Straight answers about how SearchChamp works.
Hand-written answers to the questions people actually ask about our product — including the ones where a competitor wins. Every answer names what it is based on.
Why we do / don’t
Why doesn’t SearchChamp track DeepSeek?
SearchChamp does not track DeepSeek because we have no faithful way to measure it. There is no grounded citation API, no consumer-plane scraper we trust, and its main audience sits outside our detection baseline. Adding DeepSeek today would mean publishing a number we cannot stand behind, so we deferred it instead.
- AI engine registry — the measured engine set
- Deferral decision, with revisit triggers
Why we do / don’t
Why is the Copilot engine labelled a Bing index measurement?
We label Copilot a Bing index measurement because that is what it is. Copilot draws its web grounding from the Bing index, so we measure that index directly and say so on the label. The honest alternative was to proxy Bing silently and present it as a Copilot reading, which would hide real sampling error from you.
- Engine registry — per-engine provenance labels
- Provenance labelling policy
Why we do / don’t
Why is outreach draft-only with human approval?
Outreach is draft-only because sending email under your domain is not a decision software should make alone. Every outreach message is prepared for human approval before it leaves the system. An automated sender that misreads context does not just waste a send, it spends your sender reputation and your relationship with that site.
- Brand-safety policy — human approval before send
Why we do / don’t
Why do you never send site content to China-hosted APIs?
We never send customer site content or analytics to China-hosted APIs because agency customers cannot audit that boundary on our behalf. Our processing stays with providers we can name in a sub-processor list and place under a data agreement. This rules some models out entirely, which is a cost we accept rather than disclose late.
- Sub-processor disclosure and data-boundary policy
Why we do / don’t
Why are ChatGPT and Gemini measured on the consumer plane?
ChatGPT and Gemini are measured on the consumer plane because that is where buyers read the answer. A developer API returns a different response than the same question asked in the product interface, so an API-only reading would describe a surface your customers never see. The divergence is the point, not a footnote.
- Engine registry — per-engine collection plane and provenance label
- Provenance labelling policy
Why we do / don’t
Why does SearchChamp never auto-publish content without a quality gate?
SearchChamp does not auto-publish content without a quality gate because a model that invents a statistic would publish that invention under your byline. Every draft passes an anti-fabrication check that flags unsupported numbers, invented quotes, and claims with no source in the brief. A human approves the final publish.
- Content quality gate and anti-fabrication validation policy
Why we do / don’t
Why do you not report a synthesized content class?
We do not report a synthesized content class because we cannot prove it. Telling you a passage was synthesized rather than quoted requires knowing how an engine composed its answer, and no engine exposes that. An unprovable label would read as measurement while resting on a guess, so it stays unreported.
- Reported measurement classes and what each one asserts
Why we do / don’t
Why is a failed measurement reported as unknown instead of zero?
A failed measurement is reported as unknown instead of zero because zero is a finding and unknown is the absence of one. Reporting a collection failure as zero would turn our pipeline problem into an apparent visibility drop, and you would spend the week auditing your pages instead of asking us.
- Unknown-state reporting policy — a failed run is never a zero
How we compareConcedes a point to a competitor
How does SearchChamp compare to AthenaHQ?
SearchChamp and AthenaHQ both track AI visibility, but SearchChamp bundles it with a full SEO stack at self-serve pricing starting at $79 monthly. AthenaHQ is priced for larger contracts. AthenaHQ genuinely wins on seats: it offers unlimited seats, while our top self-serve plan includes 8. Compare both before deciding.
- Plan pricing and seat allowances
- Measured engine set
How we compareConcedes a point to a competitor
How does SearchChamp compare to Brandlight?
Brandlight sells an enterprise engagement with services attached; SearchChamp is self-serve software you can start without a sales call. That is the honest split. Brandlight holds a SOC 2 attestation that we do not yet hold, so a procurement team with a hard audit requirement should weigh that against our pricing and speed.
