How Do I Choose the Best Topics for My Gumshoe Report?

Topics are the themes that drive prompts in your Gumshoe report. Think of them as “buckets” of traditional SEO keywords. The Topics you choose shape which questions get asked and where your brand shows up.

Gumshoe will automatically generate strong Topics, but only you know your industry. Take a few minutes to review and edit them. After you review the Topics and Personas, the Prompts will fall into place without needing to review each one.

Remember, no AI Models share their real-world data. Topic generated by Gumshoe reflects what the models say are common or likely topics to come up related to the report's brand and Business Focus.

Best practices for Topics

• Follow the Report Focus. Only include Topics that serve as subcategories of the overall Business Focus of the report.
• Match your business. Choose Topics that reflect your products, services, or experiences.
• Think like your customers. Use everyday language, not just jargon (e.g., “tools to manage customer data” vs. “MDM solutions”).
• Cover discovery to usage. Include early research, purchase, and post-purchase questions.
• Mix broad and specific. Balance general categories with long-tail opportunities.
• Stay current. Run reports on a schedule to catch shifts in AI model answers or competitor positioning.

How often should I use Gumshoe?

AI-generated search results change frequently. Models update their knowledge, adjust rankings, and respond differently over time, even from week to week. Because of this, tracking your AI visibility regularly is essential to stay ahead of trends and ensure your brand is consistently visible and accurately represented.

We recommend running Gumshoe reports weekly to stay on top of changes.

Frequent tracking allows you to:

• Identify early shifts in brand visibility across AI models
• Spot inconsistencies that may signal content gaps
• Adapt your strategy before competitors gain ground

AI model behavior can vary even if you’re not making frequent website changes. The same question might produce different results depending on which sources are favored, how models interpret queries, or recent training cycles. A weekly cadence ensures you catch these shifts early.

You can also rotate your report focus to dig deeper into specific areas, such as a product line, campaign, or competitor.

Example Use Cases:

• Launching something new? Run a report focused on the new product to see if AI models are recognizing it.
• Repositioning your brand? Try different focus terms or messaging to compare outcomes.
• Monitoring the market? Run competitor-focused reports weekly to compare how you stack up.

By staying proactive with weekly monitoring, you can respond faster, optimize your content more effectively, and ensure AI platforms always tell the right story about your brand.

What Is a Product/Service Focus?

When you run a report in Gumshoe, setting a Product/Service Focus lets you narrow your AI search results to a specific offering, such as a flagship product, service category, or sub-brand.

By default, Gumshoe analyzes your brand as a whole, surfacing AI mentions across your entire online presence. But when you define a Product/Service Focus, Gumshoe filters those results to highlight only the AI references most relevant to that particular offering.

This ensures the insights you receive are tightly aligned with how that product or service is perceived in AI-generated content, rather than showing a general brand overview.

Why Use a Focus

Your brand’s size, structure, and online footprint influence whether you should set a Product/Service Focus.

Here are a couple of examples:

• Big Company Example: A multinational brand with divisions in retail, cloud computing, and logistics might focus on “cloud services” to isolate AI visibility tied to that business unit.
• Small Business Example: A bakery that also offers catering could use a focus like “catering services” to understand how that offering is mentioned in AI search, separate from general store references.

Leaving the field blank will return broad visibility data for your brand overall. But when you want precision—use a Product/Service Focus to see exactly how AI models are interpreting specific parts of your business.

What prompts should I use?

When you first run a Gumshoe report, you’ll notice that it generates topics, personas, and prompts automatically. One common question we hear is: “What prompts should I use?”

The short answer is: you don’t need to worry too much about them as long as the foundations of the report are accurate.

Take Time Setting Your Report’s Business Focus

Prompts are designed to reflect the kinds of questions your customers or prospects might ask in AI tools. But the real key to a good report is the Business Focus you choose at the start. The Focus defines the area/category of your business or market you want visibility into. Once that’s clear, Gumshoe automatically builds out the right prompts to explore that focus in depth. For instance, if you work at Nike, you might want to generate a report focusing on running shoes, as they represent a distinct category of your business.

Personas matter most

Each report includes a set of personas, the audience types most relevant to your market. Gumshoe provides starter personas for every report. We recommend:

• Keep them as-is unless you strongly disagree.
• Add more personas if there are additional roles or audience types you want covered.
• Remove personas only if they are completely irrelevant to your goals.
• Take the time to read and edit all Personas in your report.

By adjusting personas, you’re ensuring that Gumshoe generates prompts and analysis that reflect the voices of the people you care most about.

Minimal tweaking required

Once your focus and personas are set, the rest of the report (including prompts) will generate automatically. Gumshoe is designed so that you don’t have to spend time writing or perfecting individual prompts. With minimal adjustments, you’ll get a full picture of how AI models are presenting your brand and how to improve your visibility.

Conclusion

Don’t worry about writing the “perfect” prompts. Just choose the right focus, make sure the personas fit your goals, and Gumshoe will handle the rest.

Why is my Visibility so Low?

Many brands score low in AI visibility—even well-known global companies. The reasons vary: some industries simply aren’t well represented in AI models yet, some brands are newer or produce limited content, and others have technical readability issues that make their sites difficult for models to use. Low visibility also happens with highly local businesses, niche suppliers, or sectors that haven’t meaningfully adopted GEO/AEO practices.

Here are some ways you can check the accuracy of a Gumshoe report:

Check the Page Audits

In each report, open the Page Audit section in the left menu. We automatically crawl the homepage, but you can crawl additional URLs for free. What to look for:

• Is the score low?
• Are important types of content missing?

If the Page Audit flags major technical issues with how LLMs read the site, it almost always correlates with low visibility.

Check the Leaderboard

Look at the full Leaderboard, then filter by direct competitors.

What to check:

• Are the right competitors showing up?
• Do the direct competitor recommendations make sense for the category?

If the right competitors are listed but also have low scores, this suggests an industry-wide visibility gap. If competitors have high scores, the report is calibrated correctly, and the brand itself is the issue.

Scan the Conversations

Open the Conversations page and filter by each model.

What to look for:

• Are the answers generally coherent and relevant?
• Any obviously odd or unrelated results?
• Are the prompts shared with the models recommendation-oriented rather than informational? ("How does HVAC work?" VS "What's the best HVAC parts supplier?")

If the conversations look logically structured and on-topic, the report is behaving correctly.

Check the Sources

Review the Sources page to see what URLs the AI models used to answer your prompts.

What to look for:

• Are competitors, aggregators, or marketplaces being cited instead of the brand?
• Is the brand’s domain appearing at all?

If the brand doesn't appear in citations, it means the AI models aren’t using its content to answer user questions. When a brand is cited infrequently, a low visibility score is expected.

Compare Persona Coverage

Look at how the brand performs per Persona.

What to look for:

• Is there any audience where visibility is stronger?
• Does visibility drop consistently across all personas?
• Is there a critical Persona that is missing?

Differences across personas can reveal whether visibility problems are isolated to specific audiences or reflect a broader issue with how the models understand the brand.

Check Topic Alignment

Review the Topics chosen for the report.

What to look for:

• Are the topics appropriate for the category?
• Are any important topics missing?

If topics were poorly chosen or too broad, results will naturally appear thin.

If everything above checks out, the report results are accurate. The brands need content tailored for LLMs, technical fixes, and third-party reinforcement to become visible in AI search.

Why Should I Create Reports Using Multiple AI Models?

When you run a Gumshoe report with multiple AI models, you get a broader and more accurate picture of how your brand appears across the AI search landscape. Scheduling those reports makes this insight even more powerful.

The Value of Scheduling Multi-Model Reports

• Consistency Across Models: AI models (like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity) update at different times and use different methods to generate answers. Scheduling ensures you can track how your brand’s visibility shifts across each one.
• Catch Model Updates in Real Time: Some models release frequent updates that can dramatically change answers overnight. Regular reports help you spot these shifts immediately.
• Balanced Perspective: No single model tells the whole story. Scheduling lets you measure patterns across many models over time, making your insights more reliable.
• Identify Which Models Need More Exposure to Your Brand: Over time, scheduled reports reveal which AI models consistently recommend your brand, which are improving, and which need more focus.
• Models Don’t Reveal User Data: Since AI models don’t share data on who uses them, there’s no way to know which model your audience relies on most. Running reports across more models helps ensure you’re covering all bases.

Why It Matters

With many models in play, visibility can change quickly and not always in sync. By scheduling your reports, you build a trendline across the AI ecosystem, giving you the clearest possible view of where your brand stands now and how it’s shifting over time.

Pro Tip: The more models you track, the more important it is to schedule reports. Otherwise, you’ll only ever see a single, temporary snapshot from each model.

Why Should I Schedule Reports in Gumshoe?

Running a Gumshoe report once gives you a snapshot of how AI models view your brand right now. However, scheduling your reports makes them far more powerful by allowing you to track trends over time. You’ll notice variations and trends over time, even without making changes to your own content — because your actions aren’t the only factor influencing how models respond.

The Value of Scheduled Reports

• Spot trends, not just snapshots: AI search results shift constantly. Scheduled reports help you see patterns and track whether your visibility is improving or slipping.
• Measure the impact of your actions: If you publish new content, add schema, or secure media coverage, scheduled reports show you how those efforts affect visibility.
• Benchmark against competitors: Competitors may gain or lose visibility over time. Scheduled reports let you compare your performance on the same timeline.
• Support long-term strategy: AI visibility is not static. Regular insights allow you to refine your strategy with real-world feedback.

Why It Matters

AI search is dynamic, and visibility can change quickly as models update and new content is published. Without scheduled reports, you’re left guessing about whether today’s results are better, worse, or the same as last month. With them, you get measurable proof of progress.

How to Manage Scheduled Reports

Please visit these Help Center articles for more detailed information on scheduling reports:

• How Do I Finalize, Run, and Schedule a Gumshoe Report?
• How do I manage scheduled reports in Gumshoe?
• How does billing work for scheduled/repeating Gumshoe reports?
• How Do I View Past Runs and Historical Trends for a Scheduled Gumshoe Report?

Why Should I Use 10+ Prompts Per Persona?

When building a Gumshoe report, it might be tempting to only include a few prompts for each persona. But to get the most accurate picture of your brand’s visibility, you’ll want 10 or more prompts per persona.

With fewer prompts, you risk basing your strategy on incomplete or misleading data. With 10+ prompts per persona, you’ll see the complete picture of what AI models are actually saying to your ideal customers.

Why 10 or More is Better

AI models don’t give the same answer every time. They vary depending on the question phrasing, intent, and context. By using a broader set of prompts, you:

• Cover natural variation: Different customers ask the same thing in different ways.
• Increase accuracy: More prompts mean a larger sample size and fewer skewed results.
• Find hidden opportunities: Some phrasings may trigger competitor mentions or reveal gaps you’d otherwise miss.
• Build trend value: Repeating reports with larger prompt sets makes trends over time more reliable.

Pro Tip: Use prompts that span different intent levels, from broad discovery (“What are the best X tools?”) to transactional (“Which provider offers X service in Y location?”).

Why Should I Use at least 6 Personas?

In Gumshoe, personas serve as the lens through which AI simulates your audience. Limiting yourself to only one or two personas risks missing critical perspectives. That’s why we recommend at least six personas per report.

Adding enough personas ensures that your report accurately reflects the real diversity of your market, rather than just a single perspective. You’ll walk away with more actionable insights and fewer blind spots.

Why Having Six or More Personas is Best

• Different buyers, different journeys: A CMO, an event planner, and a first-time founder ask very different questions. Covering all of them gives you a complete view.
• Catch hidden risks: AI might recommend a competitor heavily to one persona (like procurement officers) even if you do well with another (like small business owners).
• Discover new opportunities: Sometimes your strongest visibility is with an unexpected persona you didn’t know AI models already associate with your brand.
• Better actionability: Having multiple personas makes it easier to decide where to double down (strengths) and where to improve (weaknesses).

Pro Tip: Balance your personas between core buyers (the ones you know you must win) and adjacent buyers (who could influence or recommend your brand). If you already have defined ICPs, try adding them to your report in addition to the automatically generated personas.

Can I Save A Report I am Building and Come Back?

Yes! After setting a focus (and location and language, if you like), you'll be able to come back to a report and pick up where you left off.

Do I Need to Run Reports Again After My Content Changes?

Yes! Running a fresh report after you update your content is the best way to measure the impact. Gumshoe will show whether AI models recognize and cite your changes. Models can react to updates much faster than traditional search engines, sometimes showing small, near-immediate shifts and often producing significant changes within 1–3 months.

But that’s not the only reason to run again. Even if you haven’t changed anything, models and competitors may have. Fresh reports tell you if your visibility is stable, improving, or slipping.

Pro Tip: Maintain a baseline report schedule cadence (weekly to monthly) to catch trends.

Does Gumshoe have Terms of Service or a Privacy Policy?

Yes!

• You can view the Terms of Service here: https://app.gumshoe.ai/docs/tos
• You can read the Privacy Policy here: https://www.gumshoe.ai/privacy

Does Gumshoe Show Real-World Prompt Volume?

We often hear this question phrased as:

• “How many people search this prompt in real life?”
• “What’s the actual usage volume of this prompt?”
• “Can I get real data on how many times users asked this question?”

Models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity don’t share their real-world usage logs. That means no AI search visibility tool can show you the exact number of times a question has been asked inside those platforms. Unlike SEO keyword tools for Google, prompt volume data simply isn’t available directly from the models.

Gumshoe, however, is pulling in real-world data from another source to help put prompts into context.

By combining Gumshoe’s diagnostic testing with live partner data, you get the clearest picture possible of both current AI perception and real-world demand. This dual view helps you prioritize where to focus and how to improve.

Where Gumshoe's Numbers Come From

Gumshoe isn’t about past logs. It’s a diagnostic snapshot that tests how AI models respond to persona-driven prompts today.

When you run a report, Gumshoe shows:

• Which brands each model recommends in response to your prompts
• How often your brand and competitors are mentioned
• The sources AI models cite to justify their answers

This provides a forward-looking view of how models perceive and recommend your brand at present.

Where the “Volume” Numbers Come From

For each Topic, Gumshoe takes the topic label and translates it into keywords, which we then run through a trusted SEO partner’s dataset. This provides a “volume” figure that reflects how often those keywords appear in real-world searches across the web.

It’s important to note: this is a directional approximation, not an absolute number. The volume metric is designed to help you compare relative demand between topics and prioritize which ones to focus on. It does not represent exact prompt counts inside AI models, since those logs are not shared.

What You Can Measure with Gumshoe

Instead of asking “how many people asked this before,” Gumshoe helps you measure:

• Brand visibility today: How often AI models currently mention your brand.
• Comparisons to competitors: Which brands models prefer for the same questions.
• Actionable levers: What you can change (content, technical setup, third-party citations) to improve results.

Does Gumshoe track sentiment?

Gumshoe does not currently track sentiment in AI-generated responses or Persona prompts, but it’s on our product roadmap. Our focus right now is on visibility and ranking, helping you understand how often and where your brand appears in AI search results across models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

What we do track instead:

Gumshoe measures AI Search Rank alongside overall visibility.

While Visibility Scores show how frequently AI models mention your brand, Rank reflects how strongly a model recommends your brand when answering a specific question. When Gumshoe runs its analyses, it asks each model to rank the brands it includes in its responses. That’s why you may see multiple brands listed in a single answer.

For example, your brand might have 90% visibility (which is excellent) but consistently appears in the 6th position within a model’s ranked answers. That means the model recognizes your brand but doesn’t consider it a top recommendation, signaling an opportunity to improve your positioning and authority.

You can view Rank on the Conversation page. Use the Model filter to see how each AI system ranks your brand compared to others.

Does persona optimization still help if the user isn’t logged in?

Yes. Optimizing by persona will not hurt visibility, even for non-logged-in users. In these cases, AI models still utilize session data, such as language, location, and system defaults, to shape answers, so persona alignment can influence the tone and phrasing within that single response.

Where persona optimization becomes extremely valuable is with logged-in users. Because their preferences and history carry over from session to session, the AI can more consistently connect your brand to their needs across multiple interactions. This makes persona-driven optimization a powerful lever for driving long-term visibility and brand alignment.

To read more about logged-in and non-logged-in users, visit this Help Center article.

Gumshoe Security & Compliance Overview

Gumshoe is designed with a data-minimal approach. We do not ingest, store, or process any sensitive customer information. The only data we use are the inputs you provide (brand names, public URLs, and persona selections) and the publicly available outputs returned by the LLMs.

Our Security Practices

• Data minimized by design: No customer records, credentials, financial data, or private systems are ever accessed.
• Personas and prompts are never shared outside the customer account or used for data-harvesting, other than being temporarily sent to LLMs to generate that account’s reports.
• Compliant model interactions: We use official, approved API connections with every LLM provider.
• Strict access controls: Only authorized team members can access internal systems via role-based permissions.
• Secure cloud infrastructure: We follow industry best practices for authentication, network restrictions, and monitoring.

Because Gumshoe only works with public information and model responses, many enterprise-level requirements, which are typically tied to sensitive data, do not apply.

If your team needs additional details for a vendor review or procurement process, our team is happy to help. Just ask for a human over chat or email us at support@gumshoe.ai.

How Can Competitor Activity Can Change My AI Visibility Overnight?

Your competitors are also working to influence AI search. They may:

• Publish new FAQs or resource pages.
• Earn coverage in trusted media or industry roundups.
• Improve their site’s technical setup with schema or structured content.

Even if you do nothing, their changes can push your brand down in visibility rankings.

By running your Gumshoe reports on a scheduled cadence, you’ll quickly see when competitors gain ground and where you need to respond to stay competitive.

How Do AI Model Updates Impact My Visibility Over Time?

AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are constantly evolving. They adjust how they retrieve information, which sources they trust, and how they structure answers. These updates can happen quietly and without public announcements.

Some models that rely primarily on foundational training data (rather than live web search) can also push sudden updates, reshaping how they interpret and rank information overnight. Because these shifts aren’t tied to new content you’ve published, they can feel invisible unless you’re monitoring regularly.

That means your brand visibility in AI search can shift even if you’ve made no changes at all. A model update might suddenly weight new sources more heavily, or downgrade older ones.

Why scheduled reports help: Running reports regularly ensures you see these shifts as they happen, instead of discovering them months later when your visibility has already declined.

How Do Scheduled Reports Help Me Prove ROI to My Team?

For marketing, SEO, and brand teams, proof matters. Scheduled reports create a timeline that shows:

• Where you started.
• How visibility improved over time.

This is especially valuable in quarterly or annual reviews, when leadership wants to see results. A single snapshot can’t prove progress. A scheduled series of reports can.

How Do Third-Party Updates Impact My Visibility?

AI models don’t operate in a vacuum. They rely heavily on third-party websites for citations and evidence when recommending brands. Those external sites (news outlets, review platforms, blogs, and directories) are constantly changing.

A new article, an updated review, or even a competitor getting mentioned on a trusted site can shift how often your brand shows up in AI answers. Sometimes these updates boost your visibility, other times they push you down, even if you haven’t made a single change.

By running reports regularly, you’ll see when third-party content moves the needle. That way, you can spot opportunities to earn citations on the sites AI models already trust or respond quickly if competitor coverage starts edging you out.

How Does Gumshoe Ensure Accurate AI Search Results for My Brand?

Gumshoe replicates real user behavior to collect authentic AI-generated brand insights, so what you see is what your customers see.

Rather than relying on assumptions, Gumshoe queries AI models directly, just like a real user would. The results we collect are the actual responses AI models generate in search, giving you a clear, bias-free view of your brand’s visibility across platforms.

What Does “Accurate” Mean in AI Search?

Accuracy in AI search isn’t objective—it’s shaped by each model’s training data, source preferences, and interpretation logic. Many AI tools are designed to please the person posing the prompt, which can create overly positive responses when brands run searches for themselves.

Gumshoe eliminates this self-bias by simulating how a real consumer might search. This helps you understand how your brand is actually perceived, not just how it looks when you search it yourself.

Why This Matters for AIO

Knowing how AI models interpret your brand is key to improving your visibility. Gumshoe:

• Reveals the real outputs generated by AI models—unfiltered and unbiased.
• Highlights the sources and prompts that trigger your mentions.
• Tracks model behavior over time so you can adapt your content strategy.

AI Optimization (AIO) depends on understanding how models read and respond to your digital presence. Gumshoe gives you that window, then helps you improve it.

How does Gumshoe ensure unbiased and consistent results?

While Gumshoe avoids introducing any bias that would favor Gumshoe or its customers, the reports are intentionally designed to reflect the same kinds of personalization and biases that users might encounter in everyday interactions with ChatGPT or other LLMs. Here are some reasons why we not only query models in the best way possible, but also do it better than our competition.

• API Connection: Gumshoe establishes a direct connection to each AI model via API, ensuring a controlled testing environment. Every conversation starts fresh with a new persona—no history, cookies, or account data. So results reflect the model’s behavior, not individual user bias.
• Personas: Personas are foundational to Gumshoe and what truly sets us apart. Instead of treating all queries the same, we ask AI models to respond through the lens of distinct customer types. We provide human details that the models would know about their users.
• Ongoing Academic Research: We continue to invest in research and value academic work, including contributions from our own team members. As part of this effort, we also query models through their native interfaces to ensure our results stay consistent with real-world responses.

Gumshoe reveals not just whether your brand is mentioned, but also who AI believes it resonates with, surfacing strengths and blind spots that no other tool can. The results are consistent, reproducible, and free from the inadvertent personalization layer that can be introduced in one-off AI interactions.

Understanding LLM Referral Traffic vs. Gumshoe Visibility Scores

It’s common for brands to see referral traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, or other AI tools and assume this should translate into a high Gumshoe visibility score. However, traffic and visibility measure two completely different things.

This article explains why referral traffic does not necessarily indicate strong AI search visibility and how to properly evaluate what Gumshoe is showing you.

Traffic ≠ Recommendations

Referral traffic from LLMs does not necessarily indicate that a brand is being broadly recommended across personas, topics, and models.

Traditional SEO Tools measure "clicks", not:

• How often an LLM recommends a brand
• Which personas the brand appeals to
• Which topics the brand appears for
• Whether the queries were commercial or informational
• Whether the behavior is consistent across all major AI models

If ChatGPT or Perplexity occasionally surfaces a link, often due to long-tail or informational queries, those clicks show up as referral traffic. That’s positive, but it doesn't indicate meaningful visibility into recommendations for target Personas.

Gumshoe’s visibility score reflects structured, mid-to-low-funnel diagnostic tests, not incidental link appearances.

Traffic from Informational Queries

LLM referral traffic is often generated by queries such as:

• definitions
• troubleshooting questions
• generic product lookups
• AI hallucinations or incidental citations

Gumshoe focuses on recommendation-style, commercially relevant prompts—the kinds of interactions that happen between AI models and your ideal customers. These are the queries that matter most for visibility and revenue.

A brand can receive LLM traffic and still have very low visibility if:

• The traffic comes from informational queries
• The traffic does not align with the personas or use cases that matter to the business
• The traffic appears only from one or two models

How to Validate a Gumshoe Report When Traffic Data Appears Contradictory

If you want to cross-check visibility, here are practical steps:

1) Check Landing Pages Receiving LLM Referral Traffic

Then inspect them in Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Ask yourself:

• What keywords does this page rank for?
• Are those queries informational or commercial?
• Do they match the personas and topics used in the Gumshoe report?

Often, you’ll find traffic is coming from queries that are not aligned with your business objectives.

