After connecting, Gauge runs an initial sync, and campaign data populates automatically once it completes.
* **Meta** — authorize Gauge through Meta's OAuth flow to grant access to your ad accounts.
* **Google Ads** — connect your Google Ads account (a client account, not a manager account, for direct metrics).

Until an account is connected, Gauge still shows the competitor and brand-level ad activity it observes in ChatGPT answers — connecting your own accounts simply layers your first-party spend and performance on top.

## Why It Matters

Most advertising tools stop at impressions and clicks. Ads Monitoring adds the missing layer: whether your paid dollars are actually influencing the AI answers customers now rely on. By putting ChatGPT, Meta, and Google spend next to the prompts and citations Gauge tracks, you can see where paid placement is winning visibility you don't already have organically, spot competitors buying their way into your category, and decide where the next dollar is best spent. Pair it with [AI Traffic](/navigating/ai-traffic) to follow that visibility all the way through to the visits it drives.


# Agencies
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/agencies

Manage AI visibility for all of your clients from one agency account, with self-serve signup and billing that scales as you add clients.

## Agencies

Gauge has a dedicated mode for agencies that manage AI search visibility on behalf of multiple clients. Instead of juggling separate logins, your agency gets one parent account that sits above a set of client organizations. You add clients, switch between them, and pay for exactly the clients you have active. This page is for agencies running Gauge for more than one brand.

## How Agencies Work

An agency in Gauge is a parent organization with client organizations linked beneath it.

* **The agency account** is the hub you log into. It holds your team, your integrations, and your billing.
* **Client organizations** are full Gauge workspaces — each with its own markets, prompts, competitors, and data. A client is either **active** (running prompts and billed) or **inactive**.
* Opening a client from your agency takes you straight into that client's workspace, so everything you already know about navigating Gauge works exactly the same inside each client.

### Signing Up as an Agency

Agency signup is self-serve and takes two quick steps.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create your account">
    On the **Sign up your agency** page, create your login with email and password or Google. If you already have a regular Gauge account, use the **Regular signup** link instead — agency signup is only for new agency accounts.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add your agency details and pay">
    Enter your **Agency website** and name. Gauge shows what you'll pay — a monthly **Agency Base** fee plus a per-client amount for each client you activate. Click **Continue to payment** to finish checkout in Stripe.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  If you close the browser before finishing checkout, your agency is saved. Return to the signup page and click **Continue to payment** to resume where you left off.
</Note>

## Managing Clients

Your home base is the **Manage Clients** page. Clients are grouped into **Active**, **Inactive**, and **Pending** (setups still in progress), and a search box at the top filters by name, website, or market.

### Adding a Client

Click **Client Instance** to start a new client. This launches the standard onboarding flow where you set the client's name, website, and market. Setups you haven't finished appear under **Pending** with a **Step X of Y** badge — click one to resume, or use the trash icon to cancel it.

### Switching Between Clients

Click any client card to jump into that client's workspace. To come back to your client list, return to the **Manage Clients** page for your agency.

### Activating and Deactivating

Billing is self-serve: activating a client adds it to your subscription, and deactivating removes it.

* **Activate** — click **Activate** on a client card (or open **Manage** with the gear icon). Gauge invoices you immediately for the prorated remainder of the current billing period, then the client renews monthly. Gauge begins running that client's prompts daily.
* **Deactivate** — open **Manage** and click **Deactivate**. Prompt runs stop immediately and you receive a prorated credit for the unused part of the period, applied to your next invoice. You can reactivate any time.
* **Remove** — a client must be inactive first. Removing unlinks the client from your agency and removes all members from it. You'll be asked to type the client's slug to confirm.

<Warning>
  If your agency subscription lapses (for example, a failed payment), clients are deactivated automatically and you won't be able to activate or deactivate from the app until billing is healthy again. Reach out at **[support@withgauge.com](mailto:support@withgauge.com)** and we'll help you get set up.
</Warning>

## Settings & Billing

Agency settings are streamlined to what applies at the agency level. Under **Settings**, your agency sees four tabs:

* **General** — your agency name, website, and account details.
* **Integrations** — connections that apply across the agency.
* **People** — invite and manage the teammates who work in your agency account.
* **Billing** — your subscription and Stripe billing portal.

### How Billing Is Calculated

Your agency subscription has two parts:

* A flat monthly **Agency Base** fee.
* A per-client charge, multiplied by the number of clients you currently have active.

Activations are invoiced immediately (prorated to the current period); deactivations return a prorated credit against your next invoice. Manage payment methods, invoices, and your plan through the Stripe billing portal, reachable from the **Billing** tab or the **Manage billing** link on the Manage Clients page.


# AI Engines Gauge Tracks
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/ai-engines

Understand the AI answer engines Gauge monitors, how your tracked prompts run through each one, and why engine coverage shapes your visibility metrics.

## AI Engines Gauge Tracks

People often ask, "Does Gauge track ChatGPT?" The answer is yes — and Gauge tracks far more than ChatGPT. Gauge monitors a full set of AI answer engines, so you can see how your brand shows up across the tools people actually use to ask questions, not just one.

