Quickstart — your first scan in 5 minutes

This guide takes you from sign-up to a complete visibility report. No credit card required, and your free trial includes 5 prompts so you can see real data without committing.

The five steps

1. Create your account

   Visit cogvert.com/scout/auth/signup and sign up with your work email or use Google Sign-In. Your 15-day free trial starts immediately — no card required.

2. Add your brand

   Scout's onboarding wizard asks for your brand name, website, industry, country, language and a one-line description. Be specific in the description: "AI-first headless CMS for e-commerce" tells Scout much more than "a software company".

   Read the full brand-setup guide →

3. Add 1–3 competitors

   Type the names of brands you compete with in AI answers. Scout will use these to benchmark your visibility and to flag wins and losses on every prompt. You can add more later, or let Scout suggest them based on your topic.

   How competitor tracking works →

4. Choose your topics & prompts

   A topic is a buying-intent area (e.g. "headless CMS for e-commerce"). A prompt is a specific question a buyer might ask AI inside that topic (e.g. "What's the best headless CMS for a Shopify store?"). Scout's AI generates a starter set of prompts automatically — accept the ones that look right and add your own.

   Free plan: 5 prompts. Starter: 75. Growth: 200. Premium: 350.

   Prompt strategy guide →

5. Run your first scan

   Click Run Scan on the dashboard. Scout fires every prompt at ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, analyses each response, and stores everything. The first scan takes 1–3 minutes depending on how many prompts you have — you can leave the page and come back.

   What happens during a scan →

What you get after the first scan

The moment your scan finishes, your dashboard fills up with:

• Visibility ScoreA single 0–100 number showing how present your brand is across all three AI engines.
• Brand Presence BreakdownThe percentage of prompts where you were mentioned, recommended, or absent.
• SentimentThe split between positive, neutral and negative mentions of your brand.
• Per-model breakdownHow each AI engine talks about you separately. Maybe ChatGPT loves you and Gemini doesn't — that's actionable.
• Recent AI responsesThe full text of every answer Scout collected, with your brand and competitors highlighted.
• Cited sourcesEvery URL the AI cited as a source — yours or otherwise.

What to do next

Last updated July 2026 · Suggest an edit