2) Compare Topics and Personas

If the personas and topics in the report don’t reflect the real business goals, your Gumshoe report needs tuning.

If they do align, the visibility score is accurate, regardless of incidental LLM traffic.

3) Run a Second Report (Optional)

If you want to test whether visibility differs for queries that align more closely with your traffic:

• Harvest keywords or queries directly from GSC/Bing.
• Create a Gumshoe report focus that encompasses those specific keywords.
• On the prompts page, edit the topics to reflect only the harvested keywords. Delete all system-created topics.
• Regenerate all prompts.

Doing this and running the Gumshoe report might show higher visibility, but only if the newly generated prompts align with the audience your brand wants to attract.

If they don’t, you’ve identified a mismatch between the traffic the brand is currently getting and the traffic the business actually wants

When Traffic Indicates a Gumshoe Report Needs Tuning

AI models do not always understand every industry correctly. Sometimes they surface topics or personas that don’t reflect the business’s goals.

To tune a report, check whether:

• Personas match the desired buyers or users
• Topics represent true commercial categories
• Prompts align with the real decision-making journey and are recommendation-oriented

If these elements are aligned, Gumshoe will accurately reflect AI visibility. If not, adjusting them ensures the model output becomes relevant and actionable.

What Does It Mean If a Competitor or My Brand Doesn’t Appear in AI Search Results?

If your brand or a competitor is missing from specific AI-generated results, it may indicate:

• Limited AI Recognition: The brand may not be well-represented in content that AI models frequently reference.
• Content Misalignment: The website or product descriptions might not match the language, structure, or patterns that AI models prioritize.
• Missing or Weak Sources: The brand may not be featured in the sources most often used by AI models, such as third-party roundups or authoritative media sites.

How to Investigate Further

• Run a Gumshoe Report: Search for your brand or a competitor to see what the AI models are actually returning.
• Change your Report Focus: Try a different product or service focus and brand description as you create a new report.
• Check the Gemini Q &A Responses: These often provide clear signals about why a brand was or wasn’t mentioned in a particular answer.
• Review the AI Optimization Page: If it’s your own brand, low visibility might stem from site structure, schema, or metadata issues that can be fixed using Gumshoe’s AIO recommendations.
• Explore the Sources Section: See whether your domain is being cited at all. If not, it’s a sign you may need to improve discoverability on influential sites.

Whether you’re benchmarking against competitors or trying to boost your own presence, a lack of mentions is a signal, not a dead end. Gumshoe helps uncover the cause and points the way to better visibility.

What Does “Regenerate Prompts” on the Prompts Page Do in Gumshoe?

On the Prompts page, “Regenerate Prompts” creates a new set of prompts for your existing topics. These new prompts apply only to future report runs and do not affect any past results.

Re-running a report without regenerating prompts reuses the existing prompts to measure updated visibility. Regenerating prompts allows you to make changes and fine-tune your report.

This article explains how regenerating prompts works, when to use them, and how they differ from running the same prompts again.

What Are Prompts in Gumshoe?

Prompts are the specific questions your personas ask AI models during a report run. Prompts are the “queries” the AI models respond to.

What Happens When You Regenerate Prompts?

When you regenerate prompts from the Prompts page, Gumshoe creates a fresh set of questions based on:

• Updated topics
• Real-world search volume
• Current search trends and patterns
• The number of prompts you choose to generate

Key Behaviors

• Old prompts remain tied to your historical report runs.
• New prompts only apply the next time you run the report.
• Your topics stay the same unless you change them.

You can choose precisely what to regenerate:

• Prompts for a single topic
• Additional prompts for a topic
• Regenerate every prompt in the report
• Keep custom prompts untouched

Does regenerating prompts affect my past reports?

No. A Gumshoe report is a “moment in time.” New prompts only impact reports you run after regenerating.

What Does “Run Report Again” Do?

Re-running a report does not change your prompts.

It simply runs:

• The same topics
• The same prompts
• The same persona set
• Against the AI models of your choosing.

Use “Run report again” when you want to measure:

• Visibility changes after content updates
• The impact of technical SEO improvements
• The effect of structured data updates
• New competitor movement
• General week-over-week or month-over-month trends
• Any time you want a new snapshot using the same questions as the previous cycle

Why Would I Want to Regenerate Prompts?

Common reasons include:

• You updated your topics: Each topic generates its own prompt set. New or revised topics should result in new questions that the AI Models should answer.
• Your topic has high AI search volume: High-interest topics often benefit from additional prompts rather than 10. More prompts mean broader real-world coverage.
• Your industry or category is evolving: If typical customer questions change or your product set expands, prompts may need to be updated.

Does Regenerating Prompts Affect Trend Lines?

Historical trends are updated only when you run a report. If you changed prompts between the last report run and the most recent one, the trend lines will be affected. You'll need to note internally when you made the change, as it may significantly impact your visibility score and trend graphs.

Keep in mind that changing both prompts and your website at the same time makes it hard to see which change caused the change in visibility.

To keep timelines absolutely clean, rather than generating new prompts in an older report, create a new report with new prompts while maintaining the older report with the previous prompts.

Where Can I Regenerate Prompts?

From the Prompts page in your report's left menu, you can:

• Regenerate all prompts ("Actions" in the top right corner → Regenerate prompts)
• Regenerate prompts for a single topic
• Generate more prompts for a single topic
• Add a new topic and generate new prompts

From the Persona page in your Report's Left menu:

Please read this Help Center article for details.

What does “Regenerating Prompts” for a Persona mean?

When editing a persona in Gumshoe, you’ll see the option to regenerate prompts. This feature allows Gumshoe to refresh the set of AI-generated prompts associated with that persona.

Prompts are the questions Gumshoe uses to query AI models during a report. They’re designed to reflect how someone like your selected persona would search or ask questions in real life. Regenerating prompts ensures that the questions tied to your persona stay relevant, updated, and aligned with your business focus.

Why Would I Regenerate Prompts?

You might want to regenerate prompts if:

• You’ve edited or refined the persona description as you create a report, and want to be sure the prompts on the next page will match the new details.
• You have run the report once, edited the Personas, and now want to regenerate prompts to match the new Personas.

Options When Regenerating Prompts

When editing a persona, you’ll see three choices:

• Regenerate (but keep custom prompts): Gumshoe will refresh the default prompts while preserving any custom prompts you’ve manually added.
• Regenerate all: Gumshoe will replace all existing prompts for that persona with a new set. This is useful when you want to start fresh.
• Do nothing: Keeps your current prompts exactly as they are.

Best Practices for regenerating Prompts

Only regenerate your prompts if you have made significant changes to a Persona.

If you’ve added custom prompts that are important to your reporting, choose “Regenerate (but keep custom prompts)”. This gives you updated AI-driven prompts while keeping the questions you care about most intact.

What to Do if Your Brand Is Misidentified or Misnamed

If Gumshoe has misidentified or misnamed your brand in a report, don’t worry —we can fix it for you quickly.

Sometimes AI models or data sources may confuse similar brand names or pull incorrect identifiers. These issues don’t affect your long-term results, and our team can easily correct them on the backend.

Common Signs of a Brand Name Issue

You may be facing a brand-name issue if you used your correct brand domain, but the following is occurring:

• Your reports show a brand name you do not recognize
• All your reports are labeled with someone else's brand or product name
• The brand name in your report is a misspelling or variation of your actual brand
• You see a competitor's name or an unrelated company where your brand should appear

If any of these sound familiar, you are in the right place.

Here’s how to get it resolved:

• By Chat:
• Ask Snoop, the AI Agent, to transfer you to a "human" so you can connect directly with our support team.
• Let us know which brand name was misidentified and what it should be corrected to.
• Share the report URL to help speed things up.
• By Email:
• Send a note to support@gumshoe.ai with the incorrect and correct brand names.
• Include the report URL to help speed things up.

Once we receive your message, we’ll make the necessary backend changes and confirm when it’s complete. Your visibility data and reports will update automatically once the fix is in place.

What Trends Can I Learn From Running Scheduled Reports?

Running reports once gives you a snapshot. Scheduling them builds a timeline. Gumshoe’s Trends Page shows visibility over time, so you can:

• Spot upward or downward shifts across personas, topics, and models.
• Correlate visibility spikes with actions you or competitors took.
• Show proof of improvement when your strategies work.
• Measure the impact on your visibility when AI Models change or update.

Why it matters: Without a timeline, you only know where you stand today. With trends, you see the bigger picture and can make more confident decisions.

What’s the Risk of Only Running Reports Once?

If you only run a single report, you’re capturing one snapshot in time. That snapshot won’t tell you:

• Whether you’re improving or declining.
• If competitors are overtaking you.
• When AI models update their retrieval logic.
• The changes in influential third-party sites.

Without ongoing monitoring, your brand could quietly lose visibility, and you wouldn’t know until it’s too late to respond.

Where Does Gumshoe Get Topics, Personas, and Prompts?

Gumshoe identifies key topics, personas, and prompts by analyzing how AI models perceive and present your brand in search. Using a proprietary process, Gumshoe reverse-engineers AI-generated responses to surface the most relevant themes and audience segments connected to your business.

Rather than relying on traditional keyword-based methods, Gumshoe takes an AI-first approach. These insights show how AI interprets and associates your brand with certain personas, topics, and queries across models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others.

While these results reflect how AI currently sees your brand, they may occasionally include inaccuracies—especially if AI models are referencing outdated or misaligned content. Gumshoe highlights these elements to help you improve visibility and relevance.

You can also customize and refine your topics, personas, or focus to align better with your actual offerings. These adjustments can significantly improve your AI Optimization Score (AIO) and your overall discoverability in AI search.

Why do AI Models Cite Pages That Don’t Mention the Brand They are Recommending?

Gumshoe shows you which URLs AI models referenced when generating their recommendations, offering insight into how live search LLMs are influenced by online content.

How it Works:

When Gumshoe gathers sources from live search models, the URLs displayed represent the websites those models referenced when generating their answers.

How Models Use the URLs to make Recommendations:

Each model uses its own proprietary methodology to decide which pages to read and how to interpret them. This process isn’t public, so the exact reasoning behind each model’s recommendations isn’t always transparent.

For example, a model might analyze a page discussing the drawbacks of Brand X and, based on that context, recommend Brand Y, even if Brand Y isn’t mentioned directly.

How to Use Citations and Sources in Gumshoe Reports:

You can trust that these URLs are the pages the models actively referenced when making their recommendations, and they are likely to be revisited in future answers.

Check out the following articles for more information:

• What Are the Sources and Sources by Category Sections in my Gumshoe Report?
• How Do I Click Through and Analyze Sources & Citations in a Gumshoe Report?
• How do AI Models Decide Which Sources to Trust??
• How Do I Create a Third-Party Content Strategy?

Why do I get Different Answers When I ask an AI Model the Same Question?

We often hear the question, "Why do I Get Different Answers in ChatGPT than in my Gumshoe Report?" If you type the exact same question from your Gumshoe report into ChatGPT (or another model) and get a different answer, you're not alone, and it's not an error.

The difference comes down to who is asking the question, and is the key reason Gumshoe uses Personas when prompting AI Models.

Gumshoe is designed to simulate how your customers experience AI search, not how you experience it. That's why our persona-based testing often produces different results, even for the exact same question.

Gumshoe reports are not about getting the "right" answer. They are getting the answer your audience is likely to see.

AI Models like ChatGPT Have a Built-in User Bias

When you ask a question in your own ChatGPT window, even in a "new chat," the model has prior knowledge of you as the user. It remembers past interactions, preferences, and behaviors (even if they're subtle).

That means:

• It may try to please or cater to your style, rather than simulate a customer's experience.
• It won't reflect the same biases and needs that your customers have.
• It lacks the controlled setup that Gumshoe provides to remove personal influence.

Gumshoe Prompts Are Persona-Based

Gumshoe reports don't just send generic prompts to AI models. Instead, we simulate real-world searches by assigning each question to a well-defined persona: a fictional but strategically crafted user who reflects your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

When a model receives a prompt from a persona, it considers:

• The persona's background, location, and interests
• The tone and intent of their question
• What kinds of brands, products, or services someone like that might trust

This influences how the model ranks answers and which sources it cites, just like it would in real AI-driven search experiences.

Why Does Generating Reports Take Time?

Running a Gumshoe report involves complex, real-time searches across multiple AI models—each of which responds independently and at different speeds. The total time required depends on several factors:

• The number of models queried
• The complexity and volume of generated questions
• Current traffic or throttling on each AI platform

If done manually, generating a Gumshoe report would take days. Gumshoe automates it in real time, typically returning results in 5–15 minutes. In some cases, a slower model may delay results by a few extra minutes.

If your search takes longer than expected:

• You can safely continue with other tasks and return later.
• You may input your email to be notified once the report is complete.
• We’re continuously exploring ways to streamline the process further.

All completed reports are saved to your account. You can revisit any previous report under the “Reports” button in the left side menu.

If your report is taking longer than 20 minutes to lead, please contact our Customer Support Team by asking for a human in the chat or by emailing support@gumshoe.ai.

Why Does Gumshoe Use API Connections to LLMs and Not Scraping?

Gumshoe connects directly with all major LLMs via API, not through scraping. This approach ensures compliance, accuracy, and insights that reflect how AI truly interacts with real users.

Here are some reasons why Gumshoe believes using an API connection is the best way to measure AI Visibility:

Context Matters

API connections to LLMs allow Gumshoe to simulate how real people interact with AI models.

Each query in Gumshoe includes buyer persona context, meaning models respond the way they would to real users of interest. This context shapes how the model interprets the question, chooses sources, and constructs its answer.

Scraping tools can’t replicate that. Because they can’t identify or simulate a specific user, they have to treat every query as if it came from everyone at once. The model is then forced to consider all possible user intents and all possible answers. In practical terms, that means it generates a randomized or averaged response, not the targeted, persona-specific answer a real customer would see.

This difference is crucial: Gumshoe measures how AI models respond to your target audience, while scraping only shows a blurred, general snapshot of everything the model might say to anyone.

Compliance and Reliability

Scraping violates the terms of service for most LLMs. Our API connections are legitimate, long-term partnerships that ensure accuracy, uptime, and compliance.

Relationships with the LLMs

Gumshoe maintains direct relationships with all major AI model providers. We communicate with them regularly and receive feedback on the accuracy and realism of our prompts and the responses they generate.

These partnerships also allow us to test interactions through each model’s customer interface, ensuring our API integrations remain consistent and high-performing.

Long-Term Quality and Consistency

API integrations provide stable, structured results. Scraping tools, however, rely on broad, context-free interactions that produce far more variability in LLM responses. This makes it difficult to distinguish normal model fluctuation from actual changes in your brand’s visibility.

Logged-In Context and Hallucinations

All large language models (LLMs) occasionally produce inaccurate or fabricated information known as “hallucinations.” Experts in the AIO community believe that hallucinations are significantly more common when models have no user context, such as when a user is not logged in.

Some scraping tools claim to simulate this “logged-out” experience, but logged-out interactions actually force the model to guess across the full range of possible users and intents. This increases randomness and instability in the answers.

Most real users, especially those with buying intent, are logged in when using LLMs. Gumshoe’s structured, persona-based API approach mirrors this real-world behavior and provides the model with the context it needs. This reduces hallucinations, stabilizes results, and produces answers that are far more aligned with how AI responds to actual customers.

By investing in direct API integrations, Gumshoe delivers true-to-life, persona-specific AI insights you can trust; accurate, compliant, and built for long-term reliability.

Visit the Gumshoe blog for more information (blog.gumshoe.ai).

Why Gumshoe Connects to AI Models Through APIs (and Why It Matters)

Gumshoe connects directly to AI models through their APIs rather than using public web interfaces. This approach provides a controlled testing environment that ensures consistent, unbiased results reflecting how AI models truly perceive brands. We also run periodic cross-checks to confirm our API responses align with real-world interface results. This method lets us introduce the necessary context and personalization biases for testing while preventing the models from skewing their answers toward Gumshoe itself.

Gumshoe connects directly to major AI models via their APIs rather than scraping their public chat interfaces. This approach ensures that every test is consistent, controlled, and reflective of how AI models behave in the real world, without the noise of user-specific bias.

Why We Use APIs Instead of Interfaces:

• Controlled Environment: Each query begins with a clean state with no cookies or chat history. Then Gumshoe communicates the ideal personas and their traits to the LLMs, creating a controlled reproduction of logged-in user experiences.
• Consistency and Reproducibility: The API allows us to standardize prompts and conditions across models, making it possible to measure brand visibility with confidence. Scraping produces wild differences in model responses and triggers more model hallucinations.
• Transparency and Compliance: Gumshoe works directly with all major AI model providers and uses their services in full compliance with each model's Terms of Service. Gumshoe also communicates closely with the models to ensure the API remains "true" to the real-world user experience.

How We Ensure Accuracy:

Gumshoe regularly compares API-based results to those generated through the model's native interface (like ChatGPT or Gemini). This testing verifies that API outputs closely mirror real-world responses that users would encounter.

See these articles for more information:

• How Does Gumshoe Ensure Accurate AI Search Results for My Brand?
• How does Gumshoe ensure unbiased and consistent results?

The Result:

Brands get visibility data that is both fair and realistic, capturing how AI models perceive them, without distortion from personalization or user history. This makes Gumshoe's insights more accurate, more consistent, and ultimately more actionable than those of other tools that rely solely on scraping public interfaces.

Why Should I Run Reports Again If I Haven’t Made Any Changes?

It’s a good question — if you haven’t updated your content, why would your visibility change?

The answer: AI models, competitors, and other third-party sites never stand still.

Even without changes on your side, the landscape is changing around you. Running reports again (and ideally on a schedule) ensures you’re not caught off guard by outside activity.

Why Scheduling Matters

Reports aren’t just for tracking your own updates. They also help you stay ahead of:

• Model Updates – AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are constantly evolving. Regular reports show how those shifts impact your visibility.
• Competitor Activity – Competitors may be publishing new content, earning fresh citations, or optimizing their sites in ways that push you down in rankings.
• Third-Party Sources – Media sites, reviews, and industry publications influence what models say. Monitoring these shifts shows where visibility may rise or fall.

Running reports on a schedule ensures you’re not blindsided by changes happening outside your control.

AI Models Evolve Constantly

AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are updated on a regular basis. Their training, live search methods, and citation preferences shift over time. This means that even if your content stays the same, the way models interpret and surface it can change. Running a fresh report ensures you always see the current reality of how models respond.

Competitors Keep Moving

Your competitors may be publishing new content, earning fresh citations, or improving their technical setup. Even if your visibility was strong last month, they may have taken steps that push your brand down in rankings. Scheduled reports let you track those shifts before they surprise you.

Third-Party Sites Drive Visibility

AI models don’t just pull from your own website; they rely heavily on third-party sources to justify answers. These include media outlets, review sites, blogs, industry publications, and directories. As they optimize their own sites for AI Search, you'll see shifts in the sources the models reference and your own AI Search Visibility.

How Do I Understand Gumshoe’s Primary Stats?

Gumshoe calculates visibility and rankings based on how AI models respond to the prompts we run in your report.

Here’s what each number on the landing page means:

Brand Visibility

• Formula: Brand mention count ÷ total conversations
• Definition: Brand Visibility represents the percentage of all AI responses that mention your brand out of the total number of conversations run.

Topic Visibility

• Formula: Brand mention count for a topic ÷ total conversations for that topic
• Definition: The percentage of AI responses for a specific topic that mention your brand.

Persona Visibility

• Formula: Brand mention count for a persona ÷ total conversations for that persona
• Definition: The percentage of AI responses for a specific persona that mention your brand.

Model Visibility

• Formula: Brand mention count for a model ÷ total conversations for that model
• Definition: The percentage of AI responses from a given model that mention your brand.

Leaderboard Brand Mentions

• Formula: Total number of times the brand is mentioned across all conversations
• Definition: Raw count of how many times each brand was named by AI models. Each model may mention and rank multiple brands in a single answer.

Leaderboard Brand Visibility

• Formula: Brand mention count ÷ total conversations
• Definition: The percentage of total conversations where each brand was mentioned. This matches the overall Brand Visibility score.

How Do I Understand the Numbers in Gumshoe Heatmaps?

Heatmaps illustrate how visibility changes when you break down results by persona, topic, or competitor.

Heatmap Cell Values

Each cell in a heatmap contains three values. You can view them by hovering your mouse over them.

1 - Visibility

• Formula: brand mentions ÷ total conversations for that persona–topic combination.
• Definition: The percentage of answers that mention your brand.

2 - Mentions

• Definition: The number of conversations where your brand was explicitly named.

3 - Answers

• Definition: The total number of conversations for that persona–topic combination.

How These Numbers are Displayed

Each heatmap cell shows all three values when you hover your mouse over it.

How Do I Use the Conversations Page?

The Conversations page is where you explore individual AI prompts, see how different models responded, and understand how your brand was ranked in each response.

This page is designed for hands-on exploration. It helps you move from summary metrics into the actual AI-generated answers behind your report.

How Do I Open the Conversations Page?

You can access the Conversations page in two ways:

• Click on any row in the Persona Visibility section of your Gumshoe Report landing page
• Click on any row in the Topic Visibility section of your Gumshoe Report landing page

Each click opens the underlying conversations that contribute to that visibility.

How to Filter the Conversations Page

Use the filters at the top of the page to narrow your view.

You can filter by:

Personas Select a specific persona to see the questions AI models answered for that audience and how your brand performed.

Topics Select a topic to focus on a specific area of intent and see which brands AI models recommend most often.

Models Use the model filter to focus on one AI system at a time, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Google AI Overviews.

Brands Filter to show all brands mentioned or limit the view to your own brand for faster analysis. Change selected competitors from the Leaderboard page.

These filters can be combined to answer very specific questions, such as how a single persona interacts with a specific model on a particular topic.

How to View AI Answers

Each row on the Conversations page represents a single prompt.

To explore it further:

• Click on a prompt to expand the AI-generated answers
• Click on a model name or icon to view that model’s full response
• Switch between models to compare how rankings and recommendations differ

This makes it easy to see not just whether your brand appears, but why it appears and how it compares to competitors.

What to Do Next

Use what you see on the Conversations page to:

• Identify which prompts your brand already performs well on
• Spot prompts where competitors consistently rank higher
• Understand how different AI models interpret the same question
• Decide which topics or personas are most worth optimizing next

The Conversations page is most useful when used as an exploration and decision-making tool rather than a scorecard.

Understanding Gumshoe Stats, Numbers, and Analytics

Gumshoe reports generate a lot of numbers (visibility percentages, mentions, rankings, and more). This article gives you an overview of what those metrics mean and how to interpret them.

Why These Metrics Matter

Together, the following stats give you a complete picture of how AI models perceive your brand:

• Percentages show your relative visibility.
• Counts show the scale of mentions.
• Rankings show how you stack up against competitors.

By scheduling reports over time, you can observe how these numbers evolve due to model updates, competitor actions, or changes to your own content.

Core Visibility Metrics

Brand Visibility

• Overall Brand Visibility: The percentage of all AI answers that mention your brand.
• Persona Visibility: How often your brand shows up when answers are framed around a specific audience.
• Topic Visibility: How often your brand appears in answers tied to a particular subject area.
• Model Visibility: How different AI models treat your brand across their responses.

See the full article: How Do I Understand Gumshoe’s Primary Stats?

Mentions and Leaderboards

Mentions

A raw count of how many times your brand was named across conversations.