Every engine is controlled by a per-organization toggle. When an engine is enabled for your org, Gauge runs each of your tracked prompts through it on a recurring basis, captures the answer, and records where your brand and your competitors appear. Those results feed directly into your [rankings and visibility](/navigating/rankings-visibility) and your [prompts and citations](/navigating/prompts-citations).

## Engines Gauge Tracks

### ChatGPT (OpenAI)

OpenAI's ChatGPT is the most widely used AI assistant, and for most brand and category questions it searches the web (via Google) before answering. This is usually the highest-signal engine to track.

### Anthropic (Claude)

Anthropic's Claude is a leading assistant used heavily in professional and technical contexts. When it searches, it relies on Brave.

### Perplexity

Perplexity is an answer engine built around search from the ground up. It cites sources aggressively, which makes it a strong signal for which URLs are shaping AI answers in your space.

### Google Gemini

Google's standalone Gemini assistant answers questions in a conversational format, drawing on Google's index.

### Google AI Overviews (AIO)

AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of a standard Google search results page. Because they sit in front of billions of everyday searches, coverage here reaches users who never open a dedicated AI assistant.

### Google AI Mode

AI Mode is Google's fully conversational search experience — a chat-style answer surface distinct from the AI Overviews that appear on classic results pages.

### Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot answers questions using Bing as its underlying search engine, and reaches users across Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365.

### Grok (xAI)

Grok is xAI's assistant, integrated with X (formerly Twitter). It draws on real-time discussion, which can surface different sources than the other engines.

<Note>
  Engine availability is set per organization, so your workspace may not have every engine enabled. Check your organization settings to confirm which engines are active for you.
</Note>

## Why Engine Coverage Matters

Each engine searches differently, cites different sources, and reaches a different audience. A brand that dominates ChatGPT answers can be nearly invisible in Perplexity or Google AI Overviews — and you only learn that by tracking each engine separately.

Your visibility metrics are calculated across the engines you have enabled. Enabling more engines gives you a broader, more accurate picture of where you stand; a narrower set focuses measurement on the engines that matter most to your audience. When you compare visibility over time, keep your enabled engines consistent so that changes reflect real movement rather than a shift in coverage.

<Tip>
  If your visibility looks stronger or weaker than expected, check which engines are enabled before drawing conclusions — the engine mix directly determines what your scores measure. Ads surfaces like [ChatGPT ads](/navigating/chatgpt-ads) are tracked separately from organic answers.
</Tip>


# AI Traffic
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/ai-traffic

See which of your pages AI agents are actually visiting, using your own server logs from Cloudflare or Vercel.

## AI Traffic

Your Rankings and Prompts data tells you where you show up inside AI answers. AI Traffic tells you what happens next: which of your pages AI agents are actually fetching from your site. It connects the visibility Gauge measures from prompts to real requests hitting your servers.

Gauge reads your server logs through Cloudflare or Vercel and analyzes which pages LLMs are accessing. That gives you log-level evidence of how often models and coding agents are pulling your content, and exactly which URLs they're after.

## Connecting Your Logs

You connect AI Traffic from Settings, using one of two sources:

* **Cloudflare:** Gauge deploys a Worker for you to start streaming logs. Enterprise setups can use Logpush instead.
* **Vercel:** Stream your logs straight from Vercel.

Once logs are flowing, Gauge classifies the traffic and the AI Traffic page fills in automatically. For a step-by-step walkthrough of both setups, see [Configuring AI Traffic](/help/ai-traffic-setup).

## What's on This Page

### AI Bot Traffic

Gauge identifies requests from every major AI bot, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok. You can see this traffic sliced by host and by path, so you know which sections of your site AI models are pulling from most.

### Coding Agent Traffic

Gauge also classifies coding agents separately, including Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and Codex, among others. This is useful if your audience includes developers and you want to know how often agents are reaching your docs or product pages.

### Trends Over Time

Traffic is broken out by day, week, or month, so you can watch how AI access to your site changes as your visibility and content do.

## Asking Gauge About Your Traffic

Ask Gauge can query your AI Traffic data directly. You can ask questions like "How often is Claude Code fetching our docs?" and get an answer backed by your actual log evidence, rather than an estimate.

<Note>
  AI Traffic is also surfaced inside Library, where each page shows its bot traffic from server logs alongside Google Search clicks, AI traffic, and your Gauge citation rate.
</Note>

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/chatgpt-ads">
  ChatGPT Ads
</Card>


# Ask Gauge
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/ask-gauge

Use Ask Gauge, your AI marketing co-pilot, to analyze data, identify opportunities, and create content without leaving the platform.

<iframe title="Ask Gauge" />

## Ask Gauge

Ask Gauge is your marketing agent for organic, paid, and AI search. It connects all of your data, Google Analytics, Search Console, ads, keyword research, and AI visibility, and helps you act on it without leaving the platform.

## What Ask Gauge Does

### Reporting and Analysis

Ask Gauge can pull performance reports across any time period, surfacing how your visibility, traffic, and rankings are trending. Rather than digging through individual dashboards, you can ask a direct question and get a synthesized answer grounded in your actual data.

