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Prerequisites

  • A logged-in Ansvisor account (cloud or self-hosted)
  • 5–10 minutes
  • The website URL of the brand you want to track

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Onboarding flow

The onboarding wizard has 5 steps for self-hosted instances and 6 steps for the cloud (the extra step is plan checkout). Each step auto-saves so you can resume later if you drop off.
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1. Brand basics

Three fields:
  • Brand name — exactly how the brand is named in the wild (e.g. Mercedes-Benz, not MBZ). Casing matters — suggestions copy your spelling, mention detection is case-insensitive.
  • Website — your main domain without https:// prefix (e.g. mbusa.com, linear.app). Used for citation classification, AI traffic attribution, and competitor research.
  • Describe your brand (optional but recommended) — 1–3 sentences covering what you do and who your audience is. Fed into AI to generate better topics, prompts, and competitor suggestions.
The industry isn’t asked as a separate field — Ansvisor infers it from your description.
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2. Region & language

Pick the primary market and language for tracking. This drives:
  • Which language AI engines respond in (English prompts return English answers, etc.)
  • Region weighting on search engines that have it (Google AI Overview / Mode geo-localize)
  • DataForSEO query routing for prompt volume estimation
18 regions and 13 languages supported. You can change these later per-prompt if you have multi-region needs.
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3. Topic selection

Ansvisor uses your brand description and an AI model to suggest 6–10 topics — themes your customers care about (e.g. EV Range, Reliability, Pricing).Review the list and check the topics that fit your brand. Uncheck any that don’t apply. You can also type a custom topic name and add it manually.
Aim for 4–7 topics. Too few = narrow tracking surface. Too many = noisy and hard to interpret.
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4. Prompt review

For each selected topic, Ansvisor generates 5 starter prompts (real questions a potential customer would ask an AI engine). Review the full list:
  • Edit prompt text inline if a phrasing feels off
  • Delete prompts that don’t fit
  • Add custom prompts at the bottom
These prompts will run on every AI platform allowed by your plan. Self-hosted unlocks all 8 (ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Claude). Starter plan runs ChatGPT + Perplexity by default; Growth and Enterprise unlock the rest.
Avoid prompts that include your brand name (e.g. “What is Acme?”). They almost always score 100 because the AI obviously talks about you when asked — but they don’t measure organic AEO performance. Keep your tracked prompts brand-agnostic.
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5. Competitors

Ansvisor analyzes your brand and suggests 3–8 competitor names. Review the list:
  • Check the ones that are actual rivals
  • Uncheck ones that aren’t really comparable
  • Add custom competitors at the bottom (use the name as it appears in AI responses, e.g. Salesforce, not salesforce.com)
Competitor tracking is unlocked on Growth and Enterprise plans on the cloud, and always available on self-hosted.
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6. Plan & checkout (cloud only)

On the cloud, the final step picks your subscription plan (Starter, Growth, or Enterprise) and runs Stripe Checkout. All paid plans include a 14-day free trial — you enter card details but no charge happens until day 15. Self-hosted instances skip this step entirely.

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What happens after you finish

The first round of AI engine queries kicks off automatically and finishes in 5–15 minutes (depending on prompt count and plan). The dashboard updates live as platforms report back. While you wait:
  • Insights — first KPI cards appear within 1–2 minutes of the run starting
  • Citations — populates as AI responses come back with source URLs
  • Prompts → Insights tab — Suggestions card refreshes after the run, surfacing new prompts to add

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Adding the tracking pixel (optional, post-onboarding)

The onboarding flow doesn’t include the tracking pixel — it’s an opt-in step you do separately for AI Traffic Analytics (real visits arriving from AI answer engines). To set it up:
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Open the Traffic page

Navigate to /dashboard/traffic after onboarding. The snippet is shown at the top of the page.
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Copy the snippet

Looks something like:<script src="https://api.ansvisor.com/t.js" data-t="YOUR_TRACKING_CODE" defer></script>
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Paste it into your site head

Drop the snippet just before the closing </head> tag. Next.js: add it inside app/layout.tsx. WordPress: use a header injection plugin. Static sites: edit your template.
Visits start logging immediately; the dashboard updates near-realtime.

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Common pitfalls

Probably not. New, niche, or B2B brands often start at 0 across most prompts. AI engines need either (1) significant training data mentioning your brand, or (2) live citations from authoritative sources. The score only stays at 0 when both are missing — which is exactly what AEO is for.
Yes. “What is Linear?” style prompts almost always score 100 (the AI obviously talks about you when asked) but they’re not measuring organic discovery. Remove brand-name prompts; they distort averages.
That’s gold. Those are AI-suggested alternatives users see when you’re not cited. Add the most-mentioned ones to your competitors list to track them properly.
Starter plan runs only ChatGPT and Perplexity. Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and Claude unlock on Growth and Enterprise plans (cloud), or are all available immediately on self-hosted.
Yes. From the Topics page or the Suggestions card in Prompts → Insights, you can add new topics and prompts at any time. Tracking immediately picks them up on the next scheduled run.

Continue: Reading Answer Engine Insights

Now that data is flowing, learn to read the dashboard.