Leaderboard Brand Visibility

The percentage of answers where each brand appears, shown side by side. This lets you directly compare how often your brand comes up against competitors.

See the full article: How Do I Understand Gumshoe’s Primary Stats?

Heatmap Stats

Heatmaps break visibility down by persona, topic, or competitor. Each cell shows three values: Visibility, Mentions, and Answers.

See the full article: How Do I Read Gumshoe Heatmaps?

Conversations Page Stats

Shows visibility and ranking at the individual prompt level using Brand Visibility and Brand Rank.

See the full article: How Do I Use the Conversations Page?

Sources and Citations

Only browsing-enabled models (like Perplexity or Gemini with search) surface citations. Gumshoe tracks:

• Source Mention Count: the number of times a domain was cited
• Source Type Mention Count: citations grouped by category (media, blogs, e-commerce, education, government, etc.)

Do AI Models Use Live Web Data or Just Old Training Data?

Great question! The answer depends on the AI model.

Some AI models utilize live web search (also known as search augmentation or RAG), while others rely entirely on static training data from months prior.

While in the future, all AI Models will include live search, for now, customers are still using some models that reference their own foundational data.

Why It Matters

Gumshoe helps you test how both types of models see your brand:

• If you’re focused on fast impact, pay attention to reports from models with citations.
• If you’re considering long-term influence and influencing "static" models, you’ll need a sustained content presence to appear when they’re next retrained.

In short, Gumshoe provides a comprehensive view of what all the models are saying, no matter how they collect their data.

Models That Use Live Web Data

These models issue real-time search queries and pull current information from the web. You’ll know they’re doing this if your Gumshoe report includes citations. Citations are direct clues that the model searched the internet for its answer.

• These models reflect recent content updates
• They’re more responsive to changes you make on your website
• They’re useful when you want to test visibility right now

Examples include:

• Perplexity/Sonar
• Some Google Gemini Models
• Some OpenAI/ChatGPT Models

Models That Use Static Training Data

Other models don’t use the internet when answering. They rely on the data they were trained on, which usually has a cutoff date (e.g., October 2023 or March 2025). There is, however, likely some training that the models undergo through their interactions with customers. The AI Models do not share when their "static" models will be updated; it could happen at any time. Quickly optimizing your brand for AI visibility and maintaining it regularly will ensure readiness for any future updates.

• These models don’t cite sources
• They won’t reflect recent content changes until the next big update for the model
• Many users are interacting with these static models

Google (Gemini)

AKA Google, Google Gemini, Gemini, "Gemini 1.5," "Gemini 2"

Gemini is developed by Google DeepMind, Google’s advanced AI research division. Google has released multiple versions of Gemini, each designed for different levels of performance and efficiency. These models are used across various Google products, including Google Search and Workspace. Each Gemini model has unique capabilities, with some optimized for complex reasoning and others for lightweight, faster responses. Google continuously updates and refines these models, integrating them into many applications and services. Below is a breakdown of the key Gemini models currently in use.

Gemini 1.5

Gemini 1.5 Pro is one of Google’s advanced AI models, developed by DeepMind. It is optimized for multimodal reasoning, efficiently handling text, images, and code.

Where Users Find It:

• Integrated into Google Products, Including Search and Google Workspace tools

Gemini 2

Gemini 2 is Google DeepMind’s next-generation AI model, designed for even faster multimodal understanding. It has improved real-time processing and is built for enterprise-level applications.

Where Users Find It:

• Google’s Gemini AI platform
• Integrated into Google Products, Including Search and Google Workspace tools

How do AI Models Decide Which Sources to Trust??

AI models assess content credibility based on factors like:

• Value over quantity (long-form, in-depth content tends to rank higher).
• Q&A formatting (FAQs and structured Q&A content perform better in AI-generated summaries).
• Authoritative, objective, and multi-perspective reviews and discussion forums (AI often gives weight to trusted industry voices).

These are just a few factors AI models consider; each one is unique and constantly evolving.

Perplexity

AKA: Perplexity AI, Sonar Perplexity AI is a conversational search engine developed by Perplexity AI, Inc. Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine that combines large language models with direct web searches to generate real-time, sourced responses. Unlike traditional chat models, it actively fetches data to refine its answers.

As of late 2024, Perplexity AI has begun experimenting with advertising on its platform. The company has introduced ads in specific areas, such as follow-up questions related to user queries and video ads displayed separately on the right-hand sidebar. These advertisements are clearly labeled as “sponsored,” and the AI-generated answers to these sponsored questions are not influenced or written by the sponsoring brands.

Perplexity AI has also been in discussions with major brands like Nike and Marriott about developing a new advertising model. This model allows brands to bid for “sponsored” questions featuring AI-generated answers approved by the advertisers. The company aims to implement this system by the end of the year, targeting premium brands.

Where Users Find It:

• Perplexity.ai (web and mobile apps)

What Is an AI Model?

An AI model is a general term for any machine learning system trained to perform a specific task. AI models can be designed for various applications, including image recognition, speech processing, recommendation systems, and natural language understanding.

Some Types of AI Models Include:

• Image Recognition Models (e.g., CLIP, DALL·E) – Used for analyzing and generating images.
• Speech Recognition Models (e.g., Whisper) – Convert spoken language into text.
• Recommendation Models (e.g., collaborative filtering in streaming services) – Suggest content based on user behavior.
• Natural Language Models – Understand and generate text-based outputs.

What Is an LLM (Large Language Model)?

A large language model (LLM) is a specialized AI model designed to process and generate human-like text. LLMs are trained on massive amounts of text data to understand patterns, context, and meaning in language.

Key Features of LLMs

• Trained on vast text datasets (books, articles, web pages)
• Uses deep learning techniques, often based on transformer architectures (e.g., GPT, Gemini, Claude)
• Capable of answering questions, summarizing information, and generating human-like text

Examples of well-known LLMs include:

• GPT by OpenAI
• Claude Sonnet by Anthropic
• Gemini by Google
• Grok by X
• Perplexity by Sonar

What is Anthropic (Claude)?

AKA "Claude," “Claude-3-5-sonnet-latest,” or just Anthropic

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is an advanced AI model developed by Anthropic, a company focused on AI safety and interpretability. The Claude series is designed for general-purpose tasks, including research, summarization, and complex problem-solving.

Where Users Find It:

• Available through Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot
• It is integrated into platforms like Slack and Notion

What is ChatGPT (OpenAI)?

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and technology company that develops advanced language models, such as ChatGPT, that can understand, generate, and reason with natural language. It’s one of the fastest-adopted technologies in history, and many analysts believe ChatGPT will significantly reshape how people search for information in the coming years.

Gumshoe integrates multiple OpenAI language models so you can compare how different ChatGPT tiers interpret and recommend your brand, products, and competitors. Each model type has its own strengths in speed, cost, and reasoning depth.

Advanced Reasoning Models (Flagship Tier)

These models represent OpenAI’s most capable versions at any given time. They deliver the strongest reasoning, accuracy, and real-world alignment in Gumshoe.

Best for:

• Highest accuracy
• Complex or nuanced categories
• Strategic recommendations
• Detailed competitor comparisons

Where used:

• ChatGPT (web + app)
• Microsoft Copilot
• OpenAI’s “flagship” or “latest” API models

Lightweight / Fast Models (Mini Tier)

These models are optimized for speed, affordability, and high-volume tasks. They trade some depth and reasoning power for lower latency and lower cost.

Best for:

• Quick answers
• High-volume query environments
• Real-time agents
• Simple or broad-intent prompts

Where used:

• ChatGPT Mini (mobile + web)
• OpenAI’s “mini” or “small” API models

What Is DeepSeek Chat?

AKA: DeepSeek, DeepSeek Chat

DeepSeek Chat is an AI-powered conversational search tool developed by DeepSeek. Unlike traditional search engines or static chatbots, DeepSeek combines open-source language models with real-time question interpretation to return highly conversational, citation-backed results.

While DeepSeek is less well-known in the U.S. than OpenAI or Google Gemini, its responses often emphasize concise summaries pulled from Chinese and international tech sources. It’s frequently used in developer circles and research contexts.

Where Users Find It:

• deepseek.com
• Public demos
• GitHub repositories

What Is Grok by xAI?

AKA: xAI Grok, Grok2

Grok is the conversational AI developed by xAI, a company founded by Elon Musk. Integrated directly into X (formerly Twitter), Grok is designed to offer humorous, edgy, or unconventional responses—but under the hood, it’s powered by a sophisticated large language model trained on real-time X data and open web sources.

Grok’s unique strength lies in its social content integration and real-time engagement with trending conversations. In Gumshoe, it provides a valuable perspective on how a brand appears in socially-driven AI environments.

Where Users Find It:

• X (Twitter) Premium users via the sidebar or AI chatbot panel
• x.ai (for company updates and future API releases)

What Is the Difference Between an AI Model and an LLM?

As AI-powered search and language processing continue to evolve, understanding the difference between an AI model and a large language model (LLM) is essential. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they refer to different aspects of AI technology.

An AI model is a broad term for any machine learning system designed to perform a specific task, such as image recognition, speech processing, or recommendation systems. A large language model (LLM) is a specialized type of AI model focused specifically on understanding and generating human-like text, making it a subset of AI models designed for language-based applications.

Which AI Models Use Live Search and Which Do Not?

When you run a Gumshoe report, different AI models behave in different ways. Some use live web search to fetch information in real time, while others rely primarily on their foundational training data. Both are important for understanding your visibility.

Live Search Models

These models actively query the web at the time of the report run:

• Google Search AI Overview
• OpenAI GPT mini and nano
• Perplexity AI Sonar
• Google Gemini Flash and Pro

Why they matter:

• Capture fresh, real-world web content (including your newest pages and press mentions).
• Show how AI systems are citing live domains and categories.
• Help you identify the sources driving the influence right now.

Foundational Training Models

These models rely mostly on their built-in training data and reasoning:

• Anthropic Claude Opus
• Anthropic Claude Sonnet
• DeepSeek Chat
• DeepSeek Reasoner
• OpenAI ChatGPT (non-search)
• OpenAI ChatGPT mini
• xAI Grok

Why they matter:

• Show how AI recommends brands by default, even without checking the live web.
• Reflect the underlying narratives and biases baked into each model’s training.
• Provide visibility into how your brand will appear in offline or default LLM responses, which still power many AI assistants.

Why You Need Both

• Using only live search models can show you recency, but misses how users are experiencing AI Search.
• Using only foundational models shows default reasoning but ignores how fresh citations can shift outcomes.
• AI models increasingly initiate live search only when a user explicitly selects it or when it’s required for accuracy, which means many of their responses still rely on their foundational training data rather than live search results.

By running reports across both types, Gumshoe gives you:

• A balanced picture of static brand perception (training) vs. dynamic influence (search).
• Clear insight into how to optimize both your long-term reputation and your real-time visibility.
• The ability to be prepared when the AI Model foundational training is updated.

Pro Tip: Foundational models are slower to change, while live search models can shift daily. Scheduled multi-model reports help you track both patterns effectively.

Why do AI models sometimes hallucinate details about my brand?

AI models hallucinate details about your brand when they don’t have clear, structured information to rely on. If specific data isn’t available, the model may make assumptions based on related sources, previous queries, or general knowledge about the industry. This can lead to AI-generated responses that are incomplete, misleading, or inconsistent.

To help address this, Gumshoe guides users in refining AI’s understanding of their brand by addressing gaps where possible.

Why do different AI models return drastically different answers?

AI models generate different responses because they are trained on distinct datasets and follow unique ranking and retrieval methods. Each model has its own way of processing information, prioritizing sources, and interpreting user intent, leading to variations in their answers.

Here are some key reasons why AI models may return drastically different results:

• Training Data Variability: AI models are trained on different datasets, meaning some may have access to more up-to-date or authoritative sources, while others rely on broader general knowledge.
• Source Prioritization: Some AI models emphasize trusted, authoritative sources (like academic papers or government sites), while others may pull from discussion forums, social media, or user-generated content. This can affect whether a model provides fact-based responses or conversational insights.
• Query Interpretation Differences: AI models process and interpret questions in different ways. One model may prioritize factual accuracy, while another might aim for engagement or alignment with user preferences.
• Bias and Response Tuning: AI models are fine-tuned for specific behaviors. Some may aim to be more neutral and factual, while others are optimized for conversational or persuasive responses.
• Content Freshness: Certain models prioritize fresh data more than historical data, leading to differences in how they present emerging trends or recent events.

By analyzing Gumshoe’s Q&A results, users can identify patterns in how each AI model perceives their brand. This helps businesses adjust their content strategy to optimize for different AI-generated search experiences and ensure their brand is accurately represented across multiple platforms.

Does AI search influence traditional search results?

AI-powered summaries are increasingly integrated into Google, Bing, and other search platforms.

Some stats from AI search trends:

• Up to 60% of searches now include an AI-generated summary.
• Depending on the topic and industry, AI search queries range from 2-30% of total referrals.
• ChatGPT alone claims 500 million unique searches per month.

As AI-driven search becomes dominant in online discovery, businesses must adapt their strategies to ensure their brand remains visible, relevant, and accurately represented.

To stay competitive, brands need to go beyond traditional SEO. AI Optimization (AIO) helps ensure AI models accurately understand and reference your brand by improving structured data, schema markup, and content clarity. Gumshoe’s AIO tools guide you through these improvements with model-specific recommendations.

How Does AIO Differ from Traditional SEO?

As AI-powered search becomes more dominant, brands must shift from traditional search engine optimization (SEO) toward AI Optimization (AIO) — a newer, more adaptive strategy designed to help AI models understand and accurately represent your brand.

While traditional SEO focuses on keyword density, backlinks, and ranking factors across web pages, AIO is built for how AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity process content contextually and conversationally.

Key Differences Between AIO and Traditional SEO:

Context Over Keywords

AI models analyze full passages, not isolated keywords. With AIO, your content must convey clear and meaningful context that AI can interpret and summarize accurately, not just rank for search terms.

Source Credibility Matters More Than Backlinks

AIO rewards content cited by high-authority, well-structured sources. Instead of gaming backlinks, your content should aim to be mentioned in respected publications and trustworthy domains AI models pull from.

Conversational Intent Over Query Matching

AIO focuses on how real people ask questions in natural language. You must structure your content to answer those questions clearly and conversationally, not just include keyword phrases.

Search Is Dynamic, Not Static

Unlike SEO rankings that remain stable for months, AI results change frequently as models retrain, new content is published, and conversations shift. AIO requires regular updates and monitoring to stay visible.

As AI search continues to evolve, brands that adopt AIO will have a competitive edge. By shifting from SEO tactics to AI-native strategies, you’ll improve how often and how accurately your brand appears in AI-generated responses.

What is the difference between regular search and AI search?

Traditional search engines like Google rank web pages based on keywords, backlinks, and other SEO tactics. Of course, as we all know, they return a list of links, allowing users to click through and find information themselves.

AI search, on the other hand, generates responses directly within the search interface, summarizing content from multiple sources. Instead of ranking web pages, AI models interpret context and conversation patterns, pulling insights from various online materials. This shift makes AI search harder to track and influence than traditional SEO, especially as more people turn to AI models for answers instead of conventional search engines. Instead of optimizing for keywords alone, brands must ensure AI models understand and accurately represent them, making visibility in AI-generated results more critical than ever. That’s where Gumshoe comes in.

Gumshoe helps brands adapt to this shift with AI Optimization (AIO) tools. AIO focuses on structured data, schema markup, and content clarity so AI models can correctly interpret and cite your brand in AI-generated responses.

Why Is AI Optimization (AIO) the Future of Search Visibility?

In the early days of the internet, businesses discovered that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was key to getting discovered on Google. Those who adopted SEO early gained a competitive advantage. Now, we’re facing a similar shift—this time with AI-powered search.

What’s Different About AI Search?

Unlike traditional search engines that rank pages based on keywords and backlinks, AI search models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity generate direct answers. They summarize content, recommend brands, and respond to questions in real time—without linking to traditional search result pages.

If your brand isn’t optimized for these AI responses, you risk being left out—even if your SEO is strong.

What Is AI Optimization (AIO)?

AI Optimization (AIO) is how brands prepare themselves to be recognized and recommended by AI models.

It focuses on:

• Structured data and schema markup
• Content clarity and context, not just keywords
• Authoritative third-party citations
• Clean, navigable website structure
• Consistent brand representation across the web

AIO helps AI models interpret, reference, and recommend your brand in search summaries.

Why Does It Matter Now?

• AI models are already being used by hundreds of millions of people every month.
• Up to 60% of searches now include an AI-generated summary.
• Traditional rankings don’t guarantee visibility in AI responses.

Brands that embrace AIO today—just like those who adopted SEO early—will gain a lasting edge as AI reshapes how discovery works. The time to optimize for AI search is now.

Want to make sure your brand is showing up in the new generation of search? That’s precisely what Gumshoe is for.

How Can I Get a Product Tour/Demo from the Gumshoe Team?

You don't have to ask twice! Our Gumshoe team would be delighted to meet with you to walk you through our product and solutions.

Book a Demo with us now!

To book a demo at a time that works for you, please visit our scheduling calendar here (visit gumshoe.ai for booking link).

In the meantime, you can check out these product tutorials

• Video Walkthrough: Creating a Gumshoe Report
• Video Walkthrough: Understanding Your Gumshoe Report

How Does Gumshoe Work and What Does It Do?

Gumshoe helps teams understand how AI models perceive their brand and supports them in managing and improving their visibility across AI-driven search and recommendation systems. It does this by running structured searches across multiple AI systems and turning those results into clear insights you can take action on.

In short, Gumshoe does the following:

1. What are LLMs saying about your brand?
2. What you can do to get AI Models to recommend you more.

How does Gumshoe work?

At a high level, Gumshoe runs hundreds of AI-driven recommendation-style queries using the personas and topics you define. Each query simulates a real user (Persona) asking an AI model for advice or recommendations. Gumshoe then analyzes every answer to see when and how your brand appears, which competitors appear, and which sources the models rely on.

Once the searches finish, Gumshoe organizes the results into a report that shows:

• Your overall visibility across AI models
• Which personas and topics perform well
• Where your brand is missing from important conversations
• Which competitors appear most often
• What sources the models cite
• Suggested actions to improve AI visibility. Including:
• Technical Improvements
• Fresh content and content improvements
• Third-party sites to reach out to

Gumshoe’s role is to show you how AI models talk about your brand today and what you can do to influence that over time. It gives you a measurable baseline, highlights opportunities, and helps you understand the real factors driving brand recommendations across major AI systems.

If you need help getting started, ask for a human in chat or email support@gumshoe.ai.

How Is Gumshoe Different From Other Tools?

When it comes to understanding AI search, Gumshoe is built for a different purpose than traditional SEO or AI monitoring competitors. Instead of tracking keyword rankings, running thousands of prompts with no context, or producing generic reports, Gumshoe simulates real-world interactions. It focuses on how AI models actually talk about your brand right now and what you can do to improve your visibility.

Traditional SEO tells you how people used to find you. Gumshoe shows whether AI will recommend your brand today...and tomorrow. This makes it the most direct way to measure and improve your presence in the AI-driven “Answer Economy.”

Key Differences Between Gumshoe and Others

• AI-First, Not Keyword-First - Most competitors in the emerging AI visibility space are built for traditional SEO, providing a lot of data requiring an analyst to make sense of. Gumshoe takes a different approach: it’s designed for marketing teams to manage AI Search Visibility. It’s less technical and more intuitive, guided, practical, and focused on treating AI models as another “customer” you can influence and train to better represent your brand.
• Persona-Driven Testing - Competitors look at broad results, run without context. Gumshoe goes deeper by simulating real buyer personas (like Tech-Savvy Marketing Managers or Small-Town Wedding Planners) and testing what those people are likely to ask. This makes the results more closely align with real-world conversations.
• Actionable Levers, Not Just Data - Instead of giving you a static report, Gumshoe highlights the best ways to take action and improve your AI search visibility.
• Multi-Model Coverage - AI search is fragmented and spread out between manu different models. Gumshoe covers the most model families, including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and xAI, so you see the full landscape.

Is there a trial version of Gumshoe.ai available?

The first three report runs are free at Gumshoe! You can keep the report(s) and refer to them whenever needed. Gumshoe only begins charging when you create a report or run a report after your three free runs have been used.

Please note: any users who do not use business email domains will only be granted a single free report. Change your Gumshoe account email to your business email address and receive more features and more free reports!

For more information, please review our pricing details here.

What Does Gumshoe Do and How Does It Help with AI Search Management?

Gumshoe is an AI search management platform that helps businesses understand how AI models, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini, perceive and present their brand, and suggests next steps to improve their AI presence.

It analyzes brand mentions across AI-generated responses, compares visibility against competitors, and surfaces the sources LLMs cite most often.

Gumshoe provides key insights into your brand’s performance in AI-driven search, helping you take action through targeted AI Optimization (AIO) recommendations.

Who Should Use Gumshoe for Marketing, Branding, and AI Search Management?

Gumshoe is built for marketing and brand leaders who want to understand how their company is perceived in AI-generated search and take action to influence it. As AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity increasingly shape how consumers discover brands, it’s essential to know how yours shows up.

Gumshoe is especially valuable for:

• Brand & Marketing Teams – Analyze how your brand is presented across AI search tools, spot inconsistencies, and take control of narrative and visibility. Gumshoe helps teams track citations, message accuracy, and share of voice in AI-generated summaries.
• Competitive Intelligence Teams – Benchmark your brand’s visibility against competitors and uncover where others are gaining ground across AI models.
• SEO & Content Strategists – Align strategy with what AI models actually show users, using insights from model-specific rankings and cited sources.
• Customer Experience & Research Teams – Understand what questions different personas ask AI about your space and adapt your messaging to match.
• Agencies & Consultants – Provide clients with clear, defensible insights into their AI search performance, helping them refine brand presence and stay ahead.

Why It Matters

Whether you’re running brand campaigns, managing PR, or refining messaging, Gumshoe helps you protect and elevate your brand in the fast-evolving world of AI-powered discovery.

Can I influence AI search results?

For now, direct control over AI-generated content is limited, but brands can still influence how they are represented.

Gumshoe helps by showing which sources AI models reference, where brands appear, and how often. With these insights, you can improve your digital presence, create AI-friendly content, and ensure the right context is available when models generate responses.

While you can’t dictate what AI says, you can shape the information it draws from, helping your brand appear more accurately and often in AI-generated summaries.

How Do Non-Logged-In AI Model Users Affect Persona Optimization in Gumshoe?

For a shorter answer, you can visit this Help Center article: How Do Non-Logged-In AI Model Users Affect Persona Optimization in Gumshoe?

Logged-In vs. Non-Logged-In Users

AI models serve two types of users:

1. Logged-In Users

• These users sign in with an account (e.g., ChatGPT Plus, Google account). Logged-in sessions maintain persistent context, including stored preferences, search history, and account-specific instructions. Because the model can reference this persistent context, persona optimization in Gumshoe yields more substantial and consistent performance gains.

2. Non-Logged-In Users (Guest Sessions)

• These users interact without signing in. Guest sessions have no memory once the conversation ends. The model can only use temporary context, such as:
• The text in the current session
• Metadata like language or location
• The system’s default instructions

Once the session closes, all of this disappears. Persona optimization in these cases still matters, but mainly shapes tone and flow within a single interaction rather than building long-term influence.

