Skip to main content
This guide walks you through everything you need to go from a blank account to a fully populated AI visibility baseline. By the end of your first session you’ll have your AI Visibility Score, a set of tracked prompts that reflect real buyer questions, at least one competitor benchmarked head-to-head, and a draft citation-ready article ready to publish. Most users complete all six steps in under fifteen minutes.
Your baseline visibility report is generated automatically as soon as SurgeRank finishes crawling your domain — typically within a few minutes of connecting it. You don’t need to wait for it to finish before moving on to later steps.
1

Create your account

Go to surgerank.ai/auth and sign up with your email address and a password. You can also sign in with an existing Google or Microsoft account if you prefer. Every new account starts a 7-day free trial with access to all features — no credit card required. You won’t be charged or prompted for payment information until your trial ends.
2

Connect your domain

After signing in, the onboarding screen asks for your primary domain (for example, yourcompany.com). Enter it and click Analyze. SurgeRank will immediately begin crawling your site to:
  • Map your existing pages and content
  • Identify the topics and categories your site already covers
  • Seed an initial set of prompts that buyers use when researching your category
You’ll see a progress indicator while the crawl runs. You can continue setting up your account while it completes in the background.
3

Review your AI Visibility Score

Once the crawl finishes, your dashboard displays your AI Visibility Score — a single number from 0 to 100 that reflects how consistently your brand is cited across the six AI engines SurgeRank monitors. A higher score means more citations, more engines, and more relevant prompts covered.Alongside the score you’ll see:
  • A trend line showing how your score has moved over recent weeks
  • A per-engine breakdown highlighting which AI assistants cite you most (and least)
  • An opportunity list of prompts where competitors are cited but you are not
This is your baseline. Everything SurgeRank does from here is aimed at moving this number up.
4

Add tracked prompts

Prompts are the specific questions your buyers type into AI assistants — things like “best project management software for agencies” or “how do I choose an email marketing platform.” SurgeRank monitors these on a recurring schedule so you always have fresh citation data.To add a prompt, navigate to Prompts → Add Prompt, type the question, and save. You can also import a list in bulk. SurgeRank will suggest additional prompts based on your domain crawl — review these and add any that match real buyer intent in your category.Start with the five to ten prompts that matter most to your pipeline. You can always add more later.
5

Add competitors

Navigate to Competitors → Add Competitor and enter a competitor’s domain. SurgeRank will begin tracking their citation performance across the same prompts you’re monitoring, giving you a head-to-head share-of-voice view for each question.Add the two or three competitors you most often lose deals to. The prompt-level comparison will quickly show you which specific questions your competitors are winning and by how much — that’s where you focus your content effort first.
6

Generate your first article

Go to Content Engine → New Article and select a prompt where your competitors are cited but you are not. SurgeRank will generate a structured, citation-ready draft — formatted with the headers, entities, and source signals that AI engines look for when selecting citations.Review the draft, add any proprietary insights or proof points your team has, then publish it to your site. SurgeRank will pick up the new page on its next crawl cycle and start tracking whether it earns citations for that prompt.

​
Next steps

Now that your account is live and your baseline is set, go deeper on the concepts and features that will drive your visibility growth.

AI Visibility Score

Understand exactly how your score is calculated, what moves it, and how to interpret per-engine and per-prompt breakdowns.

Visibility Tracking

Learn how SurgeRank monitors citations across all six AI engines and how to configure your tracking schedule and alert thresholds.