Mention share, mention rate and other terms

Mention share is the number of answers in which a brand appears, divided by the sum of that number across all tracked brands. It is each brand's portion of the tracked brands, so the shares add up to about 100%. It is a different metric from mention rate, which shows in how many of the valid answers a brand appears.

Example: of 10 valid answers, brand A appears in 5 and brand B in 3. If A and B are the only tracked brands, A's mention rate is 50% (5 ÷ 10) and its mention share is 62.5% (5 ÷ (5 + 3)).

An answer that mentions two tracked brands counts once for each of them. That is why the denominator is a sum of counts, not a number of answers. Changing the set of tracked brands changes everyone's mention share, even for the same answers.

Mention rate is the number of valid answers in which a brand appears, divided by the number of valid answers.

In the example above, brand A's mention rate is 50% (5 ÷ 10). Mention rates of different brands do not have to add up to 100%: one answer can mention several brands, or none.

An answer that was actually received from an AI and recorded. Requests that fail are not stored, so a failed request never counts as an answer without a mention.

The brands a keyword is measured against: your own brand, which is required, and any competitors you choose to add. Mention share is calculated among these brands only.

Other ways of writing your brand name, for example in katakana. Mentions found under a registered spelling count as mentions of your brand.

The topic you track, written in Japanese: a product category, or a problem your customers want solved. Each keyword is measured with the same fixed questions every day.

One of the five fixed Japanese questions sent for each keyword. The questions ask for recommended products, services and brands in different ways, and never contain the name of the brand being measured.

When a keyword could be misread, a short note explaining what it means is added to the end of each question.

The text an AI returns to one question. Each answer is kept with its date, model and question.

Whether a question is sent with the AI's web search tool enabled. Gemini and Claude are asked with web search enabled, and each decides by itself whether to search. ChatGPT is asked without web search.

Work aimed at getting a brand mentioned, recommended or cited in answers generated by AI assistants. In Japan this work is usually called AIO; in English, AIO more often means Google AI Overviews, so this site says GEO.

AI-generated summaries shown above some Google search results. AIOPulse does not measure them.

The idea, popularized by Clayton Christensen, that customers hire a product to get a job done. People ask AI assistants about the job (sleeping better, say), not about an industry, so the brands an assistant suggests can come from several industries at once.

AI recommendation rankings that AIOPulse publishes in Japanese for 56 industry categories, measured with brand-neutral Japanese questions. ChatGPT and Gemini answers are collected every 2 days (at 06:00 JST), and Claude answers through a separate route, in principle every day.