Definitions

What does position measure inside an AI answer?

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Position is the order in which a brand appears inside an answer that names or cites it, recorded as a rank within that answer rather than as a yes-or-no event.

This is the sense CiteAngle uses when it measures. The word travels with other meanings in this market, so we pin ours before it turns up in a report.

Where this lands in the measurement

Ten names can share one answer, and the one placed first is not read the way the one at the end is. Presence and order get separate columns.

Order moves between runs, so it travels as a distribution across the repeats instead of as the single rank one capture happened to show.

What it costs to leave this loose

Record presence as a yes or a no and first place reads identically to last. The difference in what actually gets read is exactly what got dropped.

Presence and order are kept in separate columns, and order travels as a distribution across the repeats.

Who you want measuring this

One reading does not settle a term like this. The answer an assistant writes today can name different companies tomorrow, so a Panorama round puts 50 buyer questions to every place on our US list, 7 separate times each, and reads all 17 of them — ChatGPT · Perplexity · Claude · Gemini · Grok · Google AI Overviews · Google AI Mode · Bing Copilot · DuckDuckGo AI Assist · Google Search · Bing Search · Yahoo Search · DuckDuckGo Search · Google News · Bing News · YouTube · Google Short Videos. Radar starts at 5 questions and covers the same list under the same rule.

Where we ask → Surfaces we countA map from the places we ask to the surfaces we count. Only these rows split in two: Google Search and DuckDuckGo Search Assist.Where we ask 15Surfaces we count 17AI answersOpenAI web searchAI answersPerplexityAI answersAnthropic web searchAI answersxAI web searchAI answersGeminiAI answersGoogle AI ModeSearchGoogle SearchSearchYahoo SearchNewsGoogle NewsNewsBing NewsVideoYouTube searchVideoGoogle short videosSearchBing SearchAI answersBing CopilotAI answersDuckDuckGo Search AssistOpenAI web searchPerplexityAnthropic web searchxAI web searchGeminiGoogle AI ModeGoogle organicGoogle AI OverviewYahoo SearchGoogle NewsBing NewsYouTube searchGoogle short videosBing SearchBing CopilotDuckDuckGo AI AssistDuckDuckGo organicA single capture from Google Search and DuckDuckGo Search Assist splits into two surfaces. That is why we count 2 more surfaces than the places we ask.
Where we ask, set beside the surfaces we count. One place can be asked once and still be counted in two, so the two totals differ.

We put the same questions to the competitors you name inside the same runs, so you see both in one table. The conditions are sealed, so you can reproduce the round and check it, and every planned observation is published with its state, failures included. When you choose who measures this, check that all three are in place.

That describes how the measuring is done. It is not a promise about where your numbers land.

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