Perception

Perception at /perception answers a different question from the rest of Trakkr. Not whether AI mentions you, but how it describes you when it does. Each week Trakkr asks the AIs to describe your brand and to score it against five competitors, then keeps both the numbers and the sentences behind them.

Open it when you need to know what AI is actually saying, when a claim you do not recognize starts showing up in sales calls, or when you are deciding what a content or PR campaign should try to change. Open any claim to read the lines the AIs said about it, so you can see the sentence that produced the read rather than trusting a label. The drawer says when no line was kept.

Perception needs a paid plan.

What a scan does

A scan checks your brand and the five competitors you picked across the AIs Perception asks. Each model sees the whole set at once, which is what makes the numbers comparable.

Two passes come back, and they do different jobs.

The scoring pass asks each model to rate every brand from 0 to 100 on twenty fixed dimensions. Those ratings are averaged across the models into your dimension scores, your five category scores, and the single Perception Score at the top of the page. Because the models are told to score you relative to the others in the batch, your competitor list materially affects your numbers.

The description pass asks the same models to describe your brand in prose, with no numbers involved. A second pass reads those descriptions back and pulls out the specific things they said, each with a short quote taken from the description it came from. That is where the claims table comes from.

Keep the split in mind when you read the page. The scores are the models' own ratings on a fixed scale. The claims are the models' own words. Trakkr used to print a one-word brand tone label worked out from the score thresholds; that was retired in July 2026 because no model ever said it.

Scans happen weekly, and earlier completed scans remain available, so the trend chart goes back as far as the brand does. The page shows the latest weekly scan, and its date sits in the page header. Use Setup in the header to change what future scans compare.

The twenty dimensions

Twenty metrics in five categories of four. Each is a 0 to 100 score with its own rank and trend.

Each topic opens to its four metrics in the Competitors tab. Trust splits into overall trust, reliability, transparency, and safety. Innovation splits into forward thinking, adaptability, likability, and confidence inspiring. The set is fixed for every brand so that scores stay comparable.

The headline Perception Score is the mean of all twenty. It moves slowly. Compare it with its usual range and with the previous weekly read: a move outside the range is worth looking at.

The tabs

Perception has three tabs: What AI says, Competitors, and Storylines.

What AI says

The default tab. It opens with a score band: your Perception score with its trend, your rank among the tracked brands, and a vs competitors figure that shows how many topics your brand leads. Beside it, a Topics rail lists your five categories. Select a figure to open the numbers behind it.

Under the band is the claims table (see Claims below), with Each AI, in one line beside it. That rail shows how each AI sums you up, and which AIs recognized your brand.

Claims

The claims table lists the things AI says about you, one row per claim, with its Topic, Said by (the AIs that said it), an 8 weeks history, and the Change. The date of the latest scan is in the page header.

Use the view pills to read All claims, those Against you, New ones, or those you already track. Narrow by topic or search the claim text. Select a claim to open its drawer: Who says it, week by week, In their words (the actual quotes, when a line was kept), Where it comes from (the pages behind the claim), and a Suggested move you can push to Actions. From the drawer you can also Track a storyline for the claim.

To keep the evidence with the rows, export the claims as a CSV from the header: it carries each claim with its quotes, sources, and suggested fix, so a claim stays defensible away from the app.

Competitors

Pick one rival at a time (the closest one is the default). The tab shows your overall rating against theirs, how many topics you are ahead on, the widest gap, and the words only they get. Every rival, every attribute plots each topic, and each opens to its four traits. Who owns which words shows the words said of you, and the words said of a rival and never of you.

This is not the Competitors page, which counts how often each brand gets mentioned. This measures how well each brand gets described when it is mentioned. A brand can win one and lose the other.

Storylines

A storyline is a subject you want followed over time, such as a launch, a price claim, or a safety issue. Select Track a storyline and give it a name (the way an AI would say it), a brief on what a fair answer would include, and optionally the words to look for and a rival to compare with. Each week the AIs read the brief, and the tab charts their reads.

Storylines that came from a goal word show how far the score is from its goal. A storyline shows whether a fix is live or not yet, with Log a fix to record what you published. Trakkr reports which AIs now repeat the corrective message. Use it to see whether the message appears in the measured model descriptions. It does not prove the campaign caused a change. Select a storyline to read its detail beside the list. Stop tracking pauses the weekly reads and moves them to Resolved.

Setting it up and changing it

The first time you open Perception you get a first-read panel. Choose exactly five rivals to compare, from the ones Trakkr suggests (most named first) or by typing any brand, then one to five words for how you want to be seen. Select Start the first read to save both and start the read.

Both choices are editable later from Setup in the header. Changing the competitor list changes what future scores mean, so change it deliberately rather than to make a number look better.

Acting on it

A category score drops sharply in a week. Go to the claims table, filter to New, and look at what is new. Compare the new claims with the prior scan, and inspect the claim drawer. If one model moved, investigate that model first. The pattern alone does not establish the cause.

The claims read like a different company. You are "scrappy" and "startup-friendly" a year into repositioning for enterprise. That is a content problem, not a scoring problem: the models are averaging what they can find, and what they can find is out of date. Publish the new evidence, then watch for the new words to appear as new claims.

A competitor owns a dimension you need. Open Competitors, pick that rival, and find the gap, then compare claims for both brands. The word they own is usually the one you have to either reclaim or deliberately differentiate from. Follow the subject in Storylines.

Plan access

Perception is included with every paid plan. Storylines need Scale. The Storylines tab shows how many of your allowance are used, since custom entitlements can differ. Stopping a storyline frees its slot; resuming one needs an available slot.

Client portal users get What AI says read-only, plus Competitors when their agency allows it. Setup is hidden from them.

Common questions