### Gap Identification

The agent analyzes your data to surface gaps you might not see on your own: topics where you're not showing up, keywords worth targeting, or areas where competitors are outpacing you. These recommendations are based on real keyword research and AI visibility data from your connected integrations.

### Content Creation

Once a gap is identified, Ask Gauge can take you from analysis all the way to content. It can create a content brief, generate an outline, and write a full article, all informed by your search data and company context.

## How It Works

Ask Gauge understands all of your Gauge data alongside anything you've shared about your company. The more context you give it through your integrations and settings, the more accurate and on-brand its output will be.

You can ask it anything related to your search presence and it will use your actual data to respond, not generic advice.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/rankings-visibility">
  Rankings & Visibility
</Card>


# ChatGPT Ads
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/chatgpt-ads

Track and optimize your brand's visibility in ChatGPT Ad placements.

<iframe title="ChatGPT Ads" />

## ChatGPT Ads

Gauge's ChatGPT Ads tool gives you visibility into the paid advertising layer inside ChatGPT, including what your competitors are running and how your own campaigns are performing. It's the intelligence layer you need to understand and operationalize ads within ChatGPT.

## What's on This Page

### Competitor Ad Tracking

The page shows all advertisers running ads against the prompts you're tracking in Gauge. For each advertiser, you can see their ad copy and the specific prompts those ads have appeared on.

This view also tells you whether you're already showing up organically in the same answers where a competitor is running a paid ad, helping you understand whether paid placement adds new reach or overlaps with visibility you already have.

### Your Campaign Performance

If you connect your OpenAI Ads key, Gauge pulls in your own ChatGPT campaign data. You can see budget, spend, impressions, and clicks alongside calculated metrics like CTR and CPC, across your full campaign list as well as individual ad groups.

### Ad-Level Prompt Matching

Clicking into a specific ad shows you the exact prompts where that ad has been found running. This tells you how your targeting is performing in practice and helps you refine which prompts are worth running paid placements against over time.


# Competitors & Brand Tracking
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/competitors

Track your brand and competitor brands within a market, dig into any brand's detail view, and benchmark visibility side by side.

## Competitors & Brand Tracking

Gauge tracks every brand that shows up across the prompts you monitor, not just your own. That includes the competitors you care about most. By naming your primary competitors and reading each brand's detail view, you turn a list of mentions into a clear picture of who is winning AI visibility in your market and where you can close the gap.

This page covers how competitors are defined and where per-brand data lives. For the top-level view of your own coverage and the brand list, see [Rankings & Visibility](/navigating/rankings-visibility).

## Managing Competitors

There are two ways to tell Gauge which brands are your competitors:

* **From Rankings.** In the brand list on the [Rankings](/navigating/rankings-visibility) page, use the bullseye toggle next to any brand to mark it as a direct competitor. Once selected, competitors appear in a dedicated competitor view for clean side-by-side comparison.
* **From Settings.** Go to **Settings → Markets** and open the market you want to configure. The **Primary Competitors** field lets you search brands by name or website and add them to the market. Changes save automatically — you'll see a "Saving..." then "Saved" indicator as you edit.

The same market settings form is also where you set the **Market Name**, **Primary Brand** (the brand Gauge prioritizes when measuring your visibility), and **Market Description**.

<Note>
  If your organization has more than one owned brand, set a **Primary Brand** in market settings so visibility and ranking data are attributed correctly.
</Note>

## Brand Detail

Click any brand — yours or a competitor's — to open its detail page. The header shows the brand's logo, name, and a link to its website, along with two headline numbers:

* **Visibility (Avg)** — the brand's average visibility across the selected time range.
* **Visibility (Current)** — its most recent visibility reading.

Use the filters at the top to slice the view by time range, AI model, topic, and tags, or use the **Change brand** selector to jump straight to another brand. When "Overall" is selected you're looking across the top AI models; pick a specific model to see how the brand performs on ChatGPT versus Gemini versus Perplexity.

The detail page has three tabs:

* **Prompts** — every tracked prompt whose answer mentions this brand, so you can read exactly where and how it comes up.
* **Sentiment** — how AI models talk about the brand: the split of positive, neutral, and negative mentions and how that trends over time. See [Sentiment Analysis](/navigating/sentiment-analysis) for how this is scored.
* **Citations** — the websites that reference the brand in AI answers, grouped by domain. You can expand a domain to see the prompts it was cited for and label its relationship to your organization.

<Tip>
  Open a competitor's detail page to see which prompts they win and which sources cite them. Those citations are a shortlist of the pages and communities you need to appear on to catch up.
</Tip>

## Why It Matters

AI visibility is relative. A high coverage number means little if a competitor is mentioned in even more answers for the prompts that matter to your market. Tracking competitor brands the same way you track your own lets you benchmark visibility side by side, see exactly which topics and prompts a competitor owns, and turn that gap into a concrete plan — the right content to publish and the right sources to earn mentions from.

To see your competitors ranked against your own brand across the market, head back to [Rankings & Visibility](/navigating/rankings-visibility). To understand which prompts feed all of this tracking, see [Branded Prompts](/help/branded-prompts).