- Published security posture and certification status
How we compareConcedes a point to a competitor
How does SearchChamp compare to monitoring-only AI visibility tools?
Monitoring-only AI visibility tools do one job; SearchChamp bundles that tracking with rank tracking, auditing, keyword research and content tooling. Focus is a real advantage: a single-purpose tool ships changes faster in its own surface and asks nothing of you elsewhere. If you already own an SEO stack, compare on that basis.
- Per-plan refresh cadence and the daily-refresh add-on
How we compare
How does SearchChamp compare to traditional SEO suites?
Traditional SEO suites have built backlink and keyword indexes for far longer than SearchChamp has, and that historical depth is a genuine advantage we concede plainly. What SearchChamp adds is AI answer measurement sitting in the same workspace as the crawl, the rank data and the content tools, rather than bought as a second subscription.
- Plan pricing and included surfaces
- Measured engine set
How we measure
What counts as a citation in AI visibility tracking?
A citation counts when an engine's answer links or attributes a claim to your domain in a response we actually collected. A brand mention without attribution is recorded separately, because it is a weaker signal. We never infer a citation from a ranking position, and an unresolved collection is reported as unknown rather than zero.
- Citation and mention definitions
How we measure
Why is the default refresh cadence weekly rather than daily?
The default refresh cadence is weekly because every prompt run costs real money at an engine, and daily sampling rarely changes the decision you make. A weekly cadence across a 100 prompt allowance already resolves the trend. Daily exists as an add-on for teams who need it, priced honestly rather than bundled invisibly.
- Per-plan prompt allowance and refresh cadence
How we measure
How does AI crawler verification work?
Crawler verification resolves each visit into one of three states: verified, spoofed, or unverifiable. We check the request against the crawler operator's published address ranges and reverse DNS. A user agent string alone never earns verified status, because that string is trivially copied by anyone who wants to look like a real engine.
- Crawler verification method and states
How we measure
How do you decide which AI engines to cover?
We cover 8 engines, and an engine joins that set only when we can measure it faithfully and describe how. That means a collection path we trust, a provenance label we can publish, and a confidence signal for your market. Engines we cannot yet measure this way stay off the list with the reason stated publicly.
- AI engine registry — the measured engine set
How we measure
What does the Prominence Score express?
The Prominence Score expresses where your brand sits inside an answer, not merely whether it appears. A mention in the opening sentence with an attributed link scores higher than one buried in a closing list. It is a positional and emphasis measure over collected answers, and it is directional, never a promise.
- Prominence Score definition — position and emphasis inputs
How we measure
How do prompt allowances work and what consumes one?
A prompt allowance is the number of tracked questions your plan refreshes on its cadence. Adding a question consumes a slot; the engines that answer it do not each consume their own, and a scheduled refresh does not spend a new one. Business includes up to 100 tracked prompts, refreshed weekly.
- Per-plan prompt allowance and refresh cadence
How we measure
How does the free plan differ from a one-time credit grant?
The free plan is a standing workspace, not a one-time credit grant. A grant hands you a fixed pot of runs that empties and then ends. The free plan keeps your site, your tracked keywords and your history between visits, asks for no credit card and imposes no trial clock. Paid tiers lift those limits.
- Free plan scope and trial policy
How we measure
What do you do with a verified, spoofed or unverifiable crawler visit?
A verified crawler visit counts toward your AI crawl coverage and can inform a robots or content decision. A spoofed visit is reported as a security signal and never counted as coverage. An unverifiable visit is shown separately and counted toward neither, because acting on it would mean acting on a guess.
- Crawler verification states and their reporting rules
How we measure
How often does the engine set change and what happens to your history?
The engine set changes rarely, and only when an engine can be measured faithfully or can no longer be. It currently holds 8 engines. When it changes, your history is not rewritten: past runs keep the engines they were actually collected on, and a new engine starts its own series.
- AI engine registry — the measured engine set and its change log