Avg Position
What Avg Position means
Section titled “What Avg Position means”Avg Position is the average spot your brand occupies in an AI answer when it gets mentioned. Ask an AI platform “what are the best project management tools” and it typically replies with an ordered list of brands. The spot your brand takes in that list is its position for that response. MaxAEO averages the positions across every response that mentions you.
Why position matters
Section titled “Why position matters”AI answers share one trait with a traditional search results page: the top recommendation owns the user’s attention. After asking an AI a question, most people seriously consider only the first one or two names; everything after that reads like filler. The difference is that an AI answer usually lists just a handful of brands and there is no “page two” — if you don’t make the top few spots, being mentioned is worth far less.
Read Avg Position together with Mention Rate. A concrete example:
- Brand A: 50% Mention Rate, Avg Position #1 — mentioned in every other response, and almost always as the first pick;
- Brand B: 50% Mention Rate, Avg Position #5 — mentioned just as often, but always at the tail of the list.
Both brands have identical Mention Rates, yet the value of those mentions is completely different. Mention Rate alone would tell you they’re evenly matched; add Avg Position and you can see which brand the AI actually treats as the default answer. In short: use Mention Rate to measure whether the AI mentions you, and Avg Position to measure how highly it ranks you when it does.
How it’s calculated
Section titled “How it’s calculated”Avg Position only counts responses that mention your brand. Responses that skip you entirely are excluded — they lower your Mention Rate, not your Avg Position.
Avg Position = sum of positions across mentioned responses ÷ number of mentioned responsesA small example: a monitoring run produces 10 AI responses, 4 of which mention your brand at positions #1, #3, #2, and #2:
Avg Position = (1 + 3 + 2 + 2) ÷ 4 = 2.0Note that the Mention Rate for this run is 4/10 = 40%, while the Avg Position of 2.0 is determined solely by the 4 mentioned responses. This explains a common surprise — a low Mention Rate can come with a great-looking Avg Position: if only 1 of 10 responses mentions you and it happens to put you first, your Avg Position is 1.0. Don’t celebrate the position in that case; fix the Mention Rate first.
Where to find it
Section titled “Where to find it”-
Dashboard KPI card: Sign in and open the Dashboard. Among the three KPI cards, “Avg Position” shows your average recommendation position when mentioned within the selected time range, along with the change versus the previous period. Use the controls at the top left to switch project, AI platforms, and time range.
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Mentions page KPIs: Open the Mentions page. The KPI row at the top shows Avg Position (position when mentioned) alongside Mention Rate, Monitor Count, and Total Mentions.
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The “Position” column in the monitor details table: Below the KPIs, the monitor details table lists one row per prompt, and the “Position” column shows where your brand appeared in the AI responses for that prompt. Click a row to open the Prompt Details dialog: it shows that prompt’s Avg Position, the competitor ranking, and the full AI replies from each platform — reading the raw replies is the fastest way to understand why you landed at #5.
Interpreting fluctuations
Section titled “Interpreting fluctuations”AI answers are inherently non-deterministic: ask the same question twice and the recommendation order can change. So it’s normal for Avg Position to drift up or down by a spot or two between monitoring runs — it doesn’t mean your brand standing changed, and it doesn’t mean monitoring is broken.
How to read it:
- Watch the trend, not a single data point: a sustained slide over several monitoring runs (say, from around 2 to consistently above 4) deserves attention; a one-off jump usually doesn’t.
- Cross-check with Mention Rate: if your position worsens while Mention Rate rises, the AI may simply be mentioning you in more responses (new mentions often land lower in the list) — that’s still net progress. Position and Mention Rate falling together is the real warning sign.
- Break it down by platform: each AI platform (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) has its own recommendation habits. A wobble in the global average is sometimes driven by a single platform — use the platform filter at the top left to find the source.