Surround Sound Metric Definitions

1. Coverage

Short description: Coverage shows how much of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) is taken by pages mentioning selected Brand (including pages that belong to this brand’s domain). It ranges from 0 to 100%. Non-weighted metric. 

Let us consider this example:

This is TOP 10 Google search results for keyword “best vegetarian meal boxes”. 

These results are checked if the brand Hello Fresh is mentioned on the pages ranked there (or if the domain of the brand - hellofresh.com - holds some of these positions).

Results 6, 7 and 10 do not mention Hello Fresh (greyed out).

This means that 7 out of 10 pages do mention Hello Fresh brand. In other words, 7 / 10 = 70% of all results. This is Coverage - 70%

And the formula for coverage is:

Where:

• M - Number of pages that mention brand or belong to brand domain
• N - Total number of pages on the search results page 

But this was an example with one keyword.

Now let us consider the example with multiple (two) keywords:

This is TOP 10 Google search results for keywords “best vegetarian meal boxes” and “meal delivery services”.

We already know that Coverage for “best vegetarian meal boxes” - C(1) -  is 70%

Now, for the second keyword - “meal delivery services” - we can see that results 4, 6 and 9 do not mention Hello Fresh (greyed out). 

This means that 7 out of 10 pages do mention Hello Fresh brand. In other words, 7 / 10 = 70% of all results. This is Coverage for “meal delivery services” keyword - C(2) - is 70% as well.

Overall Coverage for multiple keywords is calculated as a simple average. So, in this example total Coverage is (C(1) + C(2)) / 2 = (70% + 70%) / 2 = 70%

And the formula for total coverage is:

Where:

• n - number of keywords
• C(k) - Coverage for k-th keyword

Coverage is a very simple and straightforward metric. 

2. Visibility

Short description: “weighted coverage”

Visibility estimates how visible the Brand is on the SERP. It differs from coverage in a way that coverage treats all the positions equally (for coverage it doesn’t matter if the page with mention is on first or on sixth position), but visibility takes into account the position of the page with mention. In a way, it’s a weighted coverage. And the logic behind this is that pages that are ranked higher usually attract more attention than those ranked lower. The lower the position the less visibility it has. It ranges from 0 to 100%. Page ranked 10th has the same coverage as page ranked 1st. But the first position is more valuable if we talk about traffic. Visibility fixes it.

How visibility weight that the page has depends on the page position.

Well, for Coverage metric each page has a weight of 1.

For Visibility this weight:

Where:

• P is the position of the page, that mentions the brand or belong to brand domain

This is the graphical representation of the weights for positions 1 through 10:

All 10 positions should give us 100% in total. So if we recalculate the chart above into percentages we will have:

And the formula for calculating numbers from the chart above:

Where:

• Pos - page position
• Top - depth of the search results page (yes, visibility percentages will be different if we study Top 10 search results and, for example, Top 20 search results. That is because total visibility should always be equal 100%)

Now, let’s calculate the Visibility for the same example as we used with Coverage:

So, for keyword “best vegetarian meal boxes” next positions mention Hello Fresh brand:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9.
Visibility values for these positions are: 19.92%, 14.08%, 11.5%, 9,96%, 8.91%, 7.04% and 6.64%. Summing up these numbers we get Visibility for first keyword, V(1) = 78.05%

For the second keyword “meal delivery services“ next positions mention Hello Fresh brand:
1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 10.
Visibility values for these positions are: 19.92%, 14.08%, 11.5%, 8.91%, 7.53%, 7.04% and 6.3%. Summing up these numbers we get Visibility for second keyword, V(2) = 75.28%

As you can see, though the Coverage numbers for these two keywords are the same, the Visibility numbers are different.

Overall Visibility for multiple keywords is calculated as a simple average. So, in this this example total Visibility is (V(1) + V(2)) / 2 = (78.05% + 75.28%) / 2 = 76.66%

Please, note, that Visibility is greater than Coverage. That is because the majority of the pages that mention the brand are ranked in the top part of the search page.
And the formula for total visibility is:

Where:

• n - number of keywords
• V(k) - Visibility for k-th keyword

3. Estimated traffic

Short description: Not all keywords are born equal. Some keywords are very popular, while others less so.

The keyword popularity can be roughly estimated using Volume metric (keyword Volume is a rough estimate of how many times this keyword was searched on Google, monthly). The thing is that the Brand may have the same Visibility values for two keywords. But these two keywords may have very different Volume values, leading to very different business results. Estimated Traffic fixes it. Estimated traffic roughly shows how many people may get in touch with the brand. It uses visibility values, and then on top of visibility it takes into account Volume values of keywords. It has no specific range and can range from zero to any positive number.

Let’s get back to our example with two keywords one more time.

Keyword #1 = “best vegetarian meal boxes”
Keyword #2 = “meal delivery services” 

We already know that Visibility for the first keyword - “best vegetarian meal boxes”:
V(1) = 78.05%

And Visibility for the second keyword - “meal delivery services“:
V(2) = 75.28%

The interesting part is that Volume for “best vegetarian meal boxes” is 10 and Volume for “meal delivery services“ keyword is 90,500.

So, Estimated Traffic for Brand from first keyword should be 78.05% of 10
ET(1) = 10 * 0.7805 = 7.8 

And Estimated Traffic for Brand from second keyword should be 75.28% of 90,500
ET(2) = 90,500 * 0.7528 = 68,128.4

As we can see, though the Visibility of the first keyword is slightly higher than the Visibility of the second keyword, its Estimated Traffic is nothing in comparison to the Estimated Traffic of the second keyword.

Even if all the pages on search results for keyword “best vegetarian meal boxes” were mentioning Hello Fresh brand and only one page - on 10th position - was mentioning Hello Fresh brand on search results for keyword “meal delivery services“ it would still bring 500 times more Estimated Traffic.

4. Potential 

Short description: Spotting opportunities (pages to work on) for improvement can be a difficult task if there are hundreds of keywords in a campaign. On one hand, you want to gain new mentions and improve existing mentions on pages that rank for keywords with highest Volume. But on the other hand, you want to look for such pages on keywords, where Visibility is low (to have a larger space for improvement). Potential metric combines these two approaches. It is a keyword metric, that tells what share of this keyword’s Volume can be additionally gained for a brand. The higher it is, the more profitable is the keyword in terms of improvement.

The formula for keyword’s Potential is:

P = (100% - Visibility) * Volume

Where:

• Visibility - current Visibility of the brand on this keyword
• Volume - this keyword’s Volume

Let’s get back to our example with two keywords

We already know Visibility and Volume for the first keyword - “best vegetarian meal boxes”:
Visibility = 78.05%
Volume = 10

So Potential for this keyword is:
P(1) = (100% - 78.05%) * 10 = 2.1

And Visibility and Volume for the second keyword - “meal delivery services“ - are:
Visibility = 75.28%
Volume = 90,500

So Potential for this keyword is:
P(2) = (100% - 75.28%) * 90,500 = 22,371.6

As P(2) is 11,000 times greater than P(1), it is better to start looking for improvement opportunities on pages, that appear in search results for “meal delivery services” keyword first.