Where You're Starting From
Not every team has the same starting point — and knowing which reports are actually available to you now avoids promising your stakeholders a number you can't produce yet.
This guide's earlier chapters describe reports that need a connected ai12z project with ingested content, chatbot conversations, and referral history. If your organization just deployed ai12z, or is about to, you won't have all of that on day one. Understanding what's available now vs. what unlocks over time keeps your first baseline honest.
Three Tiers of Data Dependency
The reports in this guide don't split cleanly into "have it or don't" — they split into three, based on what they need to run at all:
Tier 1: Works Against Your Public Website Alone
No usage history required. These are available from day one:
| Report | What It Needs |
|---|---|
| Citation Monitor | A brand name, domain, and a manually-built query list — no prior usage required |
| Agent-Readiness Audit | Public HTTP access to your site — no API keys |
| Site-Wide Sweep | Requires your site to be indexed by your ai12z project, but not chatbot usage |
| AI Footprint | Public web research against your brand name — no usage history required |
| URL Analysis | A single public URL — no usage history required |
Tier 2: Needs a Live Bot, Not History
One report sits in between: Keyword Visibility tests answer quality by asking your own live ai12z chatbot a set of target questions — it needs a bot to query, but not weeks of prior usage. As soon as your bot is deployed, even brand new, this report is available. It's also the standard way to verify a content edit worked over time: run it once to find a gap, update the relevant page in your CMS, then re-run the same Keyword List and check whether the score moved.
Tier 3: Needs Accumulated Usage History
These require real conversations or traffic that's already happened:
| Report | What It Needs |
|---|---|
| Q&A Analysis | Real chatbot conversation history to cluster and score |
| Q&A Insights | The same conversation history, live and per-record |
| AI Referral Analytics | Real AI-referred traffic to attribute |
| GEO Trend Comparison | At least two prior Q&A Analysis runs to diff |
| Conversation-sourced query lists (Generate a Citation List from Q&A) | Q&A Analysis history to pull from |
If You're Just Getting Started
Build your first baseline entirely from Tier 1, plus Tier 2 once your bot is live:
- Build your question list manually — pull from what your team already knows buyers ask, or source it from Google Search Console/Analytics query data or your site's old search logs rather than guessing
- Run Citation Monitor, Agent-Readiness, Site-Wide Sweep, and AI Footprint — all available immediately
- What you can't measure yet: a citation-to-conversation walkthrough, an IDK rate, or a referral-traffic reading — none of these exist without usage history. Don't be discouraged; this baseline is real and valuable on its own, and it's what you compare against once Tier 3 unlocks.
Once You Have Usage History
Everything in Tier 1 and 2, plus the full Tier 3 set:
- Build your question list from real conversation data via Citation Phrase Suggestions or the Generate Citation List from Q&A wizard — reflects what buyers actually ask, not what your team assumes they ask
- Add Q&A Analysis, Q&A Insights, AI Referral Analytics, and (once at least two Q&A Analysis runs exist) GEO Trend Comparison
- The full six-stage loop from The ai12z Advantage is now demonstrable end-to-end, including the referral-to-conversation walkthrough — this is the strongest version of your program
Nothing from your Tier 1 baseline is wasted once you get here — it carries forward as your historical record, and Tier 3 simply adds the next layer of measurement on top of it.
Related Documentation
- Getting Ready — Which reports to prepare before your working session, based on where you're starting from
- What You'll Measure — The four measurement pillars in full
- Keyword Visibility — Including where to source real keywords instead of guessing