> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.withgauge.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Understanding your metrics

> What visibility, citations, and mention rate mean—with a simple example.

Gauge measures the answers it collects for your prompts. Here’s how to read the numbers.

## One example, three metrics

Imagine Gauge collects **100 answers**:

| What happened                          | Your metric                        |
| -------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- |
| Your brand appears in 40 answers       | **40% visibility**                 |
| Your page is cited in 20 answers       | **20% citation rate**              |
| 10 of those 20 answers name your brand | **50% mention rate** for that page |

A page can be cited without your brand being mentioned. Your brand can also appear because another website talks about it.

## Share of Voice

Share of Voice compares your brand's mentions with your competitors' mentions.

If your brand gets 40 mentions and competitors get 60, your share is **40%**. Changing which competitors you track changes the comparison.

Visibility tells you how often you appear. Share of Voice tells you how that compares with others.

## Compare like with like

Use the same prompts, engines, and filters when comparing dates. Adding prompts or an engine changes what you're measuring.

Check several days and open the actual answers before deciding why a number moved. A change after publishing an article does not prove the article caused it.

## What does prompt volume mean?

Volume comes from search keywords linked to a prompt. It does **not** count how many people asked that exact question in ChatGPT.

Gauge shows the highest-volume keyword linked to the prompt or topic. Use it to help prioritize questions, alongside what you know about your customers.

## Missing data or zero?

| What you see                 | What it means                                                            |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Zero, with answers available | No matching mentions or citations were found.                            |
| A dash or no data            | Gauge cannot calculate that metric for the current filters.              |
| Still processing             | More answers may arrive. Check again before comparing the day’s results. |

Blank traffic metrics can also mean an integration needs connecting. See [Troubleshooting data](/help/troubleshooting-data).

## Calculation details

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Which prompts count toward visibility?">
    Topics' visibility uses non-branded prompts. Rankings and Citations exclude branded prompts by default. Questions that name a brand are better for checking how AI describes it. See [Branded Prompts](/help/branded-prompts).

    New prompts and engines only have data from when Gauge began collecting their answers.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Do repeated mentions count more than once?">
    Visibility counts each answer once per brand, even if the answer names it repeatedly. Domain citation rate counts answers citing any page on that domain; several citations to the same domain still count as one answer.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How does the dashboard combine results?">
    **All Categories** combines the areas you track. If you select multiple owned brands, an answer mentioning any of them counts once toward combined visibility.

    Daily rates combine answers from the selected engines. Engines with more collected answers contribute more to the result. Select one engine to compare it on its own.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What do the trend and Current values mean?">
    The Performance Metrics trend compares the first and last plotted values. A move from 20% to 30% is an increase of **10 percentage points**.

    On Topics, **Visibility (Avg)** covers the selected dates. **Visibility (Current)** uses the last date in that range, which may still be processing.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Why don't brands' visibility percentages add up to 100%?">
    One answer can mention several brands. Share of Voice uses a different calculation: it divides mentions among the brands in your comparison, so their shares total 100%.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>