6. What do Google and Bing’s first-party AI reports replace—and what still needs paid monitoring?

Use platform reports to answer platform-specific questions, then identify the remaining measurement gap.

Put to: Krishna Madhavan and Aleyda Solís.

Why it matters to buyers: Google’s dedicated report measures impressions of links to the site in supported generative features. Bing’s Citation Share describes a site’s relative citation presence for a grounding query; its newer Topics Portfolio adds approximate topic and opportunity information. Neither definition is a count of recommendations across every assistant. (support.google.com)

Ask: “Which purchasing decisions can we now support with first-party reporting, and what specific evidence would a monitoring subscription add?”

A good answer should cover:

• A crosswalk between impressions, citations, grounding queries, monitored prompts and recommendations.
• Whether coverage, thresholds or aggregation explain apparent disagreements.
• The distinction between a retrieval query and the customer’s original conversation.
• Incremental requirements such as competitor answers, brand framing, factual accuracy or additional engines.
• A method for reconciling reports without forcing unlike metrics into one score.

Press for: a demonstration using the buyer’s own property. Ask what the supplier would remove from its paid scope now that first-party evidence is available.

Expert quote — pending: ____________________