Why This Matters for Gumshoe Personas

Gumshoe personas simulate how AI models generate responses for various user types. But the effectiveness of persona-driven optimization depends on whether a model is dealing with a logged-in or non-logged-in user:

• Logged-in Users: Personas can significantly enhance performance because the model can connect answers to stored user preferences. These contexts often include enterprise users or frequent customers.
• Non-Logged-in Users: Persona shaping helps adjust how your brand appears in tone or structure during a single session, but won’t persist. These contexts are more common for casual, exploratory users.

ROI of Persona Optimization

Since no public data is available to show the exact split of logged-in vs. guest usage, using academic sources, Gumshoe assumes the following pattern:

• Casual and exploratory usage (e.g., consumers testing ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity) → often non-logged-in.
• Enterprise and frequent usage (e.g., teams with accounts, power users) → usually logged in.

This means the highest ROI for persona optimization is in logged-in contexts, where the AI has persistent context to connect your brand with a persona’s needs repeatedly.

How has AI search changed the SEO landscape?

Traditional SEO is built around keyword-based rankings, where businesses aim to match specific search terms to drive traffic from page-one results.

AI search changes that model. Instead of returning lists of links based on exact-match keywords, AI tools generate full-sentence responses based on broader context and conversation. Models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity summarize answers by pulling from multiple sources, making brand visibility harder to predict and control.

This shift requires new strategies. Gumshoe helps brands navigate the change by tracking brand mentions, analyzing model-specific responses, and providing insights to optimize visibility in AI-generated content.

Which AI Models Does Gumshoe Track?

Gumshoe monitors multiple AI models to show how your brand appears in AI-generated search results across different platforms. Each model has its own way of sourcing information, interpreting context, and generating answers—which is why visibility can vary so much from model to model.

By tracking these differences, Gumshoe helps you understand how your brand is interpreted across the AI landscape and where you may need to improve.

Current AI Models Tracked by Gumshoe

Google (Gemini Flash, Pro, Search Overview)

Powers Google’s AI Overviews. Pulls from a mix of structured content, news sources, and authoritative web pages.

Perplexity AI (Sonar)

A research-focused AI model that cites sources in real time, often favoring academic, technical, or long-form content.

Anthropic (Claude)

Known for thoughtful, context-rich responses. Prioritizes safe, balanced outputs and high-quality reference material.

OpenAI (GPT-5 / 5 Mini / Nano)

These models power ChatGPT’s search and no-search variants. They interpret brand visibility based on both direct citations and inferred reputation.

DeepSeek Chat

A newer model with growing adoption, focused on multilingual response accuracy and AI-agent compatibility.

xAI (Grok)

Elon Musk’s AI product, integrated into X (formerly Twitter). Prioritizes conversational tone and emerging source types.

Why It Matters for AI Optimization (AIO)

Each AI model sees your brand a little differently. By understanding how these models evaluate and cite your content, you can:

• Identify which models favor your brand (and which don’t).
• Adjust your content strategy to match how each model pulls and interprets data.
• Improve performance in both AI-generated answers and traditional search summaries.

Gumshoe makes it easy to track visibility across models, so you can stay ahead no matter where your audience searches.

Why does AI search visibility matter?

AI search is rapidly changing how people find and trust information. Instead of clicking through traditional search results, users increasingly rely on AI-generated summaries and conversations to answer their questions.

If your brand isn’t visible in those conversations, you may be left out of the conversation entirely—even if your website ranks well in standard search. AI visibility determines whether models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity reference your brand when users ask about your industry, product category, or competitors.

Improving your AI search visibility ensures your brand is discoverable, accurately represented, and part of the answers customers see first.

Can Gumshoe.ai compare my brand's AI search performance to competitors?

Yes, Gumshoe.ai assesses your brand's performance against competitors across topics and AI models, offering insights into areas where you can improve your competitive standing.

How Do I Improve My AI Visibility with Gumshoe?

Improving your brand’s visibility in AI search is no longer about guesswork. With Gumshoe, you can measure exactly where you stand today and take clear, targeted actions to improve.

Unlike traditional SEO, AI visibility isn’t driven by keywords alone. It depends on context, credibility, and clarity. Gumshoe reports surface the gaps holding your brand back, and our three levers provide the practical paths to close them, so your brand shows up where it matters most.

Step 1: Measure with a Report

Start by running a Gumshoe report. This gives you a visibility baseline:

• Which personas see your brand in AI-generated answers?
• Which topics are your brand mentioned for or missing from?
• Which AI models and sources surface your brand?

This measurement step ensures you’re not guessing. You’ll see exactly where your brand appears (and doesn’t) in AI search.

Step 2: Take Action with the Three AIO Levers

Once you know your baseline, you can act. Gumshoe’s Actionability framework is built around three levers that consistently move visibility:

Third-Party Content

• Appear in the places AI already trusts (media sites, directories, reviews, industry roundups...).

Technical Improvements

• Make your site easier for AI models to parse.

First-Party Content

• Publish content on your own site that mirrors the way people actually ask questions.
• Train AI Models to properly represent your brand in interactions with customers.

Step 3: Measure Again

After you’ve taken action, run a fresh report. You’ll see whether your visibility improved with the personas, topics, and models that matter most. Over time, repeating this cycle builds compounding visibility gains.

How does Gumshoe track my brand in AI search tools like ChatGPT and Gemini?

Gumshoe works by testing leading AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Anthropic. It analyzes how often and in what context your brand is mentioned in AI-generated responses.

Using these insights, Gumshoe generates reports on brand visibility, share of voice, and competitive ranking. The platform also identifies which sources are being cited by the models, so you can understand and influence your presence in AI search results.

As new AI tools emerge, Gumshoe expands its coverage and updates its optimization recommendations to help brands stay visible and competitive in the evolving AI landscape.

In addition to running platform diagnostics, Gumshoe is actively investing in research and development to stay at the forefront of AI search behavior. Our team continuously tests how different models surface brand content, validates recommendations through real-world query analysis, and refines optimization strategies to ensure every insight is accurate and actionable.

What Insights Can You Get from a Gumshoe AI Visibility Report?

Gumshoe helps brands understand how AI search models perceive and present them by providing structured insights across multiple key areas. These insights help businesses track their presence in AI-driven search, benchmark performance, and optimize visibility.

Brand Visibility

See how often and in what context your brand appears in AI-generated responses. Gumshoe tracks brand mentions across search tools to help you measure exposure and presence in relevant topics.

Competitive Rank

Compare your brand’s visibility to competitors across AI models. Identify gaps, measure positioning, and track who’s winning in key categories.

Persona

Understand which audience segments are most likely to encounter your brand in AI-generated content, and how your messaging aligns with their intent.

Topics

Track which search topics, categories, and question types most frequently lead to your brand being mentioned.

Prompts

See the types of prompts or questions personas ask AI tools that could surface your brand. Use these insights to align your content and messaging more effectively.

Model Visibility

Find out which AI models mention your brand the most — and which ones don’t. Use this data to tailor your optimization efforts by platform.

Citations

Review third-party sources AI models rely on when generating responses that include your brand. Identify missed opportunities or reinforce high-authority sources.

Page Audits

Analyze and compare multiple URLs for AI Optimization performance. Gumshoe shows how each performs across models and where to make targeted improvements.

Can Gumshoe.ai track changes in my brand's AI search visibility over time?

Yes, Gumshoe.ai monitors your brand's AI search presence by running reports on a regular cadence, allowing you to track progress and adjust strategies as needed to maintain or improve visibility.

Does Gumshoe.ai offer recommendations for outperforming competitors in AI search?

Gumshoe.ai provides tactical recommendations based on competitive analysis, helping you implement strategies to enhance your brand's AI search performance relative to competitors.

How does Gumshoe.ai perform competitive analysis?

Gumshoe.ai evaluates your brand's performance against competitors by analyzing mentions and context across various AI models, highlighting areas where you can improve your competitive position.

The Complete Gumshoe AI Visibility Playbook

This guide explains the complete Gumshoe workflow: how to set up tuned reports, run them regularly, publish 1st-party content, fix technical issues, build a 3rd-party strategy, and repeat the cycle for consistent AI visibility improvement.

Gumshoe helps you understand how AI Models see your brand and shows you exactly what to do to improve your visibility over time. This playbook outlines the proven workflow used by top-performing Gumshoe customers.

Create your Gumshoe Reports

The first step in your Gumshoe journey is to create a set of repo"ts "t"ned" to focus on what you care about most.

Step 1: Create Tuned, Single-Focus Reports

Each report should focus on one business area to keep insights clean and actionable. You may also want to focus on a specific location or language, too

Examples of report focus, language, and location Settings:

• Best sustainable children's clothing
• Best second-hand kid's clothing
• Best American-made children's clothing
• Best sustainable children's clothing in the UK
• Best sustainable children's clothing stores in East LA
• Best sustainable children's clothing stores in East LA, Spanish Language

To create a report:

1. Set a Business Focus (set a geographic area or language, if you like)

• What Is a Product/Service Focus?
• How do I choose a product or service (AKA Focus) to improve my Gumshoe report?
• How Do I Use the Location Feature in Gumshoe?
• Can I Run a Gumshoe Report in Another Language?

2. Set Persona

• What Are the Persona & Topic Visibility Sections in my Gumshoe Report?
• How Can I View, Edit, and Use the Personas Page to Understand My AI Search Audience?
• Why Should I Use at least 6 Personas?
• Where Does Gumshoe Get Topics, Personas, and Prompts?

3. Set Topics

• What are Topics in Gumshoe and how do they improve report results?
• How Do I Choose the Best Topics for My Gumshoe Report?
• What Are the Persona & Topic Visibility Sections in my Gumshoe Report?

4. Set Prompts

• How Can I View, Edit, and Use Prompts to Understand My AI Search Standings?
• What prompts should I use?
• Why Should I Use 10+ Prompts Per Persona?
• What Does “Regenerate Prompts” on the Prompts Page Do in Gumshoe?

Refer to these Help Center articles for additional assistance:

• Create Your Gumshoe Report
• Gumshoe Best Practices
• Video Walkthrough: Creating a Gumshoe Report

Before finalizing your reports, you need to set the schedule and select models.

Scheduling Gumshoe Reports

AI search changes constantly. Repeating reports ensures you can measure progress over time. And remember, you’re not the only one making changes. Even if you aren’t actively optimizing, regular runs matter because competitors and AI Models are shifting every week.

Common schedules:

• Weekly (Recommended): baseline tracking, optimization changes, fast-moving categories, or competitive spaces
• Biweekly: active optimization
• Monthly: baseline tracking

Regular runs let you see how content updates, technical fixes, competitor changes, third-party modifications, and updates to the AI Models themselves affect your visibility over time.

Refer to these Help Center articles for additional assistance:

• How Do I Finalize, Run, and Schedule a Gumshoe Report?
• How do I manage scheduled reports in Gumshoe?
• How Do I View Past Runs and Trends for a Scheduled Gumshoe Report?
• Why Should I Schedule Reports in Gumshoe?
• How Do Scheduled Reports Help Me Prove ROI to My Team?
• What Trends Can I Learn From Running Scheduled Reports?

Choosing AI Models

A single model doesn’t dictate AI visibility. Each LLM has its own training data, strengths, biases, update schedules, and ways of interpreting your brand. Relying on only one model (like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews) gives you an incomplete and sometimes misleading picture.

Running multiple models ensures you’re measuring your true AI search presence across the entire ecosystem.

Why multiple models matter:

• Different models cite different sources: What ChatGPT cites is often not what Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity rely on. Your visibility can vary dramatically from model to model.
• Each model has unique weaknesses and blind spots: We are still learning about how each AI Model works and understands the world. They are exposing sometimes drastic differences. Multi-model reports expose what you’d never see otherwise.
• Training Data vs. Live Search: AI Models rely primarily on their internal training data and don’t use live search at all. Even models that can scrape the internet decide when, or even if, to do so. Training data updates often happen in large training batches rather than in real time. Including more models provides you with more live search citations to base improvements on, while you can track foundational training baselines and updates.
• Updates roll out at different times: AI models update silently and independently. One week, one LLM may improve citations; the same week, another may drop them. Multiple models protect you from misreading a single-model fluctuation as a trend.
• Real buyers use a mix of AI tools: Users often move between different AI Models, using standalone apps, browser-based tools, and built-in AI search across their devices. Your strategy needs to account for the full ecosystem they actually interact with, not just one model.

Run reports with as many models as possible to get an accurate, durable, and complete picture of your AI visibility, then track them over time to understand how each model evolves.

Refer to these Help Center articles for additional assistance:

• Why Should I Create Reports Using Multiple AI Models?
• Which AI Models Does Gumshoe Track?
• AI Search Models Explained

Now that you've created and scheduled your report, it's time to improve your AI visibility!

Take Action Based on Your Report Results!

Now that you have tuned reports to run on a regular schedule, it's time to improve your AI search visibility using insights from those reports. Gumshoe's "Three Levers" to make effective improvements.

Step 2: Generate and Publish 1st-Party Content (Lever 1)

Publishing fresh, structured, targeted content is the strongest lever you control.

Content types available in Gumshoe:

• FAQs
• Knowledge Articles
• How-To Guides
• Social Media Posts
• YouTube and TikTok Video Outlines

Gumshoe content is modeled on the formats LLMs already cite, increasing the likelihood that models will read, understand, and reuse your content.

Publish weekly or monthly to stay inside the LLM freshness window.

Refer to these Help Center articles for additional assistance:

• How Do I Use Content Generation in Gumshoe?
• Where Should I Publish Gumshoe-Generated Content?

Step 3: Improve Technical Health with Page Audit (Lever 2)

Technical clarity significantly influences how well AI models can interpret your pages. While improved content is beneficial, it won't be effective if the model can't read it.

Use Page Audit to identify issues related to:

• Metadata
• Heading structure
• Markup quality
• Page performance
• Structured data
• Internal linking
• Crawlability
• Retreivability

Improving technical health ensures your site is fully accessible to the AI models that influence visibility.

Refer to these Help Center articles for additional assistance:

• What is the Page Audit in Gumshoe?
• How do I Optimize Technically for AI Search?

Step 4: Build a 3rd-Party Content Strategy (Lever 3)

AI models depend on a variety of fresh, authoritative sources. Your website is not the only online resource that these models utilize. Assess your competitor's content and devise a strategy for outreach to non-competitive sites.

Use the Sources section in your report to identify:

• Websites that the models already cite
• Publications that influence your category
• Competitor coverage you’re missing
• Domains that repeatedly shape model answers
• Times Models cited your own content

Build your strategy around these insights:

• Target cited publications
• Contribute content or expert commentary
• Secure listings on authoritative directories
• Collaborate with writers, journalists, or creators
• Strengthen your presence on high-trust sites

Third-party outreach helps AI Models confirm and reinforce what they learn from your own site.

Refer to these Help Center articles for additional assistance:

• How Do I Create a Third-Party Content Strategy?
• How Do Third-Party Updates Impact My Visibility?

Run the Loop Again

The Gumshoe workflow is continuous: monitor your reports, identify new opportunities, make improvements, and run your reports again to measure the impact. AI search visibility is a new, rapidly shifting frontier, and the landscape is constantly changing. Other companies are adapting quickly, too, which means you’ll need a consistent routine of measurement and improvement to stay competitive and keep up with the pace of change.

Continuous Steps: Build, Execute, and Iterate on Your Improvement Plan

Here is a recommended cadence for maintaining and improving your AI search visibility over time. These actions are based on patterns emerging from thousands of Gumshoe report runs, content batches, Page Audits, and real-world learnings across brands.

Remember, AI search visibility is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistent small improvements add up and deliver meaningful gains over time.

Weekly

Your weekly rhythm focuses on freshness, technical clarity, and targeted content creation, the areas in which you can make the fastest gains.

• Review report trends across your models, competitors, personas, and topics
• Publish at least one new batch of 1st-party content
• Rewrite and republish a "batch" of content older than 90 days (LLMs heavily favor fresh content)
• Fix high-priority technical issues identified by Page Audit

Goal of the month: Chip away at the to-do lists to make steady improvements.

Monthly

Monthly tasks help you measure meaningful changes, plan strategic focus areas, and expand your footprint across 1st-party and 3rd-party sources.

• Review month-over-month visibility changes in all reports
• Set third-party outreach or PR targets for the coming month (based on Sources insights)
• Review how often AI Models cited your site or published content, and set content goals for the next month
• Set new technical improvement goals for the coming month

Goal of the month: Confirm what’s working, correct course on what isn't, and strengthen authority signals both on-site and off-site.

Quarterly

Quarterly work focuses on bigger structural improvements, model shifts, and long-term strategic adjustments.

• Evaluate your reports holistically and update personas, topics, and prompts based on new visibility trends
• Assess whether additional reports are needed (e.g., new product lines, new regions, new competitor clusters)
• Review overall content strategy
• Review overall technical strategy (Re-run Page Audits)
• Review the overall third-party strategy
• Review multi-model performance to identify where gaps are widening or narrowing

Goal of the quarter: Adapt your strategy to shifts in your business, competitors, and the AI Models themselves.

Keep in Touch

The Gumshoe team is continually improving the platform, and we’re committed to supporting our users however we can. Don't hesitate to reach out for help or guidance. If you’d like a product demo, you can schedule time through our sales calendar (visit gumshoe.ai for booking link). For support needs, use the chat widget or email support@gumshoe.ai.

What Should I Do Next? Introducing the Improvement Wizard

The Improvement Wizard turns your latest Gumshoe visibility report into a clear, prioritized action plan. It tells you exactly what to do next and why. So your team can focus on changes that improve AI visibility.

This feature bridges the gap between insight and action.

By highlighting content gaps, technical issues, and external authority, the Wizard helps teams take confident, measurable steps to boost AI visibility—no guesswork needed.

If you’re wondering “what should we do next?”, the Wizard has the answer.

What the Improvement Wizard Does

After a report runs, the Improvement Wizard analyzes your results and highlights the highest-impact opportunities to improve how AI models understand and recommend your brand.

It organizes next steps into three core areas that directly influence LLM visibility.

To visit this wizard, click on "Improve My Visibility" under your Brand Visibility Score on the main report page, near the top.

The 3 Ways to Improve AI Visibility

Read about these "Levers of Influence" here.

1) Generate Content to Address Weak Areas

AI models can only recommend what they understand. If your visibility is low for certain personas or topics, it often means the models lack sufficient, clear, structured information about your brand.

The Wizard identifies where competitors are outperforming you and guides you to:

• Create targeted content for high-impact personas and topic gaps
• Focus on questions with strong AI search demand
• Generate content that models are more likely to retrieve and cite
• Improve existing content
• Add content designed to improve specific URLs on your site

This is usually the fastest way to improve visibility.

2) Optimize the Technical Elements of Your Site

Even strong content can be invisible if your site is difficult for LLMs to parse. The Wizard points you to technical improvements uncovered in Page Audits, such as:

• Crawlability and structure issues
• Missing or hard-to-extract content
• Pages that aren’t being cited despite relevance

These fixes make it easier for models to understand, reuse, and reference your site.

3) Strengthen External Sources and Citations

AI models rely heavily on trusted third-party sources when forming recommendations. The Wizard helps you:

• See which external domains are influencing AI responses
• Identify where competitors are earning citations
• Build a focused outreach or 3rd party content partnership plan

Increasing authoritative third-party references reinforces your brand’s credibility inside AI models.

How the Wizard Helps Teams Move Faster

The Improvement Wizard is built for action:

• Prioritizes steps based on impact, not theory
• Explains why each recommendation matters
• Links directly to the tools needed to act (Content Generation, Page Audits, Sources)
• Helps teams align quickly without AI search expertise

Instead of guessing what to fix, you get a clear roadmap.

When to Use the Improvement Wizard

Use it:

• Right after running a visibility report
• When visibility scores are low, and you’re unsure where to start
• When you need to justify the next steps to stakeholders
• As a recurring guide for ongoing AI optimization work

You may also be interested in these Help Center articles.

How Can I Delete My Gumshoe Account?

Deleting a Gumshoe account is a permanent action, so we want to make sure it’s truly your intended goal. In most cases, deleting your account is unnecessary, since there are easier ways to manage reports and avoid charges.

To Avoid Charges for Reports

You do not need to delete your account to avoid charges.

• Past reports stay free to view forever.
• Billing only applies if you run new reports or schedule reports to repeat.
• If you have repeating reports, you can set them to stop in your report settings.
• If there’s no payment method on file, you won’t be charged.

To Organize Reports

If your goal is to clean up your workspace, deleting your account isn’t required.

• You can rename reports to organize them (for example, adding “ARCHIVED” to the name).
• An “Archive” option is coming soon, which will make this even easier.

To Delete Reports

If you really want a report deleted permanently, we can do that for you.

• Please confirm the report name and share the report URL when contacting support.
• This helps us ensure we’re removing the correct report(s).

To Delete Your Entire Account

If you still want to delete your Gumshoe account, a human will need to assist you. Please:

• Via the in-app support chat interface, ask to speak with a human, or email our team at support@gumshoe.ai.
• Let them know you read about your options in the Help Center and would still prefer to close your Gumshoe account.
• We’ll handle the deletion and confirm once your account has been fully removed.

How Do I Change My Email Address in Gumshoe?

If you created a Gumshoe account with an email address you no longer want associated with your account, you can change it in your Gumshoe account settings.

Steps to Change Your Email:

• Click on your profile avatar in the bottom left corner of the Gumshoe app.
• Select Settings.
• First, create a password if you don't already have one.
• Update the Email field with your new business email.
• Click Save.
• Check your old email inbox for a confirmation email.
• Confirm the change.
• Then, check your new email for a verification link.
• Click it to finalize the switch.

What Happens After the Switch?

• You’ll still be able to log in with your original Gmail if you used Google SSO.
• Once your business email is verified, you’ll gain access to Gumshoe’s Beta Features.

If you get stuck, please reach out to support for assistance with completing the verification.

How Do I Create an Organization in Gumshoe?

Creating an organization in Gumshoe allows you to collaborate with teammates, manage shared reports, and centralize your AI visibility efforts under one workspace. If you’re ready to start working together inside Gumshoe, follow these simple steps to set up your organization.

What Is an Organization in Gumshoe?

An Organization in Gumshoe is a shared workspace where multiple users can:

• Run reports under a single brand or team name
• Access each other’s reports and insights
• Share visibility data across multiple stakeholders
• Manage user roles and access

This is especially useful for marketing teams, agencies, SEO strategists, and enterprise users who need shared access to AI search visibility reports.

Steps to Create an Organization in Gumshoe

• Log in to your Gumshoe account.
• Click your "Personal Profile" on the Top Left side of the screen.
• Select “Create Organization.”
• Name Your Organization.
• Click Submit
• Now you'll be viewing Gumshoe through the organization you just created.
• If you created the organization, you will automatically be an admin. (See below for more information about organization admins and members)

You’ll now see the organization listed in your dropdown menu. Any reports you create within this organization will be visible to other team members.

Steps to Adding Team Members to your Gumshoe Organization

• Be sure you are in the correct organization within Gumshoe. (You will not be able to invite others to join your personal organization.)
• Invite Team Members by clicking on "Team" in the left side menu.
• Click "Invite."
• Enter your teammate's email address and choose their membership status for the organization. (See below for more information about organization admins and members)
• Your teammates will receive an email inviting them to accept your invitation and create a Gumshoe account, if they don't already have one.
• You may want to warn your teammates to expect the invite and encourage them to use their business email addresses to access Gumshoe's beta features.

If you can't invite someone to your organization, be sure you are an admin in that organization. Only admins can invite new members.