# Content Engine
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/content

Turn a topic or gap into a published article through a guided pipeline, with human checkpoints at the brief and outline.

## Content Engine

The Content Engine turns a topic or content gap into a finished, publishable article through a guided, stage-by-stage pipeline. Instead of starting from a blank page, you describe what you want and Gauge works through the piece with you: gathering a brief, researching the topic, drafting an outline, writing the article, running review passes, and publishing to your CMS.

The pipeline runs inside [Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge), so every stage is grounded in your organization's own visibility and citation data. You stay in control at the two checkpoints that matter most, the brief and the outline, while Gauge handles the heavier drafting and review work.

Once a piece is written and published, it lives in your [Library](/navigating/library), where you can track its performance and refresh it over time.

## Starting a Piece

You start a new piece from the **New content** screen, which opens with the prompt **"I want to make a…"** and a selector for the format you want.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Choose a format">
    Pick a content type from the selector, such as **Listicle**, **Alternatives**, **Head-to-Head**, or **Freeform Article**. Each format shapes how the brief and outline are structured.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add context">
    Depending on the format, you can set target brands and select reference citations that Gauge should draw from.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Describe what you want">
    In the input box ("Describe what you'd like to create…"), add any specifics, then send. Gauge opens the piece and begins the pipeline.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  Content ideas often start elsewhere in Gauge. When a recommended action in the [Action Center](/navigating/action-center) points to a content gap, it can hand that context straight into a new piece.
</Tip>

## How It Works

Each stage produces an artifact you can read and adjust before moving on. The generation stages run in the background, so Gauge works through them and shows you the result when each is ready.

### Brief

Gauge first drafts a **brief** that captures the angle, the target audience, and the key points the piece should cover. This is your first checkpoint: review the brief, tell Gauge what to change, and add any direction or research of your own before moving forward. Getting the brief right here saves rework later.

### Research

With the brief settled, Gauge researches the topic, pulling together supporting context, competitor and brand details where relevant, and source material the article can cite. This research feeds directly into the outline and the draft.

### Outline

Gauge turns the brief and research into a structured **outline** of the sections the article will contain. This is your second checkpoint. Review the structure, reorder or reshape sections, and give directions before generating the full draft.

### Writing

From the approved outline, Gauge writes the **article** section by section, weaving in the research and citations gathered earlier. You get a complete draft rather than a skeleton to fill in.

### Review

Gauge can run targeted **review passes** over the draft, each focused on one dimension, including voice, positioning, structure, citations, and proofreading. It can also grade the article to flag what still needs attention. Each pass finds and fixes issues, and you can run only the passes you want.

### Publishing

When your organization has a CMS connected, the final stage publishes the article to it. You choose the target state:

* **Draft** — saved in your CMS but not visible on your site.
* **Staging** — published to a staging or preview environment, where the CMS supports it.
* **Live** — published to your production site.

<Warning>
  Publishing to **live** changes your real website. Gauge only publishes live when you explicitly ask, and if it finds more than one possible destination it will ask which to use first. See [CMS Integrations](/help/cms-integrations) to connect and configure a CMS.
</Warning>

<Note>
  The Content Engine is for creating new pieces. To browse, manage, and track the performance of content you already own, use the [Library](/navigating/library).
</Note>


# Organization Dashboard
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/dashboard

Read your organization-wide AI visibility at a glance, including Share of Voice against your competitors.

## Organization Dashboard

The Organization Dashboard is the top-level view of how your brands show up in AI answers across your entire organization. Where the [Rankings & Visibility](/navigating/rankings-visibility) page drills into a single category, the dashboard rolls everything up into one place: an overview of your performance across every market you track.

It's the right screen when you want the headline read on how you're trending — and how you stack up against competitors — before you dig into a specific category, prompt, or citation.

## What You'll See

At the top of the page you can filter the whole dashboard by time range, tags, and AI model, so every section reflects the same slice of data.

### Performance Metrics

This section tracks your **Visibility** and **Citation Rate** for your brands across markets. If your organization tracks more than one category, a tab bar lets you switch between **All Categories** and any individual category. The chart plots visibility and citation rate over time, and the panel on the right shows current values with a trend badge for the change over the selected period.

Use the **Compare to...** selector (the bullseye) to overlay a competitor's visibility and citation rate on the same chart, drawn in red for a clean side-by-side. Below the metrics, brands are listed in rank order so you can see where you sit relative to competitors.

<Tip>
  If you track several of your own brands, use the checkboxes in the brand list to include or exclude specific brands from the chart.
</Tip>

### Traffic

The Traffic chart tracks referred sessions from AI answers over time — how much real visits your AI presence is driving.

### Health Score

Your Health Score is calculated from the average score of all pages in your Library. It's a quick read on the overall quality of the content you've indexed.

### Competitor Matrix

The Competitor Matrix compares your visibility to your competitors across categories and topics, so you can spot exactly where you lead and where you trail.

## Share of Voice

Share of Voice answers a simple question: of all the times the brands in your competitive set are mentioned in AI answers, what percentage of those mentions belong to you?

