Search overview
Search shows where a brand stands on Google and in AI assistants. Learn its pages, the brand settings it needs, markets, roles and data costs.
Search tells you where a brand stands when people look for what it sells. It has two halves. SEO covers Google Search: the keywords you want to rank for and who beats you on them, plus the ones you’re missing entirely. GEO covers AI Search: whether assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overview name your brand or someone else.
Where everything is
Open Search in the left menu and you’ll find two entries, SEO and GEO. Once you’re in, a dark band across the top of the page repeats them as a switch, with the pages of the current area beside it.
| Area | Page | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Keywords | What you want to rank for, grouped by topic, with your Google position today |
| SEO | Competitors | Who holds the top 10 Google spots for each keyword group |
| SEO | Keyword Gap | Keywords your competitors rank for and you don’t |
| GEO | AI Search (GEO), five tabs | Whether AI assistants mention and cite the brand, and who they name instead |
The five GEO tabs are AI Visibility, Ask the AIs, AI Volume, Who AI Trusts and Trends. They sit on a single page and switch without reloading.
Every Search page has a How this page works note on the band. Open it for a short reminder of what the numbers mean.
New to the module? Start with Keywords. Competitor reports read that list, and so does the AI Volume tab.
One brand at a time
Search always reads for the brand picked in the header. Switch brands and everything on the page switches too, because each brand keeps its own data.
You only see brands you have access to. The same rule applies to the numbers: a person without access to a brand can’t read its rankings or AI results. See Brands for how access works.
Three switches decide whether you see an area. Your organization needs the Search capability (see Capabilities and modules). The brand needs the area turned on: a brand can have SEO on and GEO off. And your role needs access to it, through the Google Search (SEO) and AI Search areas of the roles grid. When an area is off for the active brand, its entry disappears from the menu and from the band.
What Search needs from the brand
Search takes four things from the brand’s settings, all set by an admin on the Brands page (Brands administration walks through it).
| Brand setting | What Search does with it |
|---|---|
| Website | Your Google rank is the position of this site. Keyword Gap compares against it. GEO pre-fills it as your domain. |
| Markets | The countries you can check ranks in. The first market is the default one. |
| Languages | The languages offered for Keyword Gap and used by GEO. The first language is the default one. |
| Keyword clusters | The topic groups a keyword can be filed under. |
Without a website, rank refreshes stop with “This brand has no website set to rank against.” Without markets, Search falls back to the United States. Without languages, it falls back to English.
Markets and languages, page by page
Country and language don’t work the same way on every page.
| Page | Country | Language |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords (ranks) | The market you pick in the toolbar, from the brand’s markets | Each keyword’s own language |
| Keyword Gap | The brand’s first market | The language you pick, from the brand’s languages |
| GEO: AI Visibility, AI Volume, Who AI Trusts, Trends | The brand’s first market | The language you pick if the brand works in it, otherwise the brand’s first language |
| GEO: Ask the AIs | Set by the Market list (United States or France) | English for the United States, French for France |
Important: On the GEO tabs other than Ask the AIs, the Market list reads “United States · EN” or “France · FR”, but only the language applies. The country is always the brand’s first market. To check France, make France the brand’s first market.
Who can do what
These are the default rules. An admin can change them for a whole role or for one person, as Roles and rights explains.
| Action | Viewer | Editor | Brand manager | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read keywords, ranks, reports and saved results | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Add, edit, duplicate or delete keywords | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Refresh ranks, run Keyword Gap, run GEO checks | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Generate a conquest strategy | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Initialize with AI (build a keyword list from the website) | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Pin or remove competitors on a keyword group | No | No | No | Yes |
Viewers still see some of the run buttons. Clicking one returns “Your role (viewer) is read-only.”
What data refreshes cost
If you read one section before running anything, make it this one.
Nothing on these pages refreshes by itself. Every number on screen came from a run someone started, which bought live search data, an AI answer, or both, paid from your credits. See Credits and costs.
| Run | What it buys | Where you see the cost |
|---|---|---|
| Rank or Rank all (Keywords) | One live Google lookup per keyword | “Last rank refresh” line in the Keywords toolbar |
| Initialize with AI | One AI analysis, then a first ranking | On the proposal screen, then on the final screen |
| Find the gap | One data call per competitor | Your usage log |
| GEO checks | Live AI data, from one call to a few per check (see AI Search (GEO)) | On each answer card for Ask the AIs and AI search results; your usage log for the rest |
| Conquest strategy (SEO or GEO) | One AI analysis | Under the strategy, with the model name and date |
Search runs don’t quote a price before you click, apart from the model list in Initialize with AI. The cost shows up once the run is done, in the places listed above.
Before a run starts, the app checks your credits and spending caps. If they can’t cover it, the run doesn’t start and the message tells you why. A run that starts under the cap is allowed to finish, even if it crosses the cap on the way. Your usage log keeps the line-by-line record.
Agents that watch Search data spend credits on their own schedule. The AI visibility watcher, for one, buys a data call on each pass.
Runs keep going when you leave
You don’t have to wait on the page. Rank refreshes, competitor refreshes and SEO conquest strategies go into a queue on the server and run one at a time, oldest first. Keyword Gap and GEO runs save their results as soon as they finish. The Activity widget in the header follows the longer ones. See Activity.
One exception: Initialize with AI on the Keywords page runs in your open window, from the analysis through the first ranking. Keep the window open until the last screen.
Search data elsewhere in the app
- Ask Intelligence can read your keywords, rankings, competitor reports and AI visibility results, with the same SEO and GEO access you have here. You can leave Search out of a conversation from the Data included panel.
- Two agents watch this data: the Search rankings watcher checks rank movements about once a day, and the AI visibility watcher compares your GEO results about every two days. See Agents.
- The Articles workspace can start from a keyword cluster. See Articles from search data.
Good to know
- SEO or GEO is missing from my menu. One of the three switches described under One brand at a time is off. Ask an admin.
- A page is empty. Check the brand in the header first. Each brand has its own data.
- The No brand workspace. It has no website, so rank refreshes and Keyword Gap can’t run there. Pick a real brand in the header.