Additionally, if you can't invite someone to join your organization, you may be viewing your personal account instead of the organization you intended to ask the teammate to. No one can invite others to join their Personal "org." Switch to the correct organization and try again.

What Are the Roles Teammates Can Have in a Gumshoe Organization?

Gumshoe organizations include two roles: Admins and Members.

• Members have limited abilities in Gumshoe organizations. They can't invite new members or move reports out of the organization.
• Admins can move reports into and out of organizations they are admins of, and they can invite new teammates.

Note: you won't ever be able to invite others to your personal organization.

Can I Move Reports Between Personal and Organization Accounts?

Yes! Read this article for details.

How Does Billing Work with Organizations?

You can read in detail about organization billing in this Help Center article.

How Do I Set or Change My Password in Gumshoe?

You can reset your password by clicking "Forgot Your Password" on the sign-in page. You can also change your password from inside your Gumshoe account after logging in.

How to Set or Reset Your Password from a Gumshoe Account

• Click on your Gumshoe profile in the bottom left corner of the screen.
• Go to Settings.
• Scroll down to the Set Password section.
• Click Set Password.
• You’ll receive an email with a link to set or reset your password.

Once completed, you’ll be able to log in using your email and password.

How do I Share my Gumshoe Report with Others or Move it to my Organization?

If you created a report under your personal account but want to share it with your Gumshoe organization or someone outside Gumshoe, you can easily move it in just a few steps.

How Can I Share a Report with Someone Outside of Gumshoe?

You can easily share a Gumshoe report with anyone using the "Copy Link" at the top right of the report page. This is helpful when you want to show insights to colleagues, partners, or clients without giving them access to your full account.

Steps to share your report:

• Open the report you want to share.
• Click "Copy Link" on the top right side of the page.
• The report URL will now be copied to your clipboard.
• Paste the link whenever you like.

How do I Share a Report with Someone who has a Gumshoe Account?

You can copy a link to share a report with anyone, but you may want to share reports within your Gumshoe account. To do this, create an organization and then move the reports you'd like to share into that organization.

Why move a report to your organization?

Moving a report to an organization with Gumshoe allows teammates to view the results, collaborate on insights, and maintain visibility across shared workspaces. It’s especially useful when multiple people are involved in brand strategy or AI search monitoring. Billing for reports can also be handled on the organization level instead of in your personal account.

How do I create an organization?

Visit this article for details on how to create an organization.

Steps to move a report to your organization:

• Go to the Reports section in your Gumshoe account (app.gumshoe.ai) (left-hand menu).
• Locate the report you want to move.
• Click on the three dots to the right of the report.
• Click “Move Report" in the drop-down menu.
• In the pop-up window, select the organization from the drop-down list.
• Click “Submit.”
• The report will now appear under the organization’s Reports tab.

Once moved, anyone in the organization with the appropriate permissions can view and access the report.

Permissions for Moving Reports to and from Organizations

There are limitations on who can move reports in Gumshoe.

• Anyone can move a report from their personal Gumshoe account into an organization where they are a member.
• If you move a report from your personal account into an organization in which you do not have admin status, you will lose the power to move that report again.
• Members who are not admins:
• Cannot move reports between organizations.
• Can always create new reports within any organization they belong to.
• Admins of an organization can:
• Move a report out of the organization that they are the admin of.
• Move a report out of an organization that they are the admin of into their personal account.

Example:

• If you are an admin of both Org A and Org B, you can move reports between A and B freely.
• If you are only a member of Org B, you cannot move a report out of it. However, you can move a report into Org B from Org A if you are an admin of Org A.

How Does Billing Work with Organizations?

You can read in detail about organization billing in this Help Center article.

How to Create a Gumshoe Account

To run reports, Gumshoe requires an account to be created.

• Visit https://app.gumshoe.ai/go
• Click Sign Up in the top right corner.
• To access occasional special perks, please use an email address with a business domain. General domains such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com, and others will not qualify for special offers.
• Once your email is confirmed, you'll be redirected to the Gumshoe home page.
• To start a new report, click the box next to "Reports" in the left menu.

!Screenshot 2025-05-09 at 4.56.34 PM.png

If you want to create an organization to share reports with teammates, visit this link.

To find out how to begin a report, click here!

To review our pricing information, click here.

How Can I Use My 3 Free Reports in Gumshoe?

Every new Gumshoe account includes three free reports, allowing you to explore the platform before committing. You can utilize those free runs in various ways, depending on what you want to learn.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Refine a Single Report

You can use your first run as a baseline. Then, edit and re-run the report with adjustments until it accurately reflects your brand exactly as you want. This helps you learn how to tune personas, topics, and prompts for accuracy. Finally, schedule the report to repeat in a week and review the results. The first weekly run would still be free, since it counts as your third free report.

Try Three Different Reports

Run three completely different reports with different focuses, personas, topics, and prompts. This approach provides a comprehensive view of how AI models perceive your brand across various contexts.

See Trends Over Time

Run one report and set it to repeat weekly. Each week, you’ll see how your visibility shifts, whether from your own content updates, competitor changes, or model updates. This method shows you the power of Gumshoe’s scheduling and trends graph.

Pro Tip: There’s no “wrong” way to use your three free reports. Choose the method that best matches your goals, whether it’s experimentation, fine-tuning, or trend tracking.

How does billing work for organizations in Gumshoe?

Gumshoe supports organization-level billing to make it easier for teams to manage shared reports and payments.

• Payment methods are saved at the organization level (not at the individual user level).
• Any report created within an organization is billed to the organization’s payment method on file.
• When a report is moved into an organization, future runs of that report are billed to the organization and not to the original payment method used for the report.

Personal vs. Organization Reports

• Personal Reports: If you create reports outside of an organization, they are billed to the personal payment method in your Gumshoe account (if one is saved).
• Organization Reports: Reports created under an organization, or moved into one, are always billed to the organization’s payment method.

Transferring Reports Between Accounts

• Moving a personal report into an organization: Future runs of that report will be billed to the organization’s credit card on file.
• Reports already run before the move: Past charges remain tied to the original payment method used.
• Moving a report out of an organization: Currently, all reports must remain tied to an organization for billing consistency.

Who Can Update Payment Information for an Organization?

Any member of the organization can add or edit the payment information on file. For more information about organizations, click here and here.

How does billing work for scheduled/repeating Gumshoe reports?

Scheduled Gumshoe reports are billed each time they run. You must have a payment method on file to keep them running, but you will always keep access to your past reports at no cost.

• Each scheduled report run is billed at the time of execution.
• Billing only occurs when a report is actively run.
• Reports pause automatically without a payment method.
• Past reports remain accessible at no cost.

How It Works

When you set up scheduled reports (daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly), each run is billed at the time it is generated. Gumshoe does not charge in advance. Instead, you are billed only when a scheduled report actually runs.

A valid payment method must be saved in your account for scheduled reports to continue. If no payment method is available, scheduled reports will pause automatically until one is added.

What Happens if You Stop a Report from Running Regularly?

Even if you stop scheduling or creating new reports, you will always keep access to your past Gumshoe reports. Historical reports can be viewed, shared, and referenced without charge.

Can You Schedule an Older/Past Report to Run Regularly?

Yes! You also have the option to edit and re-run any past report. If you schedule an older report to run again, the billing will only occur when the run is completed.

How does Gumshoe content generation pricing work?

Gumshoe’s Content Generator helps you quickly create targeted, LLM-optimized content designed to improve your visibility across major AI models. This article explains how pricing works.

Content Generation Pricing

Gumshoe’s Content Generation feature uses a simple pay-as-you-go model:

• $25 per batch of content generated

There are no credits, commitments, or minimums. You only pay for the content you intentionally generate. A cost summary always appears before you confirm generation, so you’ll never be surprised by charges.

For more information about content generation, click here.

How does Gumshoe report pricing work?

Gumshoe uses a simple pay-as-you-go pricing model for running reports. This means you only pay for the reports you choose to run, not for reports you build and don’t finalize.

• First three report runs = always free
• You are only charged for finalized runs
• Cost = $0.10 per conversation (subject to change)
• Scheduled reports will be charged when each run is completed
• For Enterprise Plans, contact the Gumshoe sales team at hello@gumshoe.ai for a platform demo and pricing.

Your First Three Reports are Free

Every new Gumshoe user gets their first three report runs completely free.

The free report(s) include full access to all report-building features and report insights, so you can see exactly how Gumshoe works before committing to paid runs. You can hold on to your Gumshoe account and your free report(s) forever. There is no charge.

How Reports Are Priced

• After your first three free reports, each additional report run has a cost.
• Pricing is based on the number of conversations in your report.
• A conversation = one prompt (question) paired with one AI model answer.
• Example: If your report has 100 conversations, the cost is 100 × $0.10 = $10.00.
• You will always see the total conversation count before confirming a run.

Current Cost Per Conversation

• $0.10 per conversation
• Prices may change in the future based on market conditions (such as the cost of running prompts in different AI models).

Scheduled Reports and Trend Tracking

• Reports can be scheduled to run on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis.
• We recommend scheduling reports to capture trend data over time, giving you deeper insight into changes in your AI search visibility.

Enterprise Pricing

Enterprise pricing is designed for businesses that plan to run a high volume of reports and want dedicated support from the Gumshoe Customer Success Team. Contact us at sales@gumshoe.ai to set up a meeting where we can discuss your needs and create a tailored plan.

For more details on the cost of running Gumshoe accounts, visit our pricing page at gumshoe.ai/pricing.

How Often Can I Scan My Domain for Free in Gumshoe?

A common question we hear is: “How often can I scan my domain for free?” While Gumshoe does offer 3 free reports with all the features to new customers, additional reports will have pay-as-you-go pricing.

Is my First Gumshoe Report Free?

Actually, at Gumshoe, your first THREE reports on our platform are free! When you sign up and run a domain scan (also called a Gumshoe report or AI Optimization Report), you won’t be charged. This gives you a chance to explore how Gumshoe analyzes your website, scans your domain, and provides insights into your AI search visibility.

Will I Be Charged for Additional Reports or for Running my First Report Again?

No, not until you have reached three free report "runs". After your first three free reports, additional reports are billed when they are "run" (sent to the AI Models).

Gumshoe charges on a usage basis. Every report run after the first three, whether it’s a repeat scan of the same domain or a new scan for a different domain, will trigger a charge.

Is Viewing Older Reports Free?

Yes! Viewing your reports is always free; charges only apply when you run new domain scans.

How Does Gumshoe Pricing Work?

Please visit the following Help Center articles for more information:

• How does Gumshoe pricing work?
• What is a Gumshoe Report “Run”?

What happens after my first free reports?

After your first three free reports, you’ll need to add a payment method to run additional Gumshoe reports. Every run shows the conversation count and the cost per conversation upfront, so you always know what you’re paying for before you confirm.

• Your first three Gumshoe reports are free, and you have full feature access.
• Additional reports require a saved payment method.
• Gumshoe utilizes pay-as-you-go billing, with no subscription fees.
• You will always see the conversation count and cost per conversation before confirming.
• Past reports remain accessible even without new payments.

How It Works

Gumshoe gives every new user three free reports. These free reports allow you to explore the platform, review AI-generated insights, and see how your brand or competitors appear in AI-driven search results.

Once you’ve used your first three free reports, any additional report runs require a valid payment method. Gumshoe employs a pay-as-you-go billing model, meaning you are only charged for the reports you actually run.

This makes billing fully transparent. You will always see the conversation count and cost per conversation before confirming a report, ensuring there are no hidden fees or unexpected charges.

Even if you decide not to add a payment method right away, you will always have continued access to your past reports. You can view, share, and reference those historical insights at no cost.

You can visit this article for more details about our pricing.

What is a Gumshoe Report “Run”?

A Gumshoe report “run” happens when your prompts are sent to AI models and the models return answers. Each run generates new insights and is billed at the time of execution.

• A run = Prompts sent to AI models + fresh answers returned.
• Runs always generate new, live insights.
• Billing is tied to each run.
• Past reports remain viewable, but new runs require a valid payment method.

How It Works

When you create or schedule a report in Gumshoe, the system doesn’t just reuse stored data. Instead, it performs a report run and sends a query to the selected Al Models.

Here are the steps involved in running a report:

• You configure a report with your chosen Business Focus, Personas, Topics, and Prompts, then click “Run Report.”
• Gumshoe sends those prompts to one or more AI models (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) depending on your choice.
• Each model generates answers to the prompts.
• Gumshoe then collects, organizes, and analyzes those answers.
• The results are delivered back to you in a structured, insight-rich report.
• If you schedule a report to run regularly, this process will occur automatically on the cadence you set.

Because a run involves live queries to AI models, it always generates fresh results. This ensures your insights reflect the most current data sources that those AI models are using.

Different Ways Reports Run

• New Report: Creating a new report and clicking “Run Report” → This triggers an immediate run.
• Scheduled Report: Scheduling a weekly/monthly report → Each weekly/monthly cycle triggers a separate run.
• Edited Older Report: Editing a past report and clicking “Run Report” → Generates a new run with updated results.

Will Editing A Gumshoe Report Automatically Trigger A “Run”?

No. Reports will only run if you finalize and confirm them or if you schedule them to happen on a regular cadence.

How to Schedule a Report to Run on a Regular Cadence

Please see this Help Center article: How do I manage scheduled reports in Gumshoe?

_See also:_How does Gumshoe pricing work?

What Level of Customer Support Is Available for the Pay-As-You-Go and Enterprise Tiers?

At Gumshoe, we pride ourselves on offering unlimited, high-quality support to all of our customers, no matter which tier you’re on.

Pay-As-You-Go Support

If you’re using Gumshoe on the pay-as-you-go tier, you’ll have access to: Unlimited support through our chat widget and email (support@gumshoe.ai).

• Personalized responses from our team whenever you need help within 24 business hours (or much less!).
• Access to Snoop the Gumshoe AI Agent and our full Help Center with guides, walkthroughs, and best practices.

We don’t limit the number of questions you can ask. Our goal is to make sure you get the most out of every report you run.

Enterprise Support

Enterprise customers receive everything included in pay-as-you-go, plus additional layers of support designed for larger teams and organizations with a high volume of reports:

• A dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) who will regularly check in with you.
• Proactive support to help you organize, analyze, and optimize your Gumshoe reports.
• Strategic recommendations tailored to your brand’s AI visibility goals.

Enterprise users get an ongoing, hands-on partnership so you can maximize ROI and stay ahead as AI search evolves.

What’s Free in Gumshoe and When Do I Pay?

Gumshoe makes it simple: you’ll always know when you’re being charged.

TL:DR: First 3 reports are free. Old reports are free to view. Charges only apply when you run or schedule new reports.

What’s Free

• Your first three reports: Every user gets three free report runs with full access to all features and insights. Use your first report run to familiarize yourself with how things work. Create a more defined report and then try running it again!
• Viewing old reports: All reports you’ve already created remain free to view forever.
• Accounts without a payment method: If you don’t add a card, you won’t be charged.

When Charges Apply

• Running a new report: After your first three free runs, creating additional reports or scheduling your original report(s) to repeat costs money.
• Scheduled or repeating reports: Any reports set to run weekly, biweekly, or monthly will be billed as they run.
• Pay-as-you-go pricing: You only pay for the reports you choose to run. You never pay for drafts, unfinalized reports, or the storage of older reports.

How to Stay in Control

• If you don’t want new charges, don’t add a payment method, create new reports after your initial 3, or schedule reports to repeat.
• You’ll see pricing clearly before you confirm a paid report run.

Click here for more detailed information about Gumshoe pricing.

Will I be charged automatically?

You will be charged at the time of a report run. Click here to read more about Gumshoe pricing.

When Charges Occur

You are only billed in two cases:

• Manual Report Runs. When you create a report and click Run Report, Gumshoe confirms the conversation count and cost before charging.
• Scheduled Reports. If you have reports scheduled (daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly) and a valid payment method saved, each run will be billed automatically at the time it executes.

When Charges Do Not Occur

• If you do not have scheduled reports enabled, Gumshoe will never charge you without your confirmation.
• Building or editing a report without running it incurs no charges, provided you do not click “Run Report”.

Can I get a refund?

Yes. If you believe you were charged in error or experienced an issue with a Gumshoe report, you can request a refund by contacting our Customer Support Team.

• Refunds are not guaranteed and depend on the circumstances of the request.
• To prevent future issues, you can always review report costs before confirming a run or scheduling repeat runs.

Please note that scheduled reports can be paused or canceled at any time to stop future charges. However, Gumshoe cannot issue refunds for runs that have already been completed, as costs are incurred when queries are sent to AI models.

How to Request a Refund

• Contact the Gumshoe Support Team by asking for a human through the chat widget or email support@gumshoe.ai.
• Provide details about the charge or the issue you experienced with your report.
• Our team will review your request on a case-by-case basis.

Refund Process

• If your request is approved, the refund will be issued back to your original payment method.
• Processing times may vary depending on your bank or card provider. Allow up to 10 business days.

How to Contact our Team for a Refund

If you are speaking to Snoop, our AI Agent, request to talk to a human. You can email support@gumshoe.ai for assistance if you prefer email instead.

Provide as much detail in advance to make the process as smooth as possible.

How do I add or update my payment method?

Adding or updating a payment method ensures your Gumshoe reports and scheduled runs continue without interruption.

• Once saved, your payment method will be used for all future report runs and scheduled reports.
• You can update your payment method anytime if your card changes or expires.
• If no valid payment method is on file, scheduled reports will pause automatically until one is added.
• You will only be charged if you create or schedule reports.

Steps to Add or Update Your Payment Method

• Sign in to gumshoe.ai.
• Select your organization in the left-side navigation or "personal" if you are paying for reports in your personal account.
• Click on ‘Billing’ in the left-side navigation
• Enter your credit or debit card information.
• Click Save to confirm your changes.

How do I stop being charged?

To stop charges in Gumshoe, cancel any ongoing report activity. Past reports remain accessible. You can still view, share, and reference all your historical reports at no cost.

Steps to Stop Charges

• Cancel Scheduled Reports
• Go to your Gumshoe account and cancel any active scheduled reports. Read about how to do this here.
• This ensures no new runs are billed in the future.

What happens if my payment fails?

If a payment fails for a scheduled Gumshoe report, the report will pause automatically. This prevents additional failed charges and ensures you don’t lose visibility into what needs attention.

Your existing reports are never lost. Once billing is resolved, your scheduled reports will continue running without disruption.

Notifications

• You’ll receive an email notification letting you know the payment attempt failed.
• The email will include instructions on how to update your payment method.

How to Fix It

• Choose the organization or "personal" account you need to update in the top left corner of the screen.
• Click on “Billing.”
• Add or update your credit or debit card information.
• Once saved:
• For single reports (not scheduled to run on a set cadence), you'll need to manually re-run the report. See detailed instructions on running reports immediately here.
• For scheduled reports, the report should automatically run again overnight. You can read this article for more on scheduling reports.

What payment methods do you accept?

Gumshoe currently accepts all major credit and debit cards for billing. This includes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover.

• After running your first Gumshoe report, a valid payment method must be saved to your account to run new reports or keep scheduled reports active.
• You can update or change your payment method anytime in “Team” on the left side of your Gumshoe account.
• Past reports remain accessible in your account, even if your payment method is removed or expires.

Will I still have access to my old reports if I do not add a payment method?

Yes. You will always retain access to your old reports in Gumshoe, even if you do not have a payment method on file.

• Past reports remain safe and accessible at all times.
• You can view, share, and reference historical insights without cost.
• Adding or removing a payment method does not affect access to past reports.

However, without a valid payment method, you will not be able to:

• Create new reports.
• Resume or make scheduled reports.
• Re-run edited existing reports.

Once a payment method is added, you can immediately run new reports. Scheduled reports will resume automatically.

How Do I Use Content Generation in Gumshoe?

Gumshoe’s Content Generation feature helps you turn visibility insights into AI-optimized content that improves how AI models (like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity) understand and recommend your brand.

Instead of guessing what to publish, Gumshoe identifies where your brand is underrepresented and helps you generate content that fills those gaps in a way AI models can easily parse, cite, and reuse.

What Is Content Generation?

Content Generation uses your personas, topics, and visibility data to produce draft content aligned to real AI search behavior.

Gumshoe highlights:

• Which personas are asking questions
• Which topics drive AI recommendations
• Where competitors are outperforming you

It then generates structured content to help close those gaps.

You can generate:

• FAQs
• Knowledge articles
• How-to guides
• Social posts
• Video and YouTube outlines
• Competitor comparison content

You can also control tone, targeting, and source references.

Why Use Content Generation?

Target real visibility gaps

• Focus only on personas and topics where AI models currently miss your brand.

Improve AI recommendations

• Create structured, factual content that AI models can easily understand and reuse.

Save time

• Skip the blank page and start with drafts informed by real AI behavior.

Stay competitive

• Ensure AI assistants recommend your brand instead of a competitor.

Two Paths to Generate Content in Gumshoe

Gumshoe offers two content generation workflows, depending on how guided you want the experience to be.

Option 1: Quick Start from Insights

This is the fastest way to generate high-impact content.

How it works:

1. Open a visibility report.
2. Click Generate Content.
3. Select Quick start from insights.
4. Use the heatmap to identify:

• Low visibility
• High opportunity persona–topic intersections

5. Click a highlighted cell to generate content automatically.

This flow is ideal when you want Gumshoe to guide your prioritization.

Option 2: Manual Content Generation

Manual Content Generation gives you full control and is available to Insider users.

How to access it:

1. Go to Generate Content
2. Select Manual content generation
3. Choose between the three workflows

Manual Workflow 1: Generate New Content

Create fresh content from scratch with custom targeting.

• Select persona and topic (optional)
• Choose content type (FAQ, knowledge article, video outline, etc.)
• Select writing style (AI-Optimized or Brand Voice)
• Add custom instructions

A quick way to generate content in any format.

Manual Workflow 2: Improve Writing

Rewrite existing content to improve AI discoverability.

• Paste existing text
• Optimize for clarity, structure, and citations
• Ideal for refreshing older pages
• Add FAQs to an Existing Page

Designed to optimize any content you like.

Manual Workflow 3: Enhance an existing URL with AI-relevant FAQs

• Enter the page URL
• Gumshoe retrieves the content
• Generate FAQs aligned to the page's content

Designed to improve citations and recommendations

Content Setup Options Explained

Visit this article for more information.

How Long Does Content Generation Take?

Content generation typically takes 5 to 30 minutes. You’ll receive an email when your content is ready.

Where Should I Publish Generated Content?

Generated content is designed to train AI models, not necessarily convert human visitors directly.

Many teams publish it in:

• FAQ sections
• Resource Pages
• Blogs
• Knowledge Hubs
• Supporting pages that are crawlable but not heavily promoted

The goal is to give AI models clear, structured answers they can reuse when recommending your brand.

How do I Organize Generated Content?

When viewing your content list, use the "..." menu to the right to mark the content as approved, published, or archive it.

See also:

• What Are the 3 Levers for Improving AI Optimization (AIO)?
• How does Gumshoe content generation pricing work?

Understanding “Content Slop” and Why Gumshoe’s Content Won’t Hurt Your Visibility

Some users are concerned that using AI to generate content for AI will produce "content slop." And while they might typically be right, Gumshoe's content is unique and fine-crafted to boost LLM visibility.

What Is “Content Slop”?

“Content slop” refers to low-quality, generic AI-generated content that floods the internet without adding value.