The **Brand Mention Share of Voice** chart compares how mentions of your brands and your primary competitors are distributed in AI answers over time. The shares within the pool sum to 100% each day, so the chart shows relative presence — gaining share means you're being mentioned more often *than the others*, not just more often overall.

The panel on the right lists every brand in the pool alongside its current Share of Voice percentage. Your own brands are selected by default; use the checkboxes to add or remove competitors from the chart. It's read together with the raw visibility numbers in Performance Metrics: visibility tells you how often you appear, Share of Voice tells you how that presence compares to everyone else's.

<Note>
  Share of Voice is available on the dashboard for organizations that have it enabled. If you don't see the section, reach out to your Gauge contact.
</Note>

## Why It Matters

Visibility in isolation can be misleading — a rising number feels good, but if competitors are rising faster, you're actually losing ground. Share of Voice reframes your AI presence as a competition for a finite space, which is exactly how AI answers work: models surface a handful of brands, and the goal is to be one of them more often than the alternatives.

Start on the dashboard to see the organization-wide picture, then jump into [Rankings & Visibility](/navigating/rankings-visibility) or [Prompts & Citations](/navigating/prompts-citations) to understand what's driving the numbers.


# Library
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/library

One home for your owned content. See performance metrics, edit pages, and plan your content calendar in a single view.

<iframe title="Introducing Library" />

## Library

Library is the home for your owned content. It combines performance metrics, editing, and content planning into one view, so you can see how your pages are doing, refresh the ones that need work, and plan what's next without switching tools.

Library brings together every signal Gauge tracks about your pages: Google Search impressions and clicks, bot traffic from server logs, AI traffic measured via Google Analytics, and citation metrics from Gauge.

## Sitemap View

Library is organized around your sitemap, pulled directly from your CMS (for example, Webflow). The top level shows your site's directories. Clicking into one reveals every published post in that section.

For each post you can see:

* Google Search impressions and clicks
* AI traffic from Google Analytics
* Citation rate from Gauge
* Bot traffic from server logs

That gives you a fast read on which pieces are working, which are being cited, and which need attention.

<Frame>
  <img alt="Library Pages view showing posts with impressions, clicks, AI traffic, and citation rate" />
</Frame>

## Editing Existing Content

Clicking **Open** on any page takes you into an editor inside Ask Gauge. From there you can edit the piece directly, or ask Gauge to edit it for you, for example refreshing it with new data or rewriting sections to target a specific prompt.

## Creating New Content

To start a new piece, click **Start Fresh**. This drops you into the same editor with a blank slate, where you can write the piece yourself or ask Ask Gauge to draft it for you.

## Content Calendar

Calendar is where your team plans and tracks content work. You can see every piece that's in flight, queued up, or scheduled, alongside what your teammates are working on. Each piece shows its format (listicle, freeform article, instructional, etc.) so you can see the mix at a glance.

Content calendars are how content teams collaborate, so Gauge keeps yours in the same place as the rest of your content work rather than in a separate doc or tool.

<Frame>
  <img alt="Library Calendar view with pieces scheduled across a two-week range" />
</Frame>

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/ai-traffic">
  AI Traffic
</Card>


# Memory
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/memory

Teach Gauge about your company, competitors, and preferences once, so every answer and piece of content it creates is grounded in your context.

## Memory

Memory is your organization's persistent context — the brain that Gauge draws on in every conversation, analysis, and piece of content it creates. Instead of re-explaining your business each time, you write it down once and Gauge uses it everywhere.

The richer your memory, the better the output. A well-filled memory means [Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge) answers with your real positioning and voice, and the content pipeline writes in your style instead of generic filler.

## The Memory Files

Memory is organized into a set of documents, each covering a different slice of context. Some are personal to you, and some are shared across everyone on your team.

### User Preferences

Your personal tone, formatting, and style preferences. These are unique to you and shape how Ask Gauge communicates with you — the words to use, the words to avoid, and how long answers should be. Because they are per-user, your teammates can each keep their own.

### Company Context (shared)

Key facts about your company: products, positioning, pricing, ICP, and brand voice. This is the single most important file for grounding Gauge in who you are and how you talk about yourself. Shared across your team.

### Competitor Context (shared)

Competitor intelligence: each competitor's positioning, strengths, weaknesses, and how you win against them. Shared across your team.

### Content Strategy (shared)

Your editorial process, content calendar, strategic priorities, and distribution channels. Shared across your team.

### Content Style Guide (shared)

Writing rules for the content pipeline — voice and tone, banned patterns, citation format, brand positioning, and structure rules. These are loaded by the content pipeline as it drafts and reviews articles, so this file is what keeps generated content on-brand.

## How It Works

You do not have to start from a blank page. Gauge can populate your memory for you, and you can always refine it by hand afterward.

Open the **Populate Memory** menu at the top of the page for two options:

* **Generate from website** — Gauge reads your website and drafts memory content from what it finds. Generation runs in the background and updates your files when it finishes, usually within a minute or two.
* **Import knowledge** — Paste existing company knowledge, competitor analysis, or strategy documents, and Gauge organizes them into the right memory files for you.

