AI answers are no longer only a discovery surface. Buyers use them to narrow requirements, compare tradeoffs, and decide which vendor pages are worth opening.
Measure prompts by decision stage
Discovery prompts and comparison prompts behave differently. Keep separate visibility and citation baselines for each stage.
Trace citations back to pages
A mention is useful, but the cited page reveals which evidence and structure an engine trusted.
Connect visibility to action
Track the pages, assisted visits, and conversions that follow answer-engine exposure instead of stopping at a share-of-voice score.