In Genezio, a perception is one claim that Genezio extracts from an answer of an answer engine about a brand, a product, or a category. Perceptions show what answer engines say about your brand, if it is correct, and which sources caused it. The response of an answer engine usually has many claims. Genezio divides each response into smaller units, the perceptions. Thus, Genezio can evaluate each claim separately. Together, these claims show how answer engines perceive your brand and how they describe it to buyers.
The old name of perceptions is Statements. The concept did not change. The new name shows better that these claims are how answer engines perceive your brand.
Perceptions help to answer these questions:
  • What exactly did the answer engine say about a brand?
  • Is the claim correct or incorrect?
  • Which source supports the claim?
  • Which competitors does the same context mention?

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Why perceptions are important

The responses of answer engines are frequently long paragraphs with many ideas. If you do not divide them, it is difficult to find which claims are correct. For example, an AI assistant can give this answer:
Popular CRM tools for startups include HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zoho CRM. HubSpot is known for its strong marketing automation features, while Pipedrive focuses on simple sales pipeline management.
This response has many different claims. Genezio extracts them as separate perceptions, such as:
  • HubSpot is a CRM tool used by startups
  • Pipedrive is a CRM tool used by startups
  • Zoho CRM is a CRM tool used by startups
  • HubSpot is known for marketing automation
  • Pipedrive focuses on pipeline management
Each of these is one perception. Genezio can compare each perception with what your brand really does, and find if it is correct.

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Perception accuracy

The most important property of a perception is if it is correct or incorrect. Answer engines make claims about brands all the time. These claims control how buyers perceive you. Some claims are correct. Other claims are old, misleading, or wrong. Examples:
  • “Zara is a fast fashion brand”: Correct
  • “Gucci is a fast fashion brand”: Incorrect
  • “HubSpot offers a free CRM tier”: Correct
  • “Pipedrive includes built-in marketing automation”: Incorrect
An incorrect claim about your brand can mislead buyers, and you can lose recommendations. A correct claim makes your positioning stronger.

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How Genezio finds the accuracy

To find if a perception is correct, Genezio compares it with your Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base is a source of truth for your brand. You configure it one time in Brand Settings. The Knowledge Base usually has:
  • Product descriptions and capabilities
  • Prices and plans
  • The target audience and the use cases
  • The competitive differentiators
  • All other official brand guidelines
Genezio compares the claims of answer engines with your Knowledge Base. Thus, it can flag the perceptions that show your brand incorrectly. You get a clear view of where answer engines are correct and where they are wrong.

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Grounded perceptions

When you have a Knowledge Base, each perception from a conversation gets a grounded badge. The badge shows if Genezio could verify the perception, and how. The badge has three states:
  • Grounded-correct: The perception agrees with your Knowledge Base.
  • Grounded-incorrect: The perception does not agree with your Knowledge Base.
  • Not grounded: Genezio could not verify the perception with your Knowledge Base.
A tooltip on the badge tells what each state means in its context. The badge changes a list of perceptions into a triage queue:
  1. Examine the grounded-incorrect perceptions first. In these perceptions, answer engines show your brand incorrectly.
  2. Then, examine the not-grounded perceptions. They show gaps in your Knowledge Base or in the public documentation of your messages.
The grounded-correct perceptions are your wins. They are the proof that the narrative of answer engines about you agrees with the truth. Each brand gets a Knowledge Base from day one. Genezio crawls the website of the brand automatically when you create the brand. Thus, the grounded layer is active immediately. The number of perceptions that Genezio can verify depends on how much truth your Knowledge Base has. To find what to add, refer to Knowledge Base. Perceptions observe what answer engines say without a direct question. To test specific claims with direct questions, use the Fact Checker agent.

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Perceptions and their sources

You can trace each perception back to the sources that made it. This is one of the most useful functions of a perception: you can see why the answer engine said it. When you open a perception, Genezio shows the citation paragraphs that support the claim. These are the exact passages from the cited web pages, with the matching text highlighted. For example, the answer engine says that your product is hard to set up. You can go from this claim directly to the third-party page that gave the answer engine this idea. Thus, you know exactly where to put your effort for a correction or for outreach. The link operates in the two directions:
  • From a perception: See the sources (citation paragraphs) that support it, with the matched text highlighted.
  • From a citation: See all the perceptions that come from that source.
  • By citation domain: See the perceptions of a specific domain. Thus, you can find which websites control your narrative.
Genezio also makes a distinction between sources that the answer engine explicitly cites and brands or pages that it only mentions. Thus, you can separate the references that the model really used from the mentions that are not important. To learn how Genezio records and classifies sources, refer to Citations.

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Other attributes of a perception

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Text

The text is the claim in the response of the answer engine. Example:

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Brand references

The brand references are the brands that the perception mentions. One perception can mention one brand or more than one brand. Example:

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Supporting citations

Each perception has a link to one or more citations (sources). The answer engine used these citations when it made the claim. Thus, you can trace a perception back to the web page that had an effect on it. You can also understand why the answer engine made a specific claim.

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Perceptions across conversations

Genezio extracts perceptions from each conversation that it runs with answer engines. Genezio writes the perceptions in the language of your brand. Thus, the reports are easy to read for local markets. Genezio aggregates the perceptions of many conversations. Thus, it can find patterns such as:
  • Claims about a brand that occur again and again, correct or incorrect
  • Frequent errors that you must correct
  • Competitors that the answers mention frequently
  • Differences in how answer engines describe the same brand
This helps organizations to understand the narrative that answer engines connect to their brand. It also shows if that narrative is correct.

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Perceptions in the interface

In Genezio, you can examine perceptions in the conversation detail view and in the aggregated analysis views. You can sort a list of perceptions to show the most relevant claims first. Users can examine:
  • The initial response of the answer engine
  • The extracted perceptions
  • The accuracy of each claim
  • The related citations, with the supporting paragraphs highlighted
  • The brands that each claim mentions
With these views, teams can see exactly what answer engines say about their brand, and if it is true.

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Perceptions and insights

Perceptions are the base for many higher-level insights in Genezio. They have an effect on:
  • AI Recommendations: Incorrect claims can decrease your recommendation rate.
  • AI Visibility: Incorrect descriptions change how frequently answer engines show your brand.
  • Share of Voice: The accuracy of claims has an effect on the competitive position.
  • Competitive positioning: You can see which claims are better for you and which are better for competitors.
  • AI Perception Summary: The full narrative, made by AI, of how answer engines perceive your brand.
Genezio puts the responses of answer engines into the structure of perceptions, and it evaluates their accuracy. Thus, Genezio changes unstructured answers into data that you can measure, verify, and use.

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Next steps

To learn how Genezio changes perceptions and citations into measurable metrics of AI visibility, refer to:

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Perceptions in the public API

The public API reads perceptions. Refer to Perceptions.