Choose Your Primary AI Visibility Metric

1. What's New

Ayzeo ranks every brand in a project, your own and the competitors you track, in the Brand Industry Ranking. Until now that ranking used one fixed formula for everyone. Today it becomes a choice.

There is a new per-project setting called Primary ranking metric, and it lives in Project Settings under Project Details. Any project owner or admin can set it, on every plan. It offers five options:

• Composite Score, a blend of 60% Mention Rate, 25% Citation Rate, and 15% Visibility Score. This is the formula Ayzeo has always used.
• Mention Rate, how often AI names the brand in its answers.
• Visibility Score, how often the brand appears in the AI web-search results the model consulted.
• Citation Rate, how often the AI actually visited and cited the brand's URL.
• Custom weights, your own integer mix of the three metrics, so long as the weights add up to 100.

Whatever you choose orders the ranking everywhere it shows up, and it takes effect the moment you save. No new plan, no migration.

2. Why One Score Doesn't Fit Everyone

The Composite Score is a good default because it balances the three things that matter in AI answers: being named, being cited, and being visible in the search results AI reads. It weights Mention Rate most heavily, at 60%, because being said out loud in the answer is the most valuable outcome.

But a single formula quietly decides what winning means, and that definition is not the same for every business. A brand chasing awareness is not measuring the same success as a documentation team that wants AI to read and cite its pages, and neither of them is measuring the same thing as a marketplace fighting to appear in every "best tool for X" comparison. When one score ranks all of them, at least one is being graded on a curve it did not choose.

The primary ranking metric hands that decision back to you, per project, so the rank on your dashboard and in your reports reflects the outcome you actually care about.

3. Five Ways to Rank, One Per Goal

Here is how each mode maps to a real business, so you can recognize your own situation.

Mention Rate: a DTC brand tracking awareness

A direct-to-consumer skincare brand wants shoppers to hear its name when they ask an assistant "what is a good vitamin C serum." Being cited or appearing in a source list is nice, but the win is the model saying the brand name in the answer a shopper reads. Ranking by Mention Rate puts that outcome front and center, and rewards the brands AI actually recommends by name. This is also the new default for projects created from now on.

Citation Rate: a documentation-heavy SaaS

A developer-tools company publishes deep documentation and wants AI to treat those docs as the source of truth. Its goal is not just a name-drop, it is having the model open and cite its pages when answering technical questions. Ranking by Citation Rate measures exactly that, and rewards the brands whose own URLs AI visits during its research. If your strategy is to be the source AI reads and links to, this is your metric.

Visibility Score: a marketplace fighting for "best X"

An online marketplace competes in comparison and "best X" queries, where the real battle is showing up in the search results AI pulls before it writes anything. If it is not in that pool of results, it cannot be recommended at all. Ranking by Visibility Score tracks how often the brand appears in what AI consulted, which is the leading indicator for comparison-heavy categories.

Composite Score: a balanced overview or continuity

Plenty of teams want one number that captures all three signals, or simply want their ranking to stay identical to how Ayzeo has always reported it. Composite Score is the answer to both. It is the default for every project that existed before this release, so those reports do not move unless someone changes the setting.

Custom weights: an agency mapping client KPIs

An agency runs a project per client, and each client defines success differently. With Custom weights, the agency can set a mix per project that mirrors that client's KPI, for example 50% Mention Rate, 30% Citation Rate, and 20% Visibility Score for a client that values citations more than raw search presence. Any integer combination works as long as the three weights sum to 100.

"The right metric is the one that matches what you are trying to achieve. Now the ranking finally reflects that, project by project."

4. What Existing Customers Should Know

The most important thing first: if you do nothing, nothing changes. Every project created before this release keeps Composite Score, so your Brand Industry Ranking, your Industry Rank, your emails, and your PDF reports all stay exactly as they are.

A few things worth knowing when you do decide to switch:

• New projects default to Mention Rate. Any project you create from now on starts on Mention Rate, the outcome most businesses care about first. You can change it whenever you like.
• The re-rank is retroactive, and that is by design. Ayzeo always computes the ranking live from your stored raw results, so switching the metric re-orders past periods too. Pull up a 90-day view and it recalculates against the metric you just picked.
• Your raw trend charts do not move. Mention Rate, Citation Rate, and Visibility Score are measured from the AI answers themselves. Changing the ranking metric only changes how brands are ordered, never the underlying numbers or their history.
• The analytics page adapts. It highlights the primary metric's KPI card, defaults the trend chart and the Top Brands tabs to that metric, and shows a "Ranked by" label so everyone reading the dashboard knows which metric is driving the order.
• You can still look at the others. A Rank by switcher on the ranking table re-orders it by any metric for your own view, without changing the project's setting or what appears in emails and reports.
• Sentiment is never part of the ranking. It is tracked and reported on its own, and it does not feed any ranking formula, not even Composite Score or custom weights.

5. How to Change It

Open Project Settings, go to the Project Details form, and find Primary ranking metric. Pick the option that matches your goal. If you choose Custom weights, enter three integers for Mention Rate, Citation Rate, and Visibility Score that add up to 100, then save. The change applies to that project only, it takes effect immediately, and any owner or admin can make it on any plan.

For the full walkthrough of each option and when to use it, read Primary Ranking Metric: Choosing How Brands Are Ranked. If you want a refresher on the three metrics behind the ranking, start with Understanding AI Visibility Metrics.

6. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need to change anything?

A: No. Every project created before this release keeps the Composite Score it has always used, so your ranking and reports stay the same. You only change the metric if you want the ranking to reflect a different goal.

Q: What is the default for new projects?

A: Mention Rate. It reflects how often AI names a brand in its answers, which is the outcome most businesses want to see first. You can switch any new project to a different metric at any time.

Q: Does switching the metric change my historical data?

A: It re-ranks past periods, because Ayzeo computes the ranking live from your stored raw results. It does not change the raw metrics. Your Mention Rate, Citation Rate, and Visibility Score trend charts stay exactly as they were.

Q: How do custom weights work?

A: You set three integers, one each for Mention Rate, Citation Rate, and Visibility Score, that add up to 100, for example 50/30/20. Ayzeo blends the three metrics in that proportion to rank every brand in the project.

Q: Can I view another metric without changing the setting?

A: Yes. The ranking table has a Rank by switcher that re-orders it by any metric for your own view. It does not change the project's primary ranking metric or what appears in emails and reports. Sentiment, for the record, is never part of any ranking.

Get Started

Open one of your projects, decide what winning looks like for it, and set the primary ranking metric to match. Whether that is Mention Rate for awareness, Citation Rate to be the source AI reads, Visibility Score for comparison queries, a balanced Composite Score, or a custom blend, the ranking on your dashboard and in your reports will finally speak in the terms you measure by.

Key Takeaways

• Primary ranking metric is a new per-project setting in Project Settings that decides how the Brand Industry Ranking is ordered
• Five options: Composite Score, Mention Rate, Visibility Score, Citation Rate, or custom weights that sum to 100
• Existing projects are untouched, keeping Composite Score, while new projects default to Mention Rate
• The rank updates everywhere: dashboard, Brands Table, CSV and JSON exports, the monthly email, and the PDF report
• Re-ranking is retroactive but safe, computed live from stored results, so your raw metric trend charts never change, and sentiment is never part of any ranking