## Editing Memory

There are two ways to keep memory up to date: edit the files yourself, or ask Ask Gauge to do it for you.

### Edit the files directly

Memory lives under **Settings → Memory**.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Memory">
    Go to **Settings → Memory**. The file cards appear at the top of the page.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Select a file">
    Click a card to open that document in the editor below.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Edit and save">
    Update the content directly in the editor. Each file is structured with clear headings you can fill in.
  </Step>
</Steps>

### Ask Gauge to update it

[Ask Gauge](/navigating/ask-gauge) has built-in tools for reading and editing your memory, so you can update it in plain language without opening Settings. Just tell it what changed — for example, "add our new pricing tiers to our company context" or "update our notes on Competitor X" — and it edits the right file for you. Ask Gauge also picks up context as you chat and can update memory on its own as it learns about your business.

<Warning>
  Edits to shared files (Company Context, Competitor Context, Content Strategy, and Content Style Guide) apply for your whole team. User Preferences are yours alone.
</Warning>

## Why It Matters

Everything in memory feeds directly into what Gauge produces. When your company context is thin, answers stay generic; when it is rich and accurate, Gauge speaks in your voice, positions you against the right competitors, and writes content that sounds like your team wrote it. Filling in memory is one of the highest-leverage things you can do to improve Gauge's output.


# Prompts & Citations
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/prompts-citations

Explore how Gauge monitors specific prompts and tracks when AI engines cite your content as a source.

<iframe title="Prompts & Citations" />

## Prompts & Citations

The Prompts and Citations pages give you a deep analytical view of where you're mentioned, where you're cited, and which pieces of content are working for or against your AI visibility. If the Rankings page tells you your score, this section tells you why.

## The Prompts Page

### Topic Groups

Your prompts are organized into topic categories. Each group shows your visibility across those prompts, and you can compare your topic-group visibility directly against a competitor using the dropdown at the top of the page.

### Diving Into Individual Prompts

Double-clicking a topic group reveals all the individual prompts inside it. For each prompt, you can see its search volume and your exact visibility percentage.

Clicking into a specific prompt shows you the full AI output for each model you're tracking:

* **Stars** indicate where your brand was mentioned
* **Bullseyes** indicate where competitors were mentioned
* Hover over any brand to see exactly where and how it appeared in the answer
* Each prompt also shows the citations the model used, the specific sources that shaped its response

### Adding Prompts

You can add prompts in three ways:

1. **Manually:** add a single prompt directly
2. **In bulk:** upload a list of prompts at once
3. **Generate with AI:** use Gauge's built-in agent to generate relevant prompts for any topic, using keyword data from your integrations. Give it a topic, add any keywords or URLs you want it to consider, and the agent produces a ready-to-review list.

### Removing Prompts

Click into any topic group, select the prompts you want to remove, and press delete.

## The Citations Page

### Domain View

The domain view shows the most cited websites across all your tracked prompts. For each domain, you can see how frequently it's being cited and how many individual URLs from that domain have been used as sources.

<Note>
  High citation rates on platforms like YouTube or Reddit often involve many different URLs spread across that domain. On a per-URL basis, a focused first-party article may actually be more influential than a high-volume social platform.
</Note>

### URL View

The URL view shows you specific articles and pieces of content that AI models are actively citing. For each URL, you can see which brands are mentioned in the answers it influences, and which individual prompts it appeared in.

Clicking on any URL takes you into the prompts it influenced. Clicking on a prompt takes you back to the full AI response, keeping everything connected in one place.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/sentiment-analysis">
  Sentiment Analysis
</Card>


# Rankings & Visibility
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/rankings-visibility

Learn how to read and act on your brand's Rankings and Visibility data in Gauge.

<iframe title="Rankings & Visibility" />

## Rankings & Visibility

The Rankings page is the highest-level view of your AI presence. It's usually the first place to check when you log in. It gives you an immediate read on how your AEO is trending and how you compare to competitors.

## What's on This Page

### Your Brand Coverage

At the top of the page, you'll see your overall brand coverage, the percentage of AI answers across your tracked prompts where your brand appears. This is your top-line visibility number.

### The Brand Section

On the right side of the page is a list of all the brands showing up across the prompts you're tracking. For each brand, you can see their visibility and the sentiment AI models assign to them when mentioning them.

You can mark any brand as a direct competitor using the bullseye toggle. Once selected, competitors appear in a dedicated competitor view for clean side-by-side comparison.

### Filtering by Topic and LLM

At the top of the page, you can filter by topic group or by specific AI model. These filters let you take unique views of the data, seeing how your visibility looks in a specific category, or how you perform on ChatGPT versus Gemini versus Perplexity.

### Prompt Examples

At the bottom of the page, you can browse individual prompt cards to see exactly how AI models responded to a specific question. Clicking into a prompt shows you:

* The exact question that was tracked
* The full AI-generated response
* Where your brand was mentioned and what sentiment was given
* The citations the model used to generate that answer

### Top Domains and Citations

The Rankings page also surfaces the top domains being cited across your tracked prompts, as well as the most frequently cited individual URLs. This shows you which sources AI models treat as authoritative in your space.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/prompts-citations">
  Prompts & Citations
</Card>


# Reddit
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/reddit

See which Reddit URLs and subreddits are driving AI citations in your industry, and identify where your brand needs to show up.

