Snapshots

Overview

A snapshot is a recorded AI response to one of your prompts, captured at a specific point in time. Each snapshot is automatically analyzed for brand mentions, ranking position, sentiment, competitor references, citations, and content suggestions.

Snapshots are the raw data behind every metric in AEO Optima. Your visibility scores, trend charts, and competitor intelligence all derive from the snapshots you capture.

What Is a Snapshot?

When you capture a snapshot, AEO Optima sends your prompt to one or more AI answer engines and records the full response. The platform then runs automated analysis on each response to extract structured data.

Think of a snapshot as a timestamped photograph of how an AI model answers a specific question. By capturing snapshots regularly, you build a historical record that reveals how AI perception of your brand changes over time.

How to Capture a Snapshot

1. Navigate to Snapshots from the sidebar.
2. Click New Snapshot.
3. Select the prompt you want to send from the dropdown list.
4. Toggle the AI models you want to query. You can select one or multiple models per capture.
5. Click Capture.
6. Wait approximately 10 to 30 seconds for the AI models to respond and the analysis to complete.

Once the capture finishes, the snapshot appears in your list with analysis results immediately available.

Note: If no AI model options appear when creating a snapshot, you need to configure your LLM settings first. Go to Settings > LLM Configuration to enable the models you want to use.

What Gets Analyzed

Every snapshot is automatically analyzed for the following data points. No manual tagging or review is required.

Brand Mentioned

A simple yes/no indicator of whether the AI response contains a mention of your brand. This is the foundation of your Mention Rate metric on the Dashboard.

Rank Position

If the AI response contains a numbered or ordered list, AEO Optima identifies where your brand appears in that list. A rank of 1 means your brand was listed first. If your brand is not in the list, no rank is recorded for that snapshot.

Rank tracking is particularly valuable for prompts like "Best [product category]" or "Top [number] tools for [use case]", where position directly influences user perception.

Sentiment

Each response is scored for sentiment — positive, neutral, or negative — based on the language the AI model uses when discussing your brand or topic. This analysis considers the overall tone, specific word choices, and contextual framing.

For more detail on how sentiment is tracked and used, see Sentiment Analysis.

Competitors

The analysis identifies mentions of competitor brands within the AI response. This data feeds into the Competitor Intelligence features, including Share of Voice calculations and competitive benchmarking.

Citations

Many AI models include URLs or references to source material in their responses. AEO Optima extracts these citations and presents them as clickable links in the snapshot detail view. Citations help you understand which web pages AI models are drawing information from — and whether your own content is being cited.

Content Suggestions

Based on the analysis, AEO Optima may generate suggestions for improving your visibility in future responses. These suggestions are contextual and based on what was found (or not found) in the specific snapshot.

Viewing Snapshot Details

Click any snapshot in the list to open the full detail view. The detail view includes:

• Full AI Response — The complete text returned by the AI model, exactly as it was generated.
• Analysis Summary — A structured breakdown of brand mention, rank, sentiment, and competitors detected.
• Citations — All URLs referenced in the response, displayed as clickable links for easy verification.
• Content Suggestions — Actionable recommendations derived from the snapshot analysis.

Understanding Snapshot History

Snapshots accumulate over time and form the basis of your trend data. A few things to keep in mind:

Frequency Matters

The more regularly you capture snapshots, the more granular your trend data becomes. Daily snapshots give you a clear picture of week-over-week changes. Weekly snapshots are sufficient for slower-moving categories.

AI Responses Vary

AI models are non-deterministic — the same prompt can produce different responses at different times. This is expected behavior, not a bug. It's one of the primary reasons regular snapshot capture is valuable. Patterns emerge over dozens of snapshots, not from any single response.

Multi-Model Comparison

When you capture snapshots across multiple AI models for the same prompt, you can compare how different engines represent your brand. One model may consistently mention your brand while another does not. This insight helps you understand where your visibility is strongest and where it needs improvement.

Tip: Set up automated snapshot schedules to ensure consistent data collection without manual effort. Regular captures are the key to reliable trend analysis.

Cost and Usage Tracking

Every snapshot generates a usage record that tracks:

• Prompt tokens — The size of the input query sent to the AI model
• Completion tokens — The size of the AI model's response
• Cost — Calculated automatically based on model-specific pricing from the model registry

These records are visible on the Usage page, where you can see breakdowns by model, provider, and time period. This provides full cost transparency for every capture.

Snapshots and Other Features

Snapshots feed data into several other areas of the platform: