Byline: Written by Thomas Peham · Last updated March 19, 2026
Every time someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini about your category, those AI engines don’t just decide whether to mention your brand – they decide how to talk about it. Are you recommended enthusiastically, mentioned with caveats, or dismissed outright?
Until now, there was no way to measure that at scale. Today we’re changing that.
Brand Sentiment is now available in every OtterlyAI account. It gives you a quantified view of how positively – or negatively – AI search engines describe your brand, and lets you benchmark that sentiment against every competitor you track.
Below is a walkthrough of the key metrics, where to find them in the product, and how to turn sentiment data into action.
What Is Brand Sentiment in AI Search?
Brand sentiment in AI search measures the emotional tone AI Search Engines use when they mention your brand in their responses. Unlike traditional social-listening sentiment (which monitors human conversations on social media), OtterlyAI’s Brand Sentiment feature analyzes the language AI models themselves generate about you across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
This matters because AI-generated answers are increasingly shaping purchase decisions. If an AI engine describes a competitor as “the leading solution” while calling your product “an alternative worth considering,” that language gap translates directly into lost pipeline.
Key Brand Sentiment KPIs
OtterlyAI’s Brand Sentiment feature introduces three core metrics to your dashboard:
1. Net Sentiment Score (NSS)
The Net Sentiment Score (NSS) measures the overall emotional tone of AI-generated mentions of your brand by calculating the balance between positive and negative references. It ranges from −100 (entirely negative) to +100 (entirely positive).
The formula:
(Positive Mentions − Negative Mentions) / Total Mentions × 100 = NSS
An NSS of +40, for example, means your positive AI mentions outweigh the negative ones by a healthy margin. An NSS near zero signals a mostly neutral – or evenly split – perception.
2. Sentiment Breakdown
In addition to the overall NSS, you’ll see a percentage breakdown of negative, neutral, and positive sentiments in your Brand Ranking view. This gives you a quick visual read on the distribution – not just the net number – so you can spot when neutral mentions dominate even if your NSS looks decent.
3. Sentiment Count
The absolute count of negative, neutral, and positive mentions lets you understand the volume behind the percentages. A brand with an NSS of +60 based on 10 mentions tells a very different story than an NSS of +60 based on 500 mentions.
Together, these three metrics let you benchmark not just how often AI engines mention your brand, but how favorably – and compare that directly against competitors.
How to Use Brand Sentiment in OtterlyAI
Competitive Benchmarking at a Glance
The Brand Ranking view now includes sentiment columns alongside visibility and mention counts. At a glance, you can see which brands in your competitive set have the most positive AI perception – and which ones are struggling with negative sentiment.
This is where it gets strategic: a competitor might outrank you in raw mention volume but carry a lower sentiment score, which means there’s an opportunity to win on quality of perception even if you trail on quantity.
Prompt-Level Sentiment Analysis
Brand Sentiment analysis is available across multiple OtterlyAI reports. You can filter, sort, and drill into individual search prompts to compare your sentiment against competitors at the query level.
This is one of the most powerful views in the feature. Sorting by best or worst brand sentiment instantly reveals which topics and prompts generate positive coverage for your brand – and which ones surface neutral or negative mentions. That insight tells you exactly where to focus your content and PR efforts.
Per-Response and Per-Answer Drill-Down
It doesn’t stop at the prompt level. Open any specific search prompt, and you can analyze brand sentiment for each individual AI response – and even drill down into each answer within that response to see the exact sentiment attributes.
This granularity lets you understand not just that a prompt generates negative sentiment, but why – which specific claims or comparisons in the AI’s answer are driving that perception.
Three Ways to Act on Brand Sentiment Data
Tracking sentiment is only valuable if it changes what you do. Here are three ways to put this data to work:
- Identify content gaps. If certain prompts consistently generate negative or neutral mentions, examine what information the AI is drawing on. A missing product page, an outdated comparison, or a lack of third-party coverage on a topic can all drive poor sentiment. Create or update content to fill those gaps.
- Prioritize Digital PR efforts. OtterlyAI’s own research shows that 95% of AI citations come from third-party sources. If your sentiment is weak on a high-value prompt, earning a favorable mention in an industry publication or community forum may shift the AI’s tone faster than on-site content changes alone.
- Track sentiment over time. A single snapshot tells you where you stand; a trendline tells you whether your efforts are working. Monitor NSS after publishing new content, earning press coverage, or launching campaigns to measure what actually moves the needle.
Bonus: Stress-Test Your Brand With Positive and Negative Prompts
Here’s a power move most teams overlook: don’t just track how AI engines respond to neutral, informational queries – deliberately ask for the best and worst in your category.
When you add prompts like “What are the best project management tools?” alongside “Which project management tools should I avoid?”, you force AI engines to reveal the specific positive and negative attributes they associate with each brand. This creates an extreme-sentiment lens that surfaces things a balanced query would never show – the exact language AI uses when it’s praising you and the exact language it uses when it’s warning people away.
Add these prompt patterns to your OtterlyAI tracking set and monitor the Brand Sentiment for each:
- “What are the best [product category] products? Why?” – surfaces the positive attributes AI associates with top brands
- “What are the worst [product category] products? Why?” – reveals which brands carry negative associations, and what drives them
- “Rank the top 10 [product category] tools from best to worst.” – forces a direct head-to-head ordering with reasoning
- “Why do people switch away from [competitor name]?” – uncovers the specific weaknesses AI attributes to a competitor
- “Which [product category] tools are overpriced for what they deliver?” – tests price-value perception
- “Which [product category] companies have the worst customer support?” – isolates service-related sentiment
- “I’m a [persona] – what products should I avoid using?” – reveals audience-specific negative associations
Once these prompts are tracked in OtterlyAI, you’ll see sentiment data at its most polarized – and that’s exactly where the most actionable insights live. If your brand shows up in “worst” or “avoid” responses, you now know precisely which narrative to fix. If a competitor appears there but you don’t, that’s a positioning advantage worth amplifying in your content and messaging.
Try Brand Sentiment now
Brand Sentiment is available now in your OtterlyAI account. Log in and head to your Brand Ranking to see how AI search engines really feel about your brand — and your competitors.
Start tracking your Brand Sentiment →
Frequently Asked Questions
What AI search engines does OtterlyAI’s Brand Sentiment cover? OtterlyAI tracks brand sentiment across all major AI search engines including ChatGPT, AI Mode, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and more. Sentiment is analyzed wherever your brand is mentioned in AI-generated responses.
How is Brand Sentiment different from traditional social listening? Traditional social listening monitors what people say about your brand on social media and forums. OtterlyAI’s Brand Sentiment measures what AI engines themselves say about your brand when answering user queries – a fundamentally different signal that reflects how AI models perceive and present your brand.
How often is sentiment data updated? Sentiment data is refreshed alongside your regular daily OtterlyAI tracking schedule, so you always have current insights into how AI engines are talking about your brand.
Can I compare my brand sentiment against competitors? Yes. Brand Sentiment is integrated into the Brand Ranking view, so you can benchmark your NSS, sentiment breakdown, and mention counts directly against every competitor in your tracking set.
What is a good Net Sentiment Score? NSS ranges from −100 to +100. A positive score means AI engines mention your brand more favorably than unfavorably. What counts as “good” depends on your category — the most useful benchmark is your score relative to competitors in your OtterlyAI dashboard.
