The opening slides

Read the front of the report knowing that none of it is about you yet — it explains what the audit measures and why.

Opening slides overview

After the cover come several slides that are the same in everybody’s report. They set up the problem the audit is about: people ask AI assistants which supplier to choose, the assistant answers from sources, and that conversation never appears in your analytics.

They exist because the report is often the first thing a person reads about AI visibility. Without them, the data slides later have no frame.

They contain no measurements of your brand. Skip them if you already know the subject — nothing in them changes based on your audit.

Slide by slide

A new first point of contact. The opening argument: the buying decision now starts in a chat window. Alongside it, three market statistics, each with a numbered footnote naming its source and date at the bottom of the slide. Those footnotes are the point — they’re published research, not our own measurements, and you can check them.

The sample conversation. A mocked-up chat showing a buyer asking an assistant which supplier to pick, and the assistant answering with a shortlist.

This is the slide most often misread. The companies in it are invented, and so is the ranking. It’s showing you the shape of the thing being measured — an answer with a shortlist, and whether you are on it. Your own version of this is much later in the report.

How AI influence works. The three layers — being mentioned, being cited, and receiving traffic — and the point that conventional analytics only ever sees the third. This is why the report measures mentions and citations separately from visits.

This is not a one-off. The argument for measuring repeatedly rather than once: what assistants say changes as what’s published about you changes.

What AI crawlers see. How assistants reach a website at all — which bots exist, what they’re allowed to do, and why being blocked to them is invisible in ordinary analytics. This one leads directly into your own site audit, which starts on the next slide.

Good to know Any slide carrying the label “Sample for illustration only, not your data” is an example. If you only remember one thing about the opening block, make it this: invented companies, invented numbers, real shape.

How to tell an explainer slide from your own data

Three reliable tells, in order of speed:

• Your domain or your brand name is on it. If neither appears, it isn’t about you.
• It carries the illustration label. Explicit, and it’s on the slides most likely to mislead.
• It carries a footnote reference to published research. Your own numbers never do — they come from your audit, and the cover already said what they’re based on.