Run a Quarterly Brand Health Review
A repeatable quarterly process for reviewing your AI search visibility score, share of voice, competitor shifts, and presenting findings to stakeholders.
A quarterly brand health review gives your team a structured moment to step back from daily citation alerts and assess the bigger picture: are you more or less visible in AI search than three months ago, and what does that mean for your strategy?
What you'll learn
- Which metrics to pull and how to read trends over a full quarter
- How to assess share of voice shifts and identify competitor threats
- How to export a report and frame the findings for stakeholders
When to run this review
Run it in the first two weeks of each new quarter. Use the previous quarter as your measurement window. Block two hours: one to gather data, one to write the summary and prepare the export.
Step 1: Pull your visibility score trend
The visibility score is a 0-100 composite of your citation rate, citation consistency, and per-engine coverage. Open the Dashboard at /dashboard and set the date range to the previous quarter (for example, 1 March to 31 May).
Look for:
- Overall trend: Is the score higher, lower, or flat compared to the quarter before?
- Inflection points: Did the score jump or drop on a specific date? Note those dates. They often correspond to a content change, a competitor move, or an engine update.
- Per-engine breakdown: Citation rates range from 38% (Google AI, the hardest to win) to 58% (Perplexity, the strongest citer). Compare your per-engine rates against these benchmarks. An engine where you are well below benchmark is an opportunity.
Record three numbers: your score at the start of the quarter, your score at the end, and the peak.
A visibility score of 74/100 is the current platform average. If you are above it, note which engines and intent types are driving that. If you are below it, the gap is your headline finding.
Step 2: Review citation rate and volume
From the same Dashboard view, note:
- Citation rate this quarter versus the previous quarter
- Total citations this quarter (your number will vary based on your prompt count and how often each is checked)
- Citation rate by intent type: Are you stronger on branded queries than buying-intent? That pattern suggests good brand awareness but a gap at the point of purchase decisions.
Do not report raw citation count without context. A higher count this quarter could simply reflect more prompts being tracked, not better performance. Always compare citation rate (percentage), not just volume.
Step 3: Assess share of voice and competitor shifts
Go to /competitors. For each competitor you track, look at:
- Share of voice over the quarter (your citations as a percentage of all citations across you and your competitors on the same prompts)
- Competitor threat score trend: is any competitor's threat level rising?
- Prompts where you lost ground (your citation rate fell while a competitor's rose)
This is explained in depth in Competitors and share of voice.
Build a simple table for your review document:
| Competitor | Share of voice (last quarter) | Share of voice (this quarter) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Competitor A | 31% | 28% | -3 pts |
| Your brand | 42% | 45% | +3 pts |
| Competitor B | 27% | 27% | flat |
Any competitor gaining meaningful share-of-voice points in a single quarter deserves a closer look. Check which prompts they are winning and what content they published.
If a competitor's threat score moved from "low" to "medium" or "medium" to "high" during the quarter, flag it explicitly in your review. That trajectory is more important than the current snapshot.
Step 4: Review predictions and set the next quarter's target
Open Predictions and forecasts to see Outercite's projected visibility trajectory. The forecast is based on your recent citation trend. Use it to set a realistic target for next quarter.
Frame the target as: "If we take [specific action], we expect to reach [visibility score] by [end of next quarter]." Vague targets ("improve visibility") do not drive action. Specific ones do.
Example: "We are at 68/100. The forecast shows we will reach 71/100 with no changes. Our target is 76/100. To get there, we will update our three lowest-performing buying-intent pages and add structured data to the product pages by the end of next month."
Step 5: Export the report
Go to /reports and export a quarterly summary. The export includes:
- Visibility score trend chart
- Per-engine citation rate table
- Share of voice breakdown
- Top-gaining and top-losing prompts
See Export a report for format options (PDF and CSV are available).
When presenting to stakeholders unfamiliar with AI search:
- Lead with the visibility score: one number, easy to track over time
- Use the share of voice table to show competitive position
- Frame the forecast as a business outcome ("we expect to appear in 55% of AI answers for [category] next quarter")
If your audience is unfamiliar with what a citation is, link them to the What is a citation article in your review document. A 30-second read that prevents a 10-minute tangent in the meeting.
Step 6: Close the loop on last quarter's actions
Every good quarterly review closes the loop. At the start of your review, list the two or three actions you committed to last quarter and assess them:
- Did you complete them?
- Did the citation rate move on the prompts those actions targeted?
- If not, what was the gap between the expected and actual result?
Honest retrospectives make the next quarter's actions sharper.
Success metric
You have run a complete quarterly review when you have: a written comparison of start-versus-end visibility score, a share of voice table with quarter-on-quarter change, a forecast-backed target for next quarter, and an exported report ready to share.
Try this in Outercite
Pull your Dashboard now and set the date range to the last 90 days. See where your visibility score started and ended.
Related
Competitors and share of voice
How share of voice is calculated and what the competitor threat score means.
Export a report
How to export citation data, visibility trends, and share of voice as a PDF or CSV.
Predictions and forecasts
Understand how Outercite projects your visibility trajectory based on recent trends.