This type of content typically:

• Repeats common AI patterns
• Offers shallow or inaccurate information
• Lacks a clear point of view or expertise
• Doesn’t reflect real user intent
• Gets ignored or penalized by AI models and search systems

When brands publish this type of content, it can dilute their authority, confuse AI systems, and ultimately hurt AI visibility rather than enhance it.

Why Gumshoe’s Content Is Different

Gumshoe was specifically designed to avoid all the pitfalls of “content slop.”

Here’s how we do it:

Gumshoe Mirrors the Sources LLMs Already Trust

Before generating any content, Gumshoe analyzes the specific sources that language models (LLMs) are citing within your category. Our content is designed to match the clarity, structure, and depth of these sources. It aligns with the information that AI models already depend on, reinforcing the facts and signals associated with your brand’s category.

This ensures the content feels familiar, accurate, and credible to the models making recommendations.

Gumshoe’s Content Is Built on User Intent

Gumshoe generates content based on the prompts and personas outlined in your Gumshoe report. This ensures that the content aligns with how AI models understand your category, reflects the intentions behind real-world queries, and assists AI systems in confidently identifying where your brand fits. This is fundamentally different from generic AI content that generally guesses what users might ask.

Content Is Structured the Way AI Models Prefer

AI search systems respond best to content that is factual, academic in tone, authoritative, and detailed. Gumshoe content incorporates that structure by design. This makes the content easier for LLMs to understand and more likely to be reused in answers.

Gumshoe Content is Run Through Multiple Checks

Rather than relying on a single AI Model to generate content, Gumshoe has a sophisticated system in which multiple models generate content, and other models grade and judge it. This means content is always double-checked, and Gumshoe is continually improving how content is generated and published. Our team closely monitors academic and industry findings and adjusts the system as needed to address new trends and requirements.

What Content Formats and Settings Can I Choose When Generating Content?

Gumshoe’s Content Generation tools let you control what type of content is created and how it’s written, so the output matches your goals. The target audience for all content generated by Gumshoe is AI Models and not customers.

Below is a breakdown of each content format and setting you’ll see during content setup.

Content Templates Explained

FAQs

Best for answering specific, common questions clearly and directly.

Use when you want to:

• Improve AI understanding of your product or category
• Add structured answers to FAQ or resource pages
• Address persona-specific questions
• Address topic-specific questions

Knowledge Article

In-depth explanatory content, similar to a Help Center or documentation page.

Use when you want to:

• Explain a concept, feature, or product category
• Publish authoritative, reference-style content
• Support customer education and AI citations

How-to Guide

Step-by-step instructional content.

Use when you want to:

• Explain a process or workflow
• Walk users through setup or usage
• Create procedural content AI models can reference

Social Post

Short-form, text-based content optimized for engagement.

Use when you want to:

• Create drafts for Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Quora
• Support thought leadership and visibility

Video Outline

Structured outlines for video content.

Use when you want to:

• Influence the most-cited website across all industries: YouTube
• Create short-form video scripts for TikTok
• Accelerate video planning and production

Competitor Comparison

Side-by-side comparisons between your brand and competitors.

Use when you want to:

• Highlight differentiation
• Clarify positioning for AI models
• Address comparison-driven search queries

Writing Style Options

AI-Optimized

Designed to maximize clarity, structure, and citation potential.

Best for:

• Content meant for AI consumption

This style favors factual language, clear headings, and structured explanations that AI models can easily reuse.

Brand Voice

Aligns content with your brand’s tone and personality while optimizing for LLM consumption.

Best for:

• Customer-facing pages
• Marketing or educational content
• Situations where humans may encounter the content directly

Reference Source Settings

AI Models like academic-style references because they add to the "authority" of the content.

Default: Your Website Only

By default, Gumshoe references only your own domain.

Best for:

• Keeping content tightly aligned to your messaging
• Avoiding third-party citations
• Ensuring brand-controlled narratives

Optional: Include Industry or Third-Party Sources

You can choose to include reputable external sources. Competitor sites will not be included.

Why use this:

• Increase perceived authority with AI models
• Support factual claims with trusted references

Choosing the Right Setup

There’s no single “correct” configuration. Many teams:

• Use AI-Optimized + FAQ for visibility gains
• Use Brand Voice + Knowledge Articles because their blog is more visible to human customers
• Mix formats to cover both AI and human audiences

If you’re unsure, starting with AI-Optimized FAQs in your lowest-visibility areas is a strong default.

What is a “Batch” of Generated Content in Gumshoe?

A batch is created every time you click a cell in the Strategic Content Opportunities heatmap and generate content from it. Each cell represents one persona + topic pair, so choosing a cell means you’re asking Gumshoe to create content for that specific combination. Selecting multiple cells means you're asking Gumshoe to produce multiple batches of content at once.

Here’s what counts as one batch:

• You selected one cell in the heatmap (one persona–topic pair)
• You clicked Generate Content
• Gumshoe produced content using the template and writing style you chose

For some content types, multiple articles or compositions will be generated in a single batch. This happens, for example, with FAQs, social posts, and video outlines. Even though these batches contain multiple pieces of content, they still count as one batch because they came from a single click on a single cell. Likewise, a template that includes a single long-form composition, such as a knowledge article, is considered a single batch of content.

If you select multiple cells before generating, you are creating multiple batches of content, one for each cell.

Where Should I Publish Gumshoe-Generated Content?

Posting targeted content in the right places is one of the fastest and most reliable ways to improve your visibility across AI models. This guide explains the best publishing locations, why they matter, and how to choose the right option inside Gumshoe.

Why Content Placement Matters for AI Visibility

AI models rely on the open web to answer user questions. Where your content is published affects:

• Whether AI models can crawl it
• How quickly they can index it
• Whether they treat it as a trusted source
• How often your brand appears in recommendations

Strategic placement ensures that models see, understand, and trust the information you provide.

Where to Post Your Gumshoe-Generated Content

Publish on Your Own Website

Publishing to your own website is the most powerful and reliable way to improve AI visibility. Use the content to train the models to accurately and positively represent your brand.

• AI models cite brand websites roughly 30% of the time when giving recommendations.
• It's the fastest way to achieve noticeable visibility gains.
• Your content becomes a clear, authoritative signal directly tied to your brand.
• You retain complete control over structure, metadata, and ongoing updates.

Best for:

• FAQs
• How-to guides
• Knowledge articles

Where to place it:

• At the bottom of relevant product or category pages
• In a structured FAQ section
• Inside resource hubs or learning centers
• On dedicated landing pages built for specific topics

Tip: If maintaining a strict brand voice is important, you can place AI-optimized content lower on the page or in a dedicated, expandable resources section.

Publish on Social Media

Social media platforms are increasingly important to AI models, especially sites like Reddit and Quora.

Why social media?

• LLMs can quickly crawl many social platforms.
• Strong for rapid testing of messages and topics.

Best for:

• Social posts (LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora)
• Video Posts (YouTube, TikTok)
• Short-form informational content
• Topic-focused thought leadership
• Category explainers

Tip: Social posts work best when they answer a straightforward, direct question, mimicking how users ask LLMs.

Publish on External Channels

External channels help broaden reach, diversify authority signals, and meet AI models where they gather information beyond your examples:

• PR releases
• Media partners
• Industry publications
• Third-party content collaborations

Best for:

• Expanding authority signals
• Training LLMs in the domains they are already visiting
• Launching new categories or product lines

You can add external channels to your primary strategy, but your own website should remain the foundation.

Selecting the Best Writing Style

Gumshoe offers two writing styles depending on your publishing goals:

AI-Optimized

• Uses structured, authoritative language
• Ideal for AI visibility boosts
• Great for unique FAQ/Resources sections or bottom-of-page placement
• Place where humans are less likely to view

Brand Voice

• Matches your brand's tone and personality
• Still optimized for AI
• Best for user-facing content that must feel on-brand
• Ideal for marketing, PR, blogs, social, or anywhere humans might view it

How do I Optimize Technically for AI Search?

Gumshoe will soon be introducing a new optimization hub to help you manage your technical optimization tasks.

For more guidance on improving your technical AI Optimization, visit these Help Center articles:

• What is the Page Audit in Gumshoe?
• How Do I Access the Page Audit Tool?

See also: What Are the 3 Levers for Improving AI Optimization (AIO)?

How Do I Create a Third-Party Content Strategy?

Gumshoe will soon introduce a tool to help you select the right sources to influence and guide you in your outreach.

For more guidance on influencing third-party sources, visit these Help Center articles:

• What Are the Sources and Sources by Category Sections in my Gumshoe Report?
• How Do I Click Through and Analyze Sources & Citations in a Gumshoe Report?

See also: What Are the 3 Levers for Improving AI Optimization (AIO)?

What Are the 3 Levers for Improving AI Optimization (AIO)?

Just ran your first Gumshoe report and wondering “Now what?” AI Optimization (AIO) is the next step! It’s how you make sure your brand shows up when models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity generate answers. Gumshoe measures your AI visibility and points out where to improve.

After running a report, there are three main levers you can pull to start lifting your visibility results.

1 - Third-Party Content

AI models rely heavily on trusted external sources when deciding which brands to mention. If your competitors appear more often, it’s often because they are cited across industry publications, review sites, blogs, or ecosystem partners.

What to do:

• Get your brand covered in respected publications and comparison articles.
• Partner with ecosystem platforms to publish integrations or case studies.
• Pitch thought leadership and neutral explainers that highlight your expertise.

This increases the number of citable mentions AI models can pull into their responses.

For more guidance on influencing third-party sources, visit these Help Center articles:

• What Are the Sources and Sources by Category Sections in my Gumshoe Report?
• How Do I Click Through and Analyze Sources & Citations in a Gumshoe Report?
• How Do I Create a Third-Party Content Strategy?

2 - Technical Improvements

Even if you already have great content, AI models may miss it if your site isn’t structured properly. Models look for machine-readable formats and structured facts they can extract directly.

What to do:

• Add schema markup (e.g., FAQPage, Product/Service, SoftwareApplication).
• Improve content-to-code balance on your pages.
• Use semantic headings and clear fact blocks instead of burying information in long prose.
• Ensure your site is crawlable by AI bots like GPTBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot.

This helps AI models read and trust your site more effectively.

For more guidance on improving your technical AI Optimization, visit these Help Center articles:

• What is the Page Audit in Gumshoe?
• How Do I Access the Page Audit Tool?
• How do I Optimize Technically for AI Search?

3 - First-Party Content

Your own site remains the foundation for AIO. Without clear, authoritative first-party content, third-party mentions and schema won’t be enough. AI models need to see you explain your solutions directly.

What to do:

• Publish detailed FAQ-style pages that answer the exact questions buyers (and AI models) are asking.
• Create structured explainers.
• Maintain fresh, factual content across solution pages, integration pages, and case studies.

This gives AI models the core facts and narratives they need to include your brand in recommendation answers.

For more guidance on creating AI-optimized content, visit these Help Center articles:

• How Do I Use Content Generation in Gumshoe?

Putting It Together

The three levers—third-party content, technical improvements, and first-party content—work best when combined. Set small achievable goals between each Gumshoe report run and see how your improvements impact your visibility.

How can I contact Gumshoe's customer service team?

You can reach the Gumshoe support team in two ways:

• By Chat: Use the in-app chat by clicking the help icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen. From there, you can ask a question, report a bug, or request a feature. Ask to speak to a human to be transfered to a member of our team.
• By Email: Email us at support@gumshoe.ai with any questions, issues, or feedback. Our team will respond as soon as possible.

We aim to reply quickly, but please allow up to 24 business hours for a response. Thanks for your patience!

How Can I View, Edit, and Use Prompts to Understand My AI Search Standings?

What Are "Prompts" in Gumshoe?

Prompts in Gumshoe are the specific questions that Personas ask about your brand, product, or service. They are generated by combining Personas (the types of people you want to target) with Topics (the themes most relevant to your business).

These prompts represent the kinds of queries AI models expect real people to ask; not past searches (because that information is not shared by any AI Model), but predictive questions that reveal how AI anticipates user intent. By reviewing prompts, you gain insight into both how your audience might think and how AI models interpret those needs.

On the Prompts Page, each persona is assigned up to 10 prompts, covering the report’s topics. Clicking a Topic highlights all prompts connected to it, so you can quickly confirm that your Topics are fully represented.

Why Reviewing Prompts Matters

• Understand how AI models frame your brand based on user intent.
• See what models believe people are asking about your offerings.
• Identify gaps in your messaging or content.
• Improve how AI models surface relevant information about your brand.

After reviewing the prompts, click "Continue" to move on to the next step in your report.

How Are Prompts Generated in Gumshoe?

Prompts in a Gumshoe report are generated through the same proprietary diagnostic process as in the rest of the report-building wizard, ensuring they reflect the real questions AI models associate with your personas and topics. We don’t invent these questions; the models themselves generate them through Gumshoe’s diagnostic process.

This means Prompts reflect how AI currently thinks real users might engage with your brand. They aren’t based on historical search logs (which models don’t share), but on the models’ own knowledge, training, and reasoning patterns.

Think of Prompts as the “voice of the customer” as envisioned by AI. Gumshoe asks the models to simulate the types of inquiries your audience would realistically make. The result isn’t random guessing; it’s a repeatable diagnostic that shows you exactly how models think people talk about your category.

You can review and edit Prompts, but even the automatically surfaced ones are a rare window into how AI currently anticipates customer behavior. As long as you took a little time editing Personas and Topics, however, don't feel you need to get bogged down reading every prompt.

When you run a report, Gumshoe uses these prompts in real time to see which brands the models recommend and why.

How to Edit Prompts When Creating a Report

• Click the trash icon to remove any prompts that feel off-topic or irrelevant.
• Click the pencil icon to make edits.
• Click "+Add New Prompt" below each Persona's section to add a new prompt.
• If no Topics sync to that prompt, you may want to add a new related topic.
• Click "Continue" at the bottom of the page when you're ready to move on to the next page of your report.

How to Edit Prompts in an Existing Report

• Click on "Manage Prompts" in the left-side menu or in the top right "..." menu.
• Click the trash icon to remove any prompts that feel off-topic or irrelevant.
• Click the pencil icon to make edits.
• Click "+Add New Prompt" below each Persona's section to add a new prompt.
• If no Topics sync to that prompt, you may want to add a new related topic.
• Click "Continue" at the bottom of the page when you're ready to move on to the next page of your report.
• The changes will be applied to the report after the report is run again.

Why Prompts Matter for AI Visibility

The Prompts Page gives you deeper visibility into what AI thinks people want to know about your brand. It helps improve how models interpret your brand positioning, ensures better alignment with user search behavior, and strengthens the quality of your AI report results.

Click here to learn more about the next step in the report-building process.

How Can I View, Edit, and Use the Personas Page to Understand My AI Search Audience?

What Are Personas in Gumshoe?

The Personas Page highlights audience segments that are most likely to ask questions about your brand in AI-generated search. These segments represent different types of customers or decision-makers searching for information related to your products or services.

Each persona reflects a pattern of interests, behaviors, and search intent. By understanding who is asking about your brand and why, you can better align your messaging, content strategy, and brand positioning to meet your audience’s needs.

Personas matter because AI models are designed to satisfy the user’s intent, which means they’ll often tailor responses based on who they think is asking. If you or your team tried to run this research manually, it could take weeks, and the models would likely shape answers to match your perceived expectations. Gumshoe uses personas to simulate realistic audience identities, framing prompts as if they’re coming from that specific user type (e.g., “Hi, I’m a busy mom…”). This approach ensures the insights you get reflect how AI would respond to actual customer queries, not your own.

Why Personas Matter

• Identify the audience segments AI models associate most with your brand.
• Understand the motivations and behaviors behind different customer types.
• Tailor your messaging, strategy, and positioning to match user intent.
• Align content more closely with the questions and needs of your target audience.
• Get more realistic and accurate responses from AI Models.

How are Personas Generated?

Personas in a Gumshoe report are created through a proprietary diagnostic process. We query multiple AI models and return a consensus on the types of users they associate with your brand. These personas aren’t pulled from real-world customer data because AI models don’t make that information available, but instead reflect how the models themselves picture the audiences most likely to engage with you.

Think of them as a snapshot of the assumptions AI is already making. Gumshoe specifically asks models to draw on their own learned experience, so the results aren’t random guesses, but informed signals based on the patterns and context they’ve been trained on.

You can (and should) edit personas to reflect your actual target audience. But the automatically surfaced personas are a rare window into how AI currently perceives your customers, and the only way to measure those associations in real time.

When you run your completed Gumshoe report, the models are queried again, fresh and individually, to show how they would respond to each persona in a real-world environment.

How to Edit or Customize Personas when Creating Reports

• Click "See More" at the bottom of each Persona box to expand its details.
• Press the trash icon to remove a persona from your list.
• Press the pencil icon to edit the Persona's details.
• To add a new persona manually, enter a name and description, then click “Add Persona.”
• To have Gumshoe generate a description, type a name in the Persona Name field and click. “Suggest”. If the description works for you, click “Add Persona.”
• Click “Continue” when ready to move on to the next step.

How to Edit or Customize Personas in Existing Reports

• Click on "Manage Personas" in the left-side menu or in the top right "..." menu.
• Click "See More" at the bottom of each Persona box to expand its details.
• Press the trash icon to remove a persona from your list.
• Press the pencil icon to edit the Persona's details.
• To add a new persona manually, enter a name and description, then click “Add Persona.”
• To have Gumshoe generate a description, type a name in the Persona Name field and click. “Suggest”. If the description works for you, click “Add Persona.”
• Click “Continue” when ready to move on to the next step.
• The changes will be applied to the report after the report is run again.

How Can I Reuse or Import Personas from Previous Reports?

You can reuse previous Personas from any Gumshoe report within your personal account or organization.

• Click "Add Persona."
• Select "Import from existing."
• Choose "My Personas" for Personas in your Personal account or "My Organization" for Personas across all reports in your organization.
• Click "Import" next to the Persona you'd like to add.

Why Personas Improve Results

Each persona helps clarify how AI models interpret your audience. Strong persona targeting improves the relevance of your summaries, questions, and cited content in the report.

To read about persona questions and the next step in building your report, click here.

How do I choose a product or service (AKA Focus) to improve my Gumshoe report?

The Product/Service or "Focus" Page helps you refine your Gumshoe report by narrowing results to a specific product line or service. This ensures your report surfaces insights from the most relevant AI-generated conversations about your brand.

For example, if you operate a theme park and a toy line, selecting a focus ensures the report doesn't include unrelated brand data and AI results. If your company is new, choosing a focus helps the models understand your services.

Why should I choose a focus?

Without a focus, AI models may include unrelated results that don't affect the part of your business you're trying to evaluate. Setting a product or service focus:

• Improves the accuracy of your visibility report.
• Surfaces more relevant keywords, questions, and summaries.
• Helps you uncover performance insights for a specific offering.

How do I select a focus?

• Choose a product or service that best represents what you want to analyze.
• Select "Custom Focus Area" and enter a focus if your offering isn't listed.
• You can also continue without a focus to view broader brand-level results by clicking "Continue without selecting a focus" (this may be less precise).
• Don't forget to review your location setting before clicking "Continue"

Best practices for using the Focus Page

• Choose a specific product or service, not a broad category.
• Run separate reports with different focuses.

By using the Focus Page, you can guide AI models toward the parts of your brand that matter most and make your insights more actionable.

Click here to learn about the next step in building your Gumshoe report.

How do I edit my brand name, URL, and summary in Gumshoe?

After selecting your brand, Gumshoe gives you a chance to review and edit the brand name, website URL, and summary that AI models will use to evaluate your presence.

Edit Your Brand Name and URL

At the top of the page, if you’re logged in, you’ll see editable fields for your brand name and website. This is especially useful for brands that may be represented inconsistently across the web.

To update your brand name or URL:

1. Click the fields you would like to edit.
2. Update the text.

Edit the AI Summary Section

The Summary Section includes a short AI-generated description of your brand, based on how it’s perceived in search. Editing this summary helps ensure your report reflects your actual identity, voice, and product focus.

To edit the summary:

1. Click the text field below the Summary Section.
2. Modify the text or replace it to reflect your brand identity and offerings.

How to Save Your Changes

To save changes in all sections of this page, click "Continue."

The next step will be to define your report’s Focus. Learn more about the Focus section →

How Do I Finalize, Run, and Schedule a Gumshoe Report?

What Happens When I Run a Gumshoe Report?

After you’ve set your report parameters (such as brand name, URL, personas, topics, and questions), Gumshoe initiates searches by having each persona pose your defined questions to AI models. This approach helps reduce model bias and generates more authentic, user-aligned results.

Can I Schedule my Report to Run on a Regular Cadence?

You can schedule your Gumshoe report to run automatically on a recurring cadence.

Use the “Report run schedule” dropdown menu on the Finalize Report page to select how often you’d like your report to rerun. Options include:

• Weekly
• Every two weeks
• Monthly

Once scheduled, your report will automatically refresh at the interval you selected, allowing you to track your brand’s visibility over time without manually rerunning it.

Click here to learn about how to view historical data from scheduled reports.

What to Expect During the Search Process

• Progress bars will appear for each AI model as data is collected.
• You may begin to see partial results in your report while other results continue loading.
• Once all data is collected, there will no longer be a box at the top of the page showing model progress.

How Long Does It Take?

• Search time varies based on the number of AI models, personas, and questions in your report.
• Most reports complete within a few minutes, but high-volume reports may take longer.

Once complete, your report will show how your brand is positioned in AI-generated summaries, citations, and search behavior across leading AI platforms.

To learn how to share your report with others, you can click here. If you'd like a detailed breakdown of the information included in your report, you can click here.

How do I start a Gumshoe report?

It’s easy to kick off your first Gumshoe report and start seeing results right away.

To Begin your Gumshoe Report:

• On the Gumshoe home page, you’ll see a large search field.
• Select your brand from the drop-down menu.
• Click Go.

Please note, if your brand doesn’t appear in the drop-down, try entering your website URL and clicking “Go.” On the next page, you’ll be able to review and edit your brand details before your report runs.

In the next step of creating your report, you'll set your brand's details. Click here to view the instructions.

How Do I Use the Location Feature in Gumshoe?

Gumshoe includes a Location setting under the Focus step when creating a report. This feature enables you to tailor your report to the geographic region where your potential customers are located, resulting in more precise and relevant results.

What Does Location Do?

When you select a location (city, state, or country), Gumshoe asks AI models to simulate personas and prompts from that region. This helps you understand:

• How AI models recommend brands in your target market
• Which competitors show up most often in your area
• What local buyers are likely to ask when looking for solutions like yours

How to Set a Location

• Open the Focus step in the report wizard.
• Under Location, enter a city, state, or country that matches where your target customers are based.
• Click "Continue" to advance to the next step in building a report.

Pro Tip: Utilize multiple reports to compare data across different regions.

Can I change the Location in an Existing report?

Visit this article for detailed information on changing the location in existing reports: Can I change the Location in an Existing Gumshoe Report?

How do I Change the Language of Prompts and Answers in a Report?

Check out this article for details about using different languages: Can I Run a Gumshoe Report in Another Language?

Click here to learn about the next step in building your Gumshoe report.

Video Walkthrough: Creating a Gumshoe Report

Don't want to read? Who does?! Check out this video instead.

What are Topics in Gumshoe and how do they improve report results?

What Are Topics in Gumshoe?

Topics represent the major themes within your Personas’ prompts that could cause your brand to appear in AI-generated search results. They highlight the broader conversations where your brand might surface, helping you understand how AI models recognize and reference your business.