<iframe title="Reddit" />

## Reddit

The Reddit section gives you a view of which URLs and subreddits are contributing to AI visibility within your industry. Rather than tracking Reddit for reputation management alone, Gauge uses it to show you exactly which threads and communities are being cited in AI-generated answers for the prompts you're tracking.

## What You'll See

### Subreddits

The Subreddits tab shows the most impactful subreddits in your space — the communities generating the most citations across your tracked prompts. These are the places where Reddit content is actively influencing what AI models say about your category.

### URLs

The URLs tab shows the specific Reddit threads driving citations. For each URL you can see:

* **Citation rate** — how often this URL is cited across your tracked prompts
* **Change in visibility** — whether that citation rate is trending up or down
* **Brand mentions** — which brands are referenced in that thread

Click into any URL to see every prompt it was cited for.

### Coverage Gaps

You can compare citation coverage between your brand and competitors to identify threads where competitors are mentioned but you're not. Filter by topic, date range, and platform at the top of the screen.

## The Charts

Two graphs appear at the top of the Reddit view:

* **Citation rate for reddit.com** — the percentage of your tracked prompts that cite any Reddit URL. This shows how much Reddit overall is influencing AI answers in your space.
* **Reddit citations mentioning your brand** — of all the Reddit citations being pulled into AI answers, what percentage actually mention your brand. This is the number to grow.

## Why It Matters

Reddit is one of the most heavily cited sources in AI-generated answers. Knowing which threads and subreddits are driving those citations tells you exactly where your brand needs to show up — and where a competitor mention is costing you visibility.

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/library">
  Library
</Card>


# Sentiment Analysis
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/sentiment-analysis

Understand how AI models talk about your brand, not just how often you appear, but what they actually say.

<iframe title="AI Sentiment Analysis" />

## AI Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment Analysis looks at the answer text from every prompt Gauge runs across the platform — both non-branded prompts like "What's the best AI SEO company?" and branded prompts like "How does Gauge help companies rank better in AI search?" Rather than just tracking whether your brand appears, Gauge analyzes the actual language AI models use to describe you.

## What It Measures

Sentiment Analysis goes beyond a simple positive/negative score. Gauge looks across your entire dataset — every prompt, every model, every response — and surfaces:

* **Sentiment over time** — how the tone of AI responses about your brand is trending
* **Sentiment distribution** — the breakdown of positive, negative, and neutral tone
* **Model-level breakdown** — how different LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) talk about your brand differently
* **Key themes and quotes** — specific language patterns and direct quotes pulled from model responses

## How It Works

Gauge uses full-text search across all responses collected on the platform to group recurring themes into an easy-to-read dashboard. This isn't a single prompt run once, or even the same prompt run a hundred times. It's a view across your entire data set — every prompt Gauge runs, across every model — so the findings reflect how AI consistently positions your brand, not just a snapshot.

## What You'll Find

### Strengths and Key Findings

The dashboard surfaces what AI models consistently say your brand does well. For example, if models repeatedly describe your product as data-driven or highlight a specific feature positively, those themes are grouped and shown with supporting quotes directly from the models.

### Weaknesses and Gaps

Sentiment Analysis also highlights where your positioning may need work. If models are mischaracterizing your pricing, undervaluing a feature, or comparing you unfavorably to competitors, you'll see that here — with the exact quotes to back it up. These insights are actionable: they point to areas where updating your content or messaging could shift how AI talks about you.

### Competitive Positioning

See how AI frames your brand relative to competitors across the full response dataset.

## Availability

AI Sentiment Analysis is available for all Gauge customers. Two views are enabled by default: **Strengths & Weaknesses** and **Competitive Positioning**.

## Add Additional Themes for Sentiment

If you want Gauge to track a specific aspect of how AI describes your brand (pricing, a particular feature, positioning against a named competitor), you can add your own theme. Give it a name for your reference and write the evaluation question the LLM should use when synthesizing responses. Use `{brand_name}` as a placeholder and Gauge will swap it in during analysis.

<Frame>
  <img alt="New Theme modal" />
</Frame>

<Card title="Next Lesson →" icon="arrow-right" href="/navigating/reddit">
  Reddit
</Card>


# Topics
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/topics

See how Gauge groups your tracked prompts into topics so you can measure, organize, and prioritize AI visibility across the areas that matter to your brand.

## Topics

A topic is a group of related prompts that represent one theme in your market — for example, everything customers ask about a particular use case, product category, or comparison. Instead of reading thousands of individual prompts one at a time, Gauge rolls each prompt up into a topic so you can see visibility at the level you actually make decisions about.

Every prompt you track lives inside a topic. When you add prompts manually, in bulk, or with Gauge's AI-assisted generation, you assign them to a topic, and Gauge aggregates their results into a single visibility number for that topic. You can create a topic from the Topics tab with **Add Topic**, rename it, or delete it at any time.

