Search metrics
Search visibility, owned and earned presence, first-appearance position and the winning URL.
| Metric | The question it answers | Range | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search visibility | How often do search results show me at all? | 0–100% | Higher |
| Owned and earned presence | Is that my own page, or a page naming me? | 0–100% each | Higher |
| First-appearance position | When I appear, how high? | 1 and up | Lower |
| Winning URL | Which page usually takes the top spot? | A URL | — |
What a search run is
A search run is one search query on one search engine on one day. A run counts only when the engine returned results; failed or empty searches are left out.
Search visibility
The share of search runs in which you appear — your own page ranked, or a third-party result named you.
search visibility = runs where you appear (owned or earned) ÷ runs with results × 100
Unlike the AI metrics, search visibility is pooled across all runs, not averaged per engine: every results page counts once. To stop one engine from hiding another, traditional search (Google, Bing) and agentic search (Tavily, Exa, Perplexity Search) are always shown side by side.
Search queries in a brand-profile topic name you by definition, so they are left out of the brand-wide figure.
Results summary on the Search Visibility page (from 20 search runs):
| Summary | When |
|---|---|
| Rarely found | You appear in less than 15% of runs |
| Found through others | Your own site appears in 5% of runs or less, while pages naming you appear in 15% or more |
| Found late | Your average position is 10 or worse, or 40% or more of your appearances are below position 10 |
| Found | None of the above |
Owned vs earned
- Owned — your own domain ranks in the results.
- Earned — someone else's page ranks and names you in its title or snippet: a review, a comparison, a directory listing.
A run can be both. Earned presence matters because AI assistants read the pages that rank, not only the brands that own them — a comparison page that ranks and names you can put you into an AI answer even when your own site doesn't rank.
The split bar shows every run as owned only, earned only, both, or neither.
First-appearance position
The rank of the highest result that shows you, owned or earned, averaged over the runs where you appear.
Runs where you don't appear are left out, so this number describes "when we show up, how high" — never "how we rank overall". Always read it together with search visibility.
The distribution groups your appearances into positions 1–3, 4–10 and 11+, plus runs where you were not found.
Winning URL
The page that most often held the top organic result for a search query in the period, with the share of runs in which it did. It shows you the page to study — or to beat.
AI summaries
When Google shows an AI Overview above the results, we capture it and record which brands it names. It is shown as its own surface next to the organic results, because being named in the summary is different from ranking below it.