Think of Topics as the AI-era equivalent of SEO keyword buckets.

Topics display with:

• Persona count: The number of Personas tied to that Topic.
• Prompt count: The number of prompts linked to that Topic.

This gives you immediate context for how broad or narrow a Topic is across your report.

Why Reviewing Topics Matters

• See how your brand is positioned across AI search.
• Understand the conversation topics AI does and does not associate with your brand.
• Guide the next steps of your report setup.

How Are Topics Generated in Gumshoe?

Topics in Gumshoe are generated through our proprietary diagnostic process, which queries multiple AI Models to identify the subject areas they currently associate most strongly with your brand. These Topics are not pulled from keyword tools or search-volume databases. LLMs do not publish that kind of data. Instead, they reflect the themes, categories, and intent patterns that the models themselves use to interpret your brand in real time.

Think of Topics as the “buckets” AI Models naturally place you in during user conversations. Gumshoe asks the models to use their own context and reasoning when surfacing these Topics, so the results aren’t random; they’re direct diagnostic signals that reveal how AI Models are framing your brand today. You can refine these Topics to match your real-world strategy, but the automatically generated ones are valuable clues into your current AI identity.

When you create or edit a report, Topics are used to generate new questions for each persona to ask, giving you visibility into how the models would behave in real-world interactions.

How Does Gumshoe Use Real-World Search Volume on the Topic Page?

Gumshoe uses real-world search volume on the Topic page as a directional signal of user interest, helping you understand which topics people are actively researching in traditional search. While AI Models do not publish their own query volume or indicate how often users ask specific questions, Gumshoe has partnered with a data company that tracks real-world search volume through other methods. The green volume indicator below the topics shows real-world search volume estimates derived from the data we analyze.

Search volume in Gumshoe helps you prioritize which topics to focus on, decide where to generate more prompts, and identify areas where publishing new content may create meaningful visibility gains. It does not represent what AI Models are trained on or how frequently a topic appears inside any model. Still, when combined with Gumshoe’s visibility data, it becomes a useful guide for choosing high-impact areas to optimize.

How to Edit Topics when Creating Reports

• Click the trash icon on any topics you feel do not fit.
• Click "+Add New Topic" to add a new topic. New topics will take a moment to sync with the existing prompts.

How to Edit Topics in Existing Reports

• Click on "Manage Prompts" in the left-side menu or in the top right "..." menu.
• Click the trash icon to remove any prompts that feel off-topic or irrelevant.
• Click the trash icon on any topics you feel do not fit.
• Click "+Add New Topic" to add a new topic. New topics will take a moment to sync with the existing prompts.
• The changes will be applied to the report after the report is run again.

For more information on editing topics, visit one of the following articles:

• Why can't I Edit my Report Topics, Personas, and Prompts or see all of Gumshoe's features?
• What Does “Regenerate Prompts” on the Prompts Page Do in Gumshoe?

Ensure Your Topics are Covered in Prompts

Each Topic in Gumshoe is most effective when it is paired with one or more prompts. Prompts are the questions Personas ask AI models, and Topics are what tie those questions back to broader themes. If a Topic has no prompts connected, it won’t influence your report results. If a prompt is not tied to any Topics, your report results will be equally impacted.

• Check the prompt count: On the Prompts page, each Topic shows how many prompts are currently connected.
• Click a Topic: This highlights all related prompts below so that you can confirm coverage.
• Add or edit prompts: If a Topic doesn’t have enough prompts, consider adding new ones or adjusting your Personas so they naturally generate prompts tied to that Topic.

Making sure every Topic is represented in prompts ensures you capture the full range of conversations where your brand might appear.

Click here to review the next step in your Gumshoe report.

Video Walkthrough: Understanding Your Gumshoe Report

Don't want to read through our guides? We get it. Try this video guide to understanding Gumshoe reports instead!

What Are the Persona & Topic Visibility Sections in my Gumshoe Report?

The Persona and Topic Visibility sections reveal how AI models associate your brand with different types of customers (personas) and key industry themes (topics). This helps you understand where you’re already showing up in AI responses and where you might need to improve.

Persona Visibility

This section shows which personas AI models most often link to your brand. A high percentage indicates strong alignment with a specific audience. Low percentages may suggest opportunities to strengthen content or visibility for that group.

Topic Visibility

This section outlines the topics where your brand appears in AI-generated answers. It reveals which subject areas your brand is currently associated with. Gaps in visibility may mean you need to optimize your content or site structure for better AI recognition in those areas.

How to Use This Data

• Maintain strength by aligning content with the personas and topics where you’re already visible.
• Spot gaps in underrepresented personas or topics and update your messaging, FAQs, or source content accordingly.
• Use this data to refine your AI Optimization strategy and boost visibility across different AI search tools.

If you notice gaps or underperformance, Gumshoe’s AI Optimization (AIO) recommendations can guide your next steps.

For an article outlining the next section of the Gumshoe Report Landing Page, click here.

What Are the Sources and Sources by Category Sections in my Gumshoe Report?

The Sources and Sources by Category sections of your Gumshoe report's landing page reveal how AI models justify their answers. These sections list which websites and types of sites AI models rely on when recommending brands in your category. Understanding these citations helps you evaluate which domains are driving influence in your space and how your brand might show up more often in the future.

Sources Section

The Sources section shows the specific domains AI models cited when answering prompts in your report. These are often the content-rich websites AI trusts most to justify brand recommendations.

Use this section to discover:

• Which domains are influencing AI-generated answers for your category
• How often those domains are cited compared to others
• Competitor domains that are attracting citations
• Gaps where your brand is missing from key influential sites

Sources by Category Section

The Sources by Category section breaks down citations by site type (not just domain). This helps you see what kinds of content formats or publishing platforms AI models favor.

Use this to understand:

• What types of websites dominate citations in your category
• Whether you need more visibility in review sites, media coverage, blog content, or technical references
• How to tailor your content distribution strategy to match the platforms AI trusts most

Why It Matters

The Sources sections help answer key strategic questions:

• What sources do AI models trust when answering prompts about your category?
• Which types of links and domains are most influential?
• What kind of content drew AI model attention on competitor sites, and how can you replicate or improve it?
• Are there citations where your brand could show up, by earning backlinks or partnering with the content owner?

Each source listed in this landing page section links to a Source Citations Page, where you can explore the persona, prompt, and AI model responsible for the citation. If you would like to read more about this page, you can click here.

Understanding Why a Source Was Cited

Sometimes, when you click a source link, it may not be obvious how the AI model generated its answer from that content. There are a few reasons this can happen:

• Inference from related content : The model may connect ideas from different parts of a page to answer a related question.
• Blended context: The model may use information from its own training data or a base understanding of the topic blended with the information it received from the citation source.
• Hallucination: In cases that are becoming rarer and rarer, the model may generate details that don’t directly appear on the page.

These behaviors are normal in AI systems and don’t necessarily mean the source is wrong. Instead, they highlight how models combine content, patterns, and context when forming answers.

Can I Trust AI Model Sources?

Even if AI models sometimes hallucinate, Gumshoe is valuable because it makes those patterns visible. Without visibility, you’d never know when or how models are misrepresenting your brand.

Gumshoe can't “fix” hallucinations inside the models, but it gives you:

• Awareness: See what AI is actually saying (right or wrong) so errors don’t catch you off guard.
• Influence: By improving the three levers (technical improvements, first-party content, and third-party citations), you can reduce hallucinations and make it more likely the models cite accurate, trusted sources.

In short, hallucinations are exactly why brands need Gumshoe; so they can measure, manage, and mitigate them rather than being invisible or misrepresented.

Click here to read about the next section of the Gumshoe Report Landing Page.

What Are the Visibility Heatmaps on Gumshoe’s Report Landing Page and How Should I Use Them?

At the bottom of your Gumshoe report’s landing page, you’ll find a set of Visibility Heatmaps. These heatmaps visualize how often your brand (and competitors) are mentioned across different personas, topics, competitors, and AI models in AI-generated responses.

Together, these views help you quickly understand where your brand is winning, where it’s weak, and where competitors are outperforming you in AI search.

Overview of the Heatmaps

Gumshoe includes four primary heatmaps on the report landing page:

• Persona × Topic
• Persona × Competitor
• Topic × Competitor
• Model × Competitor

Each heatmap answers a different strategic question about AI visibility.

Persona × Topic Heatmap

What it shows:

• Rows: Report Personas
• Columns: Report Topics
• Cells: Visibility percentage indicates how often your brand is mentioned when a specific persona asks about a particular topic

Darker cells or higher percentages indicate stronger visibility. Lighter or blank cells indicate weak or missing visibility.

Why it matters:

This is the most direct view of how well AI models understand your brand for specific audience needs and themes.

How to use it:

• Identify persona-topic gaps where content is missing or unclear
• Prioritize content generation for weak but important combinations
• Double down on high-performing intersections in messaging and campaigns

Persona × Competitor Heatmap

What it shows:

• Rows: Personas
• Columns: Competitors
• Cells: How often each brand is mentioned when that persona asks relevant questions

Why it matters:

This heatmap shows who AI models recommend for each persona, giving you a clear competitive view by audience segment.

How to use it:

• Spot personas where competitors dominate recommendations
• Identify personas where your brand has a strong advantage
• Tailor content and positioning to win specific persona battles

Topic × Competitor Heatmap

What it shows:

• Rows: Topics
• Columns: Competitors
• Cells: Visibility percentage by topic across brands

Why it matters:

This view highlights topic-level competitive pressure and reveals which brands AI models associate most strongly with each theme.

How to use it:

• Identify topics where competitors are consistently cited
• Focus content and authority-building on high-demand, low-visibility topics
• Validate whether your positioning matches how AI currently understands the category

Model × Competitor Heatmap

What it shows:

• Rows: AI models (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity)
• Columns: Competitors
• Cells: Visibility percentage by model

Why it matters:

Different models surface different brands. This heatmap shows model-specific strengths and weaknesses.

How to use it:

• Identify where your brand performs well on one model but poorly on another
• Adjust content structure and sources to improve consistency across models
• Track whether optimization efforts improve visibility model by model

How to Read the Cells

Across all heatmaps:

• Higher percentages / darker shading = stronger AI visibility
• Lower percentages / lighter shading = weaker or inconsistent visibility
• Hovering over a cell shows:
• Visibility percentage
• Number of mentions
• Total answers analyzed

How These Heatmaps Work Together

Use the heatmaps as a system:

• Persona × Topic → What content to create
• Persona × Competitor → Who you’re losing to (and for whom)
• Topic × Competitor → Where competitors own the narrative
• Model × Competitor → How visibility varies across AI platforms

Together, they help you move from insight → prioritization → action.

To return to the beginning of the Gumshoe Report landing page walkthrough, click here. To explore deeper guides for each section of the report, click here.

What Does my Gumshoe Report Landing Page Show?

The Gumshoe Report Landing Page gives you a high-level overview of how often your brand is mentioned in AI-generated responses, what sources are driving those mentions, and how your visibility compares to competitors. This is the first screen you’ll see after your report finishes running. To watch a complete video guide to understanding your Gumshoe reports, click here.

You can explore several key sections that break down your AI visibility by theme, channel, or performance area.

Sections on the Report Landing Page:

- Brand Visibility Score

See how often your brand is mentioned overall, and how many responses featured any brand.

- Leaderboard (Competitive Comparison)

View your brand’s visibility rank compared to competitors included in the report.

- Persona Visibility

Learn which personas (customer types) see your brand most often in AI-generated responses.

- Topic Visibility

Understand which topics and themes are most often linked to your brand in AI summaries.

- Heatmaps

Identify how specific personas, topics, and models engage with your brand and your competitors.

- Sources

Review the websites AI models most frequently cite when recommending brands to personas regarding the topics in your report.

- Sources by Category

See which types of sites (e.g., business, education, news) are driving the most mentions.

- Model Visibility

Analyze which AI models mention your brand, and how frequently.

The Gumshoe Report Landing Page helps you orient yourself before diving deeper into the report’s analytics and optimization recommendations. Each section can be clicked for detailed analysis, so you can better understand where your brand stands and what steps to take next.

If you would like to skip ahead to a closer look at each section after clicking through it, visit this link.

What Is Model Visibility on the Gumshoe Report Landing Page?

The Model Visibility section shows how often your brand is mentioned in AI-generated responses across large language models (LLMs), such as Google Gemini, OpenAI’s GPT-4, Claude, and others. Each model draws from different sources and interprets questions in unique ways, meaning your visibility may vary significantly from one model to another.

Why Do AI Models Show Different Results?

AI models are not uniform. Several factors affect how they respond to the same question:

• Training Data: Each model is trained on different datasets. Some may prioritize brand websites or structured sources like documentation, while others pull more from public forums or general web content.
• Source Preferences: Some models rely more heavily on trusted publications, reviews, or FAQ-style content. Others may over-index on conversational sources like Reddit or Quora.
• Query Interpretation: Every model interprets questions slightly differently. Since Gumshoe asks each question as a unique persona, the model’s interpretation is shaped by who it thinks is asking.
• Content Freshness: Some models refresh their training data more frequently. You might see higher visibility in newer models simply because they’ve seen more recent updates to your content.
• Search Optimization: If your brand has content that’s structured for AI (e.g., schema markup, clean metadata, citations), it’s more likely to be surfaced in responses across models.

How to Use This Section

If your brand performs well in one model but is absent in others, it’s a strong signal to diversify your content or optimize for AI search compatibility.

Model Visibility helps you:

• Understand which AI platforms are recognizing your brand and which aren’t
• Pinpoint gaps in model-specific visibility
• Adjust your strategy by tailoring content toward the sources each model trusts
• Use insights from this section to dive deeper into the conversations page.

Click here to read about the next section of your Gumshoe Report Landing Page.

What Is the Brand Visibility Score in Gumshoe and How Should I Use It?

The Brand Visibility Score represents the percentage of AI-generated responses that included your brand when answering relevant questions. This score helps you understand how often your brand is mentioned in AI search responses compared to others, based on the topics and personas you’ve defined in your report.

A high score means your brand frequently appears in AI-generated answers, while a low score indicates limited brand recognition across models.

How to Use the Brand Visibility Score:

• Gauge overall AI search performance: Get a snapshot of how visible your brand is across all models.
• Compare trends over time: Watch how your score changes as you optimize brand presence and schedule report runs.
• Spot opportunities for improvement: A low score might signal a need for more relevant content, structured data, or improved citations.

If your score is lower than expected, don’t worry! Gumshoe provides tactical AIO (AI Optimization) recommendations to help increase visibility.

To read about the next section of the Gumshoe Report Landing Page, click here.

What Is the Leaderboard in Gumshoe and How Can I Use It for Competitive Comparison?

The Leaderboard shows how frequently your brand is mentioned in AI-generated content compared to other brands. This section helps you understand your competitive standing in AI search and identify which brands are outperforming you in visibility.

In this section, you’ll see:

• Your brand’s ranking position is based on visibility across all AI models.
• A list of competitor brands and their visibility percentages.
• A “Compare” button that opens a breakdown of key differences between your brand and the competitor.

How to Use the Leaderboard:

• Click "Full List" to see all the brands in the list.
• Use the search field to find a specific name on the page.
• Spot competitors gaining more AI visibility than your brand.
• You can use the Competitor toggle on each line to identify direct competitors you'd like to use in your Gumshoe report.
• Sort the page by your toggled competitors by checking the "Show Only Competitors" box.
• Click through any competitor to see a head-to-head comparison

For a deeper dive on comparing your brand with the competition, you can explore this article, which explains how to interpret the results in the Compare view.

If you would like to read about the next section of the Gumshoe Report Landing Page, you can click here.

Does Gumshoe.ai Have an API?

Yes! It is currently being made available to select users. If you are interested, please ask for a human via our chat widget or email us at support@gumshoe.ai.

The API lets you connect your reports, insights, and GEO data directly to your workflows and systems. Using the API will make it easier to integrate Gumshoe into dashboards and combine AI visibility insights with the rest of your tech stack.

You may also be interested in our current JSON export. Read more here.

How Do I Click Through and Analyze Sources & Citations in a Gumshoe Report?

The Sources & Citations feature in your Gumshoe report shows which websites AI models reference when recommending brands. Click any row in the “Sources” and “Sources by Category” cards in any Gumshoe report to begin your citation analysis.

This data helps you understand:

• Which sources AI models trust most when answering prompts in your category.
• The types of links and domains that carry the most influence in AI-generated responses.
• What kinds of competitor content attracted model citations, so you can create similar content to compete.
• Opportunities where your brand could be cited, by partnering with the content owner or appearing on influential sites.

Where to Find Sources & Citations

Go to your Gumshoe report’s landing page. Scroll to the "Sources" and "Sources by Category" section near the bottom. Or you can click "Sources" in the left-hand menu.

1. Click any domain to see a detailed citation breakdown.
2. You’ll be taken to a page listing the following:

• The AI model that made the citation.
• The persona who asked the prompt.
• The specific prompt.
• The logos of the brands mentioned.
• A link to the source.

How to Use This Data

- Benchmark Against Competitors

See which sites cite your competitors and how frequently.

- Audit Your Own Citations

If your brand isn’t showing up, check whether you’re cited at all and which prompts triggered the mentions.

- Spot Gaps in Authority

If high-authority sources aren’t referencing your brand, it might indicate a need to improve your content’s discoverability or reputation.

- Prioritize by Persona

See which personas trigger the strongest citations and align your optimization efforts accordingly.

- Track by AI Model

Certain models may be pulling from specific domains more often than others, revealing differences in how content is indexed across AI platforms.

Tips for Optimization

• Consider publishing content that answers the same prompts that personas are asking.
• Publish content that resembles the content your competitors are getting cited for.
• Add schema markup and ensure your content is crawlable by structured sources.
• Partner with or pitch the sites that drive the most mentions in your category.

Check out the following articles for more information:

• What Are the Sources and Sources by Category Sections in my Gumshoe Report?
• How do AI Models Decide Which Sources to Trust?
• Why do AI Models Cite Pages That Don’t Mention the Brand They are Recommending?
• How Do I Create a Third-Party Content Strategy?

How Do I Export a Gumshoe Report to JSON or CSV?

You can export most of your report information in JSON or CSV format.

How to Export a Report to a JSON or CSV Format

• Click the "..." dropdown next to the "Share" button.
• Choose your desired file type.

What’s included in the JSON export?

The JSON export includes all core report data, including:

• Visibility scores
• Mentions
• Personas
• Topics
• Sources and citations
• Prompts and responses

This format is ideal for:

• Internal dashboards
• Sharing with engineering or data teams
• Custom analysis or visualizations

What's included in the CSV export?

The CSV export does not include competitors, sources, or copies of the model's answers. Images like the heatmaps and graphs do not currently export.

How to Read the CSV Export

• Each row lists one prompt, with the associated persona
• Columns D–O show your brand’s mentions and rank per model.
• A number means the model recommended your brand, and that number is its rank (e.g., 5 = recommended, ranked fifth).
• A blank cell means that the model did not recommend your brand.
• Columns P–AA map prompts to Topics.
• An X means the prompt belongs to that topic.
• Multiple Xs in a row mean the prompt is connected to several topics.

Persona Report: See How Different Audiences Experience Your Brand in AI

The Persona Report shows how AI models surface your brand for different audience types, revealing who sees you, where you’re winning, and why competitors appear instead in AI-generated answers.

Rather than treating visibility as a single score, this report breaks it down by persona, helping you understand how different user intents drive very different outcomes in AI search.

What the Persona Report Shows

The Persona Report answers three critical questions:

• Which audience types see your brand most often in AI responses
• Where competitors are favored instead, and by which personas
• Which brands are recommended to each Persona by specific AI Models

Each persona represents a real-world way people ask questions in AI systems, including their goals, constraints, and decision-making style.

How to Find the Persona Report

Below the Personas listed on the main page in your Gumshoe report, you'll see a blue button to click, labeled "View Persona Report."

Persona Visibility Report Walkthrough

Brand Visibility by Persona

At the top of the report, you’ll see your overall Brand Visibility, followed by a breakdown across individual personas.

Each persona tile shows:

• Visibility percentage for that audience type
• Which personas are strongest vs. weakest for your brand

This makes it easy to identify:

• Personas where you already resonate
• Personas where competitors consistently outrank you
• Personas that may require different content strategies

Explore a Persona

Clicking into a persona reveals what’s actually happening under the hood.

Inside a persona view, you’ll see:

Competitive Positioning

• Which competitors outrank you most often for this persona
• How frequently they appear compared to your brand
• Where competitive gaps are most pronounced

Top Sources

• The domains AI models rely on most for this persona
• Whether those sources are brand-owned, third-party, or competitor pages
• Patterns in what AI trusts for this audience type

Topic-Level Performance

Click on a Topic for more detailed information.

• How your brand performs across specific topics for this persona
• Which topics you rank highly for and which you don’t

Prompts Driving Results

• The most relevant prompts the persona asked on a specific topic
• How those prompts are driving AI Models recommedations

Competitive Ranking by LLM

Click on a competitor in the graph under the Topic you selected.

• See how AI Models rank your brand against competitors by prompt

What Can I Learn by Exploring Conversations in My Gumshoe Report?

The Conversations page gives you a deeper look into how AI models associate your brand with specific topics and personas and how you stack up against competitors in actual AI-generated answers.

How Do I Access the Conversations Page?

You can access the Conversations Page by clicking on any row in your Gumshoe Report Landing Page's Persona Visibility or Topic Visibility sections.

What will I find on the Conversations Page?

The Conversations page offers valuable insights. Utilize the page filters to narrow your view and enhance your understanding.

Filter this Page By:

• Topic & Personas
• View visibility scores and average rankings showing how often your brand is mentioned for each persona or topic.
• Model Comparison
• Use the model dropdown to explore how each AI platform (like GPT-40 or Gemini 2.0) ranks your brand differently based on the same prompt.
• Brands Mentioned
• You can view all brand mentions or focus solely on your own for quicker insights.

View the Conversation Details:

• Click on any model below the prompt to expand the full AI-generated answers.
• Switch between models to see how recommendations vary by platform.
• Use this data in combination with the AI Optimization recommendations to take immediate action.

Does Gumshoe share the entire answer provided by the AI Model?

Almost. If you've ever used an AI Model, you probably know there's a lot of filler. Gumshoe extracts the most essential information from LLMs' answers.

How to Use This Data:

• Spot Patterns
• Find out which personas or topics drive the most brand mentions—and which are underperforming.
• Compare Brand Mentions
• See how often your competitors were recommended instead of you, and under what context.
• Adjust Content Strategy
• Use this insight to guide FAQs, product pages, and campaign messaging that align with AI-driven conversations.
• Improve AI Visibility
• Identify where to strengthen your presence by expanding content or improving alignment with key personas or topics.

What Can I Learn from the Competitor Comparison Breakdown Page?

The Competitor Comparison Breakdown gives you a deeper look at how your brand stacks up against a specific competitor in AI-generated search results.

How do I Find the Comparison Breakdown Pages in my Gumshoe Report?

Looking at the top of your Gumshoe report Landing Page, you can expand the leaderboard view. Then click through any competitor's row to view the competitive comparison page.

What You'll See on the Comparison Breakdown Pages

These competitor comparison breakdown pages enable you to compare your brand directly against others.

You’ll see how visibility differs by:

• Persona – Which customer personas mention your brand more (or less) than your competitor.
• Topic – Which key topics drive more AI mentions for your brand vs. theirs.
• Model – Which AI models favor your brand over your competitor (and vice versa).