For the deeper mechanics of individual prompts, citations, and AI answers, see [Prompts & Citations](/navigating/prompts-citations).

## What You'll See

The **Topics** tab lists every topic Gauge is tracking for the selected brand and market, with a summary line showing how many topics and total prompts you're tracking. Each row shows:

* **Topic** — the topic title, with a few of its keywords shown as badges (and a "+N more" count when there are extras)
* **Keyword Volume** — the search volume of the topic's highest-volume keyword, a signal of how much demand the theme represents
* **# Prompts** — how many prompts are grouped into the topic
* **Visibility (Avg)** — your brand's average visibility across the topic's non-branded prompts over the selected time range
* **Visibility (Current)** — your visibility on the most recent day in that range

Use **Search topics** to filter the list, sort by any column, and pick a competitor from the **Select competitor** dropdown to add their visibility columns alongside yours. You can also export the table. Use the filters at the top of the page to change the time range, model, and tags.

<Tip>
  Sort by Keyword Volume to surface high-demand topics, then check the Visibility column to spot where that demand is going uncovered.
</Tip>

## Topic Detail

Click any topic to open its detail page. At the top you'll see the topic title (which you can edit), your average visibility for the topic, and — when a competitor is selected — their average alongside yours. A chart tracks **% Visibility (Non-Branded Prompts)** over time so you can see whether the topic is trending up or down.

Just below the title is the topic's keyword set. Each keyword shows its monthly search volume on hover, and you can manage the list directly:

* **Add Keywords** attaches new keywords to the topic for research and volume tracking
* Removing a keyword takes it off the topic

The detail page has two tabs:

* **Prompts** — every prompt in the topic, with its Type, Volume, and visibility columns. From here you can search, select prompts in bulk, and move, retype, tag, or delete them.
* **Top Citations** — the sources cited most often in AI answers for this topic, each with its **Citation Rate**

<Note>
  Topic-level visibility is calculated from non-branded prompts. A topic made up entirely of branded prompts will show a dash instead of a visibility percentage.
</Note>

## Why It Matters

* **Organization** — topics turn a long, flat prompt list into themes you can reason about and report on
* **Prioritization** — comparing keyword volume against visibility shows you which high-demand themes you're losing, so you know where to invest first
* **Competitive context** — adding a competitor reveals the topics where they're winning coverage you're missing
* **Keyword research in context** — per-topic keywords tie search demand directly to the AI visibility you're tracking, keeping SEO and AEO decisions in one place

For rank and share-of-voice trends across all topics, see [Rankings & Visibility](/navigating/rankings-visibility).


# YouTube
Source: https://docs.withgauge.com/navigating/youtube

See which YouTube videos and channels are driving AI citations in your industry, and identify where your brand needs to show up.

## YouTube

The YouTube section gives you a view of which videos and channels are contributing to AI visibility within your industry. Rather than tracking YouTube for audience growth alone, Gauge uses it to show you exactly which videos and creators are being cited in AI-generated answers for the prompts you're tracking.

Filter the whole view by topic, time range, model, and tags using the controls at the top of the screen.

## What You'll See

### Videos

The Videos tab is the default view. It ranks the specific YouTube videos driving citations across your tracked prompts. For each video you can see:

* **Citation Rate (Average)** — how often the video is cited across your tracked prompts over the selected period
* **Citation Rate (Current)** — its citation rate at the end of that period
* **Change** — whether that citation rate is trending up or down
* **Channel** — the creator that published the video
* **Views** — the video's total view count on YouTube

Search by video title or channel name to find a specific video, and click any row to open it on YouTube.

### Channels

The Channels tab rolls the same data up to the creator level, ranking the channels generating the most citations in your space. Alongside **Citation Rate (Average)**, **Citation Rate (Current)**, and **Change**, each channel shows its **Subscribers**, the number of distinct **Videos** cited, and total **Views**.

Click a channel to filter the Videos tab down to just that channel's cited videos.

### Coverage Gaps

Use the tracking type control to switch between all citations and those tied to your brand's visibility. Videos and channels that are cited heavily but don't mention your brand are the gaps to close — the places AI answers are pulling from where you're absent and a competitor may be present.

## The Charts

Two graphs appear at the top of the YouTube view:

* **Citation Rate for youtube.com** — the percentage of AI answers that cite any YouTube video. This shows how much YouTube overall is influencing AI answers in your space.
* **YouTube Visibility for your brand** — of the YouTube citations being pulled into AI answers, the percentage that actually mention your brand. This is the number to grow.

<Note>
  Gauge's scraping of YouTube is inconsistent, so brand visibility figures on this page can read lower than reality. Treat them as directional rather than exact.
</Note>

## Why It Matters

Video is an increasingly cited source in AI-generated answers, and a single popular explainer can shape what models say about your category for months. Knowing which videos and channels drive those citations tells you exactly where your brand needs to show up — through your own content, partnerships, or creator outreach.

<Tip>
  YouTube works alongside [Reddit](/navigating/reddit) as a view into the sources feeding AI answers. To see the underlying prompts and every citation behind them, head to [Prompts & Citations](/navigating/prompts-citations).
</Tip>