This view helps pinpoint where your messaging is working and where it may need refinement.

How to Use These Pages

Look over each graph. Hover over a row to see the mention counts and click through to see the corresponding Conversation Pages.

Identify Strengths:

• See where your brand outperforms the competition and double down on what’s working.
• Spot gaps and find where competitors are winning, whether by persona, topic, or model, and uncover areas for improvement.
• Refine your strategy and use these insights to sharpen your content and positioning across AI search.

What Time Period Does the Gumshoe Report Cover?

Gumshoe Reports are Diagnostic Tests

Gumshoe reports are not based on historical traffic or past user searches, because AI models don’t share that data. Unlike traditional SEO tools, we don’t have access to what users have asked AI tools in the past, and neither does anyone else.

Instead, Gumshoe is a real-time diagnostic. Each report is a snapshot that shows how AI models respond right now to specific persona-driven prompts.

These prompts simulate the types of questions users might ask. The report then shows:

• Which brands each model mentions
• How often they are mentioned
• What sources the model used
• What context or reasoning it provides

So What Does That Mean?

You’re not seeing data from the past week, month, or year.

• AI models don’t share usage logs, so we can’t report on what real users asked or clicked.

You are seeing how your brand ranks in AI responses right now.

• Gumshoe tests specific questions across personas and topics to simulate realistic user behavior.

Mentions reflect current results from that test run.

• These are not tied to a specific historical time window, such as “last 30 days.” They show how many times your brand was cited during that particular run.

Why It Works

AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are trained on a combination of public web content and inferred user behavior, but they don’t expose that training data or activity.

Gumshoe provides a method for testing how models behave based on their training, in a consistent and repeatable manner.

To learn how to schedule your reports to run on a regular timetable, click here.

Why Do Gumshoe Report Results Vary?

AI models are not static; they have some inherent variability and evolve over time. That means your Gumshoe report results can shift even if you run the same prompts multiple times consecutively.

This variability is normal and expected. It happens because AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are influenced by:

• Ongoing training updates (new data added behind the scenes)
• Live internet crawling
• Model tweaks (changes made by the companies that operate the models)
• Contextual randomness (LLMs don’t always give identical answers, even to the same prompt)

The last factor might give you pause: yes, there is an element of randomness in how all AI models work. While they’re incredibly advanced, at their core, these models generate responses one word at a time based on weighted probabilities; essentially, they choose the next most likely word from a list of possible options. It’s not a coin flip, but more like rolling a loaded die where certain outcomes are much more likely than others.

In tightly competitive categories (think Nike vs. Adidas), this can lead to small variations from one run to the next. If the model considers both brands equally valid answers to a prompt, it may prioritize one over the other simply due to minor shifts in phrasing or probability. That’s why visibility scores can fluctuate and why scheduling repeat reports helps spot true patterns over time.

What This Means for Your Report

Each Gumshoe report is a diagnostic snapshot that simulates how a persona might interact with an AI model today, not a historical log or a permanent record. The more frequently you run a report, the more accurate your baseline visibility score will be.

Once you understand your base range and begin making adjustments to improve your scoring, you'll notice new trends in your reports as they are generated.

How to Use Variability to Improve Your AIO

Tracking variability over time is a key insight that Gumshoe provides. It helps you:

• Understand how stable or unstable your visibility is across models
• Spot when a model starts responding differently, positively, or negatively
• Detect the impact of external factors
• Adjust your strategy as models evolve

Set your reports to run on a set schedule to:

• Set a baseline
• Monitor change over time
• Respond quickly when something shifts

To understand how to schedule your reports, click here.

Why Does My Gumshoe Report Show 0% Visibility?

Seeing a 0% visibility score in your Gumshoe report can be frustrating, but it doesn’t mean there's no hope. It’s often a sign that something in the setup needs adjustment. There are several ways to troubleshoot.

Check the Leaderboard for Duplicate Domains

Your brand might be competing with itself. If your company uses multiple domains (e.g., company.com, company.co, or sub.company.com), AI models might treat them as entirely separate entities. This can split your mentions across domains, which lowers your total visibility score.

Contact Gumshoe support to merge your domains in specific reports. This ensures your visibility score reflects your full AI presence.

Review Your Brand Description and Focus

Sometimes, the report is technically working, but the AI doesn’t fully understand what your brand does. This can lead to low or zero visibility, especially if the questions in the report don’t align with your brand’s stated focus.

For example, let’s say your brand publishes reviews and advice about the best cooking tools. But your report shows personas asking, “What are the best cooking tools?” and all results are physical product brands, like All-Clad or OXO.

Even if your site was cited as a source, you wouldn’t appear on the leaderboard, because the AI thinks you’re a publication with reference materials for tools.

Update your brand description to clarify your brand's role. For example:

“We help people find great products.” “We offer expert reviews and buying guides for home cooks looking for the best cooking tools.”

Once you've set a more precise focus, ensure that the topics for your prompts are clear and specific to your brand's offerings.

Were the Personas and Topics Aligned with Your Brand?

Your report may include personas or questions that don’t match what your brand actually helps with. If none of the prompts reflect the kind of searches you want to be found for, you’ll likely get 0% visibility.

Double-check the Topics and Personas in your report setup. You can create a new report with a more focused set of prompts.

AI Models May Not Know Your Brand Yet

If your brand is new, rebranded, or hasn’t been mentioned on authoritative sites, the models may not yet be familiar with your identity. Use your report as guidance for improving your visibility.

Try creating reports on your brand's top competitors and design your content strategy accordingly.

How Do I Access the Page Audit Tool?

To view optimization recommendations and analyze how specific pages on your site perform in AI search, you'll want to explore the Page Audit section in your Gumshoe report.

Exploring Page Audit Results

The Page Audits feature shows how well individual URLs on your site are performing in AI-generated responses. This allows for targeted optimization based on real AI behavior.

Gumshoe offers two different Page Audit views with different functionality. The Page Audit view in your account dashboard displays all URLs you’ve scanned across any of your reports. However, to run a new URL audit, you’ll need to use the Page Audit tab within a specific report. This ensures that new audits are correctly associated with the report’s focus and data.

To access Page Audits:

• Open a Gumshoe report.
• Click on the "Page Audit" tab in the left sidebar.
• You'll see a list of analyzed pages, including scores and timestamps for the most recent run.
• Click on any line to open a detailed page analysis.
• To analyze a new page, enter the URL and click "Analyze."

Note: If you enter a URL that has already been analyzed, you may get an error screen. Click the back arrow to return to the Page Audit. If you need to refresh the analysis, contact the Gumshoe Customer Support Team by escalating to a human in the chat widget or emailing support@gumshoe.ai, and they will process it for you.

Accessing the AI Optimization Analysis Results

You can click on one of the analyzed URLs from the Page Audit to open the Analysis Results for that web page.

Why does my Page Audit say it failed?

Page audits in Gumshoe can fail for a few common reasons:

• The page is blocked by robots.txt, which prevents us from crawling it.
• The page requires a login or authentication to access.
• The URL points to a non-standard web page (such as a PDF or image).
• The page has technical errors that stop it from loading correctly.
• The URL was entered incorrectly.

If your audit fails, double-check the URL and ensure the page is accessible to crawlers. Then, please notify our customer support team by escalating to a human in the chat widget or by emailing support@gumshoe.ai to request a rerun of the page audit.

Visit this article to learn about refreshing the Page Audit for a URL.

What Is AIO (AI Optimization) and What are AIO Recommendations?

AI Optimization (AIO) is the process of improving your brand’s visibility and representation in AI-generated search results. As large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity become go-to tools for discovery and decision-making, showing up in their responses is just as important as ranking on Google.

Traditional SEO focused on keywords and backlinks to help web pages rank. AIO goes further. It ensures that AI models find your content and understand it, contextualize it, and cite it when generating answers. Gumshoe’s AIO framework focuses on five key areas:

• Structured Data: Using schema markup to make content machine-readable.
• Content Clarity: Writing clearly and consistently for both human and machine audiences.
• Conceptual Grouping: Helping models associate your brand with the right topics, personas, and use cases.
• Citation Readiness: Ensure your content is the type AI models pull from (e.g., FAQs, reviews, how-tos, product pages).
• Coverage & Authority: Ensuring your brand is visible on the domains and formats AI models trust.

Your AIO Score in Gumshoe reflects how well AI models interpret and reference your brand. A low score means there’s work to do; minor tweaks in content or structure can often lead to significant gains.

By following your AIO Recommendations and keeping your content fresh and AI-friendly, you’ll increase the chances that your brand shows up in AI answers across platforms—driving awareness, authority, and conversions.

What Will I Find on the AI Optimization Page?

The AI Optimization page (AIO) helps you evaluate how well your brand’s homepage is structured for AI-generated search results. It provides your AIO Score, a breakdown of key optimization categories, and actionable steps to improve your visibility across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

Key Sections of the AIO Page

AI Optimization Score (AIO)

• Your overall score reflects how AI-friendly your homepage is.
• A higher score means your site is well-structured and easier for AI models to interpret and reference in search results.

Structured Data Assessment

• Evaluates whether your site provides structured data (like product or organization markup) that AI can parse.
• A low score may indicate missing or incomplete structured content.

Page Layout Structure

• Reviews the organization of headings, sections, and navigation elements.
• Clear, consistent layout helps AI models understand and follow your site’s structure.

Schema Markup

• Measures how well your site uses schema to define and describe content.
• Good schema boosts AI visibility by helping models extract product names, brands, categories, and page types.

Navigation

• Scores the simplicity and clarity of your site navigation.
• Clean menus and link structures help AI models map your pages accurately.

Content Balance

• Assesses how well you blend descriptive content with promotional material.
• Too much marketing copy and too little substance may reduce AI understanding.

Metadata

• Checks whether you use proper meta titles and descriptions.
• These help AI models categorize your pages and associate them with relevant AI responses.

How to Use This Data

• Use the recommendations under each category to improve your homepage’s AI readability.
• Ask the Gumshoe team to re-run your report after making changes to track improvements.
• Monitor how your brand appears in AI search summaries over time.

Can I change the Location in an Existing Gumshoe Report?

While we hope to release this feature in the near future, it is not currently available.

How Location Settings Work Now:

Once a report has been created in Gumshoe, the location setting cannot be changed. If you'd like to see results for a different region, you'll need to create a new report and select the correct location during setup.

This ensures results are accurate and aligned with the models' responses for that specific region.

Optional Workaround:

If you'd like to change the "location" in a current report, you can edit the Personas (left-side menu when viewing a report) and add the location to the persona descriptions. Before saving your changes, choose to regenerate the Persona's Prompts so they match the new location-specific details. Then rerun the report with your changes.

Pro Tip: If you plan to compare multiple geographies, we recommend setting up separate reports for each location.

For more information, please visit the following Help Center articles:

• How Do I Use the Location Feature in Gumshoe?
• Can I Run a Gumshoe Report in Another Language?

Can I Run a Gumshoe Report in Another Language?

While Gumshoe's interface is currently English-only, we can generate reports in other languages. This lets you test how AI models respond to non-English prompts, even though the rest of the platform remains in English.

How does it work?

Begin a new report (an older report can't be retroactively translated). On the "Focus" page, at the bottom, you'll see the option to set a location for the Personas in the report and a language. Please contact our Customer Support Team (ask for a human in the chat widget or email support@gumshoe.ai) if you can't see this option in your account.

Please give us your feedback! We'd love to know how our translations are doing.

Can I change the Location of Personas in a Report?

Check out this article for more detailed information: How Do I Use the Location Feature in Gumshoe?

How do I change the AI models to query in a report?

If you want to adjust which AI models are used in your Gumshoe report (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity), there are a few options.

For Reports Scheduled to Repeat:

• Open the report you’d like to update.
• Click on the ”…” menu in the top right corner of the report.
• Select “Settings.”
• Scroll to the Models section.
• Check or uncheck the models you want to include in your report.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page.
• Click Save to confirm your changes.

Your report will now run on its set schedule using the updated set of models.

For Reports You Want to Run Immediately:

• Open the report you’d like to run.
• Click on the box in the upper right part of your report that lists the last time the report was run. (For example, "Run 6 Days Ago.")
• Select “Rerun Report.”
• Review the Finalization screen to ensure you are including the right models and click "Run Report."
• Review the pop-up confirmation screen to see the number of conversations and total cost.
• Click "Confirm" to generate your report.

Your report will run immediately with the models selected.

How do I Change the Models in an Existing Report?

You can update a Gumshoe report’s selection of models in the report settings.

Changing a Report’s Models

• Open the report you’d like to update.
• Click on the "..." menu in the top right corner of the report.
• Click "Settings."
• Select the models you'd like to use.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page.
• Click Save to confirm your changes.
• Your changes will take effect in the report the next time it is run.

How Do I Edit my Gumshoe Report's Name?

You can update a Gumshoe report’s name from the report’s settings.

Changing Your Report's Name

If you want to change the name of a report, follow these steps:

• Open the report you’d like to update.
• Click on the "..." menu in the top right corner of the report.
• Click "Settings."
• Adjust the name of the report at the top of the page.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page.
• Click Save to confirm your changes.
• Your report will now display the new name in your reports list.

How Do I Edit or Copy an Existing Gumshoe Report?

You can edit the Personas or Prompts in an existing report. Duplicating or cloning is not currently available. Editing just the Personas and Prompts lets you make small changes to reports to "tune" them over time. If you'd like to use the same personas in two different reports, you can import them.

Editing Personas, Topics, and Prompts

Why Edit Personas, Topics, and Prompts in an Existing Report?

• Refine Personas to better reflect your real-world audience.
• Adjust Topics so the report covers the most relevant themes for your business.
• Update Prompts to capture new questions customers or executives might ask.

Updated these elements in an existing report when you want to maintain the report and its historical data, but make a few tweaks. The changes will be applied to the report when it is run again.

How to Edit Personas, Topics, and Prompts

Visit these Help Center Articles for directions:

• How Can I View, Edit, and Use the Personas Page to Understand My AI Search Audience?
• What are Topics in Gumshoe and how do they improve report results?
• How Can I View, Edit, and Use the Prompts Page to Understand My AI Search Standings?

Importing Personas

Importing personas lets you reuse proven audience definitions without recreating entire reports from scratch. Since reports themselves can’t be duplicated, importing personas is the fastest way to carry forward the thinking, structure, and context from previous work while still keeping each report clean and independent. It helps teams stay consistent across analyses, saves setup time, and makes it easier to build on what’s already been tested and refined.

Visit this article for details on how to import Personas: How Do I Import and Reuse Personas from Previous Reports?

How Do I Import and Reuse Personas from Previous Reports?

Gumshoe lets you reuse personas across reports by importing them from your personal workspace or from any shared organization you belong to. This makes it easy to stay consistent without having to recreate personas from scratch.

How to Import a Persona from an Existing Report

You can import personas from existing reports in your own account or from reports shared within your organization.

1-Navigate to Personas

For an existing report, click Personas in the left navigation. You can also start this process from the Personas step while creating a new report.

• Click Add persona.
• Select Import from existing.
• This opens the Import persona modal.

2-Choose a Source

At the top of the modal, you can switch between two tabs:

• My personas: Personas from reports you personally own or have created.
• My organization: Personas from reports shared within organizations you are a member of.

You can use the search bar to quickly find a specific persona by name.

3-Complete the Import

• Locate the persona you want to reuse.
• Review the Report name column to see where the persona was originally used.
• Click Import.

The persona will be added to your current report and can be edited if needed.

What happens after import

• The imported persona keeps its original structure and description.
• You can customize the persona further without affecting the original report it came from.
• Imported personas behave exactly like newly created personas in prompts, reports, and analysis. It is not imported with topics or prompts from the previous report.

Things to keep in mind

• You can import personas from any shared organization you have access to.
• Importing a persona creates a copy, not a live link. Changes do not sync back to the original report.
• This is useful for standardizing personas across multiple reports or projects. See how your brand performs with the same set of Personas across multiple Business Focuses, for example.

Visit these help center articles foradditional information regarding Personas:

How do I manage scheduled reports in Gumshoe?

You can update a Gumshoe report’s schedule, set it to run regularly for the first time, or stop it from running altogether from the report’s settings.

• You can schedule any reports (both old and new) to run on a schedule.
• You will only be billed when a scheduled report actually runs.
• Stopping a scheduled report from running does not delete the report. You’ll still be able to view, edit, and manually rerun it anytime.
• If you want to avoid any future charges, you should stop the schedule before the next run is processed.

Changing a Report’s Schedule

If you want to change how often your report runs (daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly) or stop it from running at all, follow these steps:

• Open the report you’d like to update.
• Click on the "..." menu in the top right corner of the report.
• Click "Settings."
• Adjust the schedule frequency to your preferred option.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page.
• Click Save to confirm your changes.
• Your report will now run on the new schedule going forward.

How Do I Refresh My Page Page Audit (AIO Technical Scans)?

Currently, refreshing Page Audit (AIO technical scans) is a task that can only be run by the Gumshoe team. We plan to make the feature available to users soon.

How to Request a Refresh

If you’ve recently updated your website and want to see those changes reflected in your Gumshoe report:

• Contact the Gumshoe team through the Help Center or in-app support chat by asking for a human.
• Provide the URL(s) you want rescanned.
• Our team will trigger a new Page Audit scan and let you know when it’s updated in your account.

Important Note

• If you enter a URL that has already been analyzed into the field on the Page Audit tab, you may see an error screen.
• Simply click the back arrow to return to the Page Audit tab.
• If you need the analysis refreshed, reach out to the Gumshoe Customer Support Team, and they will process the refresh for you. Ask for a human in chat or email support@gumshoe.ai.

Tip: If you’re actively making updates to your site, it’s a good idea to request a refresh once the changes are published.

If you would like to read more about running a Page Audit scan or report, you can visit this article.

How do I rerun my report immediately?

If you’d like to manually run a report just once, without setting up a repeating schedule, you can do so directly from the report itself.

Steps to Run Report Right Away:

Your report will begin processing immediately, and you’ll see fresh results once the run completes.

Note: This option will not create a recurring schedule. It’s a one-time run only. Click here to learn how to schedule a report to re-run.

How Do I View Past Runs and Trends for a Scheduled Gumshoe Report?

If you've scheduled a Gumshoe report to repeat (weekly, biweekly, or monthly), you can view the history of all past and individual runs directly within the platform.

Where to Find Your Report Trends

The Trends page provides a visual overview of your report's performance over time, helping you spot trends, track improvements, and compare AI search visibility across past runs. While there's a smaller trends graph on your main report page, there's also a much more detailed Trends page.

To View the Trends Page:

• Go to any report in your Gumshoe account.
• Select "Trends" in the left-hand menu.
• Review the graphs to compare all previous runs for that report in one place.
• Change the page filters to see different information.

Each run shows the brand's AI visibility based on the conditions and model data at that time. This is an effective way to monitor changes and improvements over time, accounting for the variability in the AI model's responses.

Where to Find Previous Versions of a Report

You can view the entirety of any specific version of a report in a series.

To View Previous Report Runs:

• Go to your report's main landing page.
• Locate the timestamp near the top right (e.g., "Run 2 days ago").
• Click the dropdown arrow next to the timestamp.
• A list will appear showing all previously completed runs of that report.
• Click any entry to load and review the results from that specific run.

Notices and Event Markers in Trend Graphs

Trend graphs may include notice markers that indicate Gumshoe system-level updates or industry changes. These markers provide context for changes that could impact visibility results, such as prompt methodology updates, model upgrades, or provider version changes. When you see a notice, it means results may shift even if you haven't made any changes, and neither have your competitors. Use these markers to distinguish between changes driven by outside updates and changes caused by your own optimization efforts. This helps ensure trend analysis remains accurate and prevents misinterpreting normal system evolution as performance issues.

If you want to learn how to schedule a report to repeat, click here.

I ran my Gumshoe Report, Now what?

After you have run a Gumshoe report and observed the results, it's time to take action! You can begin making changes that will improve your AIO.

See the following articles for help with next steps:

• What Are the 3 Levers for Improving AI Optimization (AIO)?
• Understanding Gumshoe Stats, Numbers, and Analytics

What is the Page Audit in Gumshoe?

Gumshoe scans your website pages to assess the technical health of your website in terms of AI visibility. These scans consider the retrievability, structure, and machine-readability of your content for AI models, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

Because AI Optimization (AIO or sometimes called GEO, AEO, or other terms) is still so new, it can be difficult to clearly define what you’re looking for when it comes to web page audit. If you find yourself asking the following questions, you're looking for what Gumshoe (currently) calls "Page Audit":

• “Can AI models actually read and understand my site?”
• “How do I check if ChatGPT or Gemini can find my content?”
• "Where can I find my content retrievability analysis
• "Is my site machine-readable?"
• "Is my content optimized technically so AI can pull answers?"
• "Are my pages blocked?"
• "Are my web pages missing the right signals?"

To read about Gumshoe's "Page Audit" feature and how to use it, click here.

Why can't I Edit my Report Topics, Personas, and Prompts or see all of Gumshoe's features?

You may not always see the option to edit a report in Gumshoe. In some cases, certain features you’ve read about might also be hidden. Below are the most common reasons why this happens.

You're Using a Gmail Email Address

Users who sign up with a personal email (such as Gmail or Yahoo) will have limited access to Gumshoe. To unlock all features, update your account with a business email address. If you would like instructions to help you change your email address, please click here.

If you think your account should include missing features, please contact our support team by asking for a human in the chat or by emailing support@gumshoe.ai.

You’re Not Signed Into the Right Account

Only the original creator of a report (or users with admin permissions within an organization) can edit report elements. Make sure you’re signed into the account that created the report or that you are viewing the report from an organization for which you have admin access.

• You can check which account you’re using by clicking your profile icon in the bottom left corner of your Gumshoe account and then clicking settings.
• You can check the organization you are logged into by checking the top left corner of your screen.

You Don’t Have Permission

If someone shared their report with you or added you to an organization as a viewer, you may only have read-only access. You may not be able to edit/clone the report.

In that case, you’ll be able to view reports but not change the setup. Reach out to your organization's admin if you need edit access. If an individual has shared their report with you, ask if you can create an organization in which you can share admin access to the report, or if they would like to join an organization you have already created.

For more about organizations, visit these articles:

• How Do I Create an Organization in Gumshoe?
• How do I Share my Gumshoe Report with Others or Move it to my Organization?

The Report Has Already Been Run

Editing existing reports is possible, but may not be as flexible as running a new report in some cases. Check out the following article for more detailed information.

• How Do I Edit an Existing Gumshoe Report?

If you continue to experience issues, please don't hesitate to contact our support team.

Why is my report stuck or taking too long to build or run?

Building a Gumshoe report should be quick. Each step in the setup process (choosing your focus, personas, topics, and prompts) should take less than a minute.

If Setup/Report Creation Feels Stuck

If a specific page in the report-creation process is taking longer than a minute, this is not expected. Please report it to our Customer Support team right away so we can investigate.

Normal Run Times After Setup

Once you click Run Report, Gumshoe sends prompts to AI models (like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity) and collects their answers. Most reports finish running quickly in up to 15 minutes.

What to Do if Your Report Is Still Not Ready

• As models come back, their results will be displayed in your report.
• Check back later. Reports run in the background and will appear in your account when finished.
• If a report has not completed its run within 15 minutes, tell Gumshoe's customer support team.

Content Generation Taking A Long Time

Content generation (optional extra step) may take up to 30 minutes and you'll be emailed when it is done.