2 · Documentation

The application

Getting started, test and plans, seats, Search Console, questions from Google, the assistant and consultation — what augenmerk does beyond measuring.

The other pages of this documentation explain how augenmerk measures. This page explains how to use it: from the account to a conversation with us.

Getting started and the test#

A new project takes three steps: brand (name, domain, language, market), competitors (we read the website and suggest industry, range and competitors; you remove and add) and questions (the question set according to the blueprint, to prune and rephrase). The first run starts right after.

Anyone who wants to get to know augenmerk first starts with the free test: one project, ten questions, four channels, one run. A complete example project is available for viewing alongside it, the German frozen-pizza market, with many competitors and all views — to show what emerges after several runs.

Plans and units#

We bill questions, not brands: every question measures all brands of a market. Compute units are the unit of account — every measurement books units before it runs, every booking is in the usage ledger, and whatever an aborted run did not measure is refunded. The allowance covers the full scope of the plan; before every run augenmerk shows the expected usage.

Payment runs by card or SEPA direct debit through Stripe; the invoice comes from us by e-mail and is stored in the account, where you also manage billing address, VAT ID, payment method and cancellation. Annual plans are billed in advance, monthly plans can be cancelled monthly.

Seats and roles#

An account can have several people. Three roles: owner (everything, including plan and seats), admin (change projects, questions, competitors, runs), member (read everything, change nothing). Invitations are sent from the account by email address; the link is valid for 14 days and only for that address. The invitee registers with the same address and joins the account — no separate empty account is created.

Connecting Search Console#

The website view estimates Google keywords and visits from third-party search data. With your Google Search Console it works with Google's own numbers: impressions, clicks and position, per page and per query.

The connection needs no Google login. You give our read-only address "Restricted" permission on your property and tell us the property; the application walks you through it step by step. We only read, never write. The connection can be removed at any time, and we then delete what we read.

What it gives you: the figures and curves show Google's own count instead of an estimate. The gap view puts your strongest Google pages next to the AI citations — pages with demand and without a citation are the most concrete to-do list there is. And the queries become the source of new questions (below).

Google does not yet make its own report on impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode available to tools like augenmerk (as of September 2026). As soon as it does, those numbers appear next to our citation rate.

Questions from Google queries#

A question set from onboarding asks about the market: best providers, recommendations, attributes. Google's queries show what people actually search for — often a need: price, place, time, how-to. augenmerk bundles the most-seen queries of your property by need — synonyms form one group; "near me", a city or a product type each form their own — and phrases one question per group the way a person asks an AI. Queries with brand names, rare queries and duplicates of your existing question set stay out.

Each suggestion appears under "Questions" with its origin: which queries, how many impressions. You activate what you want to measure; activated questions count against the plan's question limit and run from the next run on. What then shows: whether the AI serves the same demand Google sends to your site.

The AI assistant#

Every project view has an assistant that answers questions about your data: "Why did presence drop?", "Which source does the AI cite for competitor X?", "What does noise band mean?". It knows the project's views and this documentation and answers only what can be backed by them — every answer points to the view it comes from. What cannot be derived from the measurements, it says so. It triggers no measurements and makes no promises.

Each request counts 30 units; Starter allows 50, Pro 150 requests per month. The assistant is not available in the free test.

AI ads#

Ads in ChatGPT (OpenAI Ads) appear below the answer when the conversation matches the offer — delivered by context, not keywords. The "AI ads" view shows where an ad closes a gap: questions where ChatGPT names the brand in fewer than half of the runs, weighted by Google demand from Search Console, plus the brands named instead.

The second source is the measured objections: presence in exactly the conversations where AI speaks critically about the brand — with a factual answer instead of a promise, and only with a page that backs it up; if none exists, the plan flags it instead of pointing to the homepage.

One click turns this into a campaign plan: ad groups by need, context hints from the questions, two ads per group from the measured strengths (title up to 50, body up to 100 characters — the limits of the Advertiser API), landing pages from your site and a bid recommendation. Connect your OpenAI ad account (Advertiser API key from Ads Manager, stored encrypted and never shown) and augenmerk creates the campaign there paused — ad groups, context hints, ads, optionally with an image — and afterwards shows impressions, clicks and spend per group next to the organic hit rate of the question. Activation happens in Ads Manager; budget and billing stay with OpenAI and with you. Without a connection the plan is available as CSV and as JSON for the Advertiser API.

What an ad does not change: organic visibility. The answer stays as it is; the ad bridges the time until content and sources take effect.

Consultation#

Thirty minutes via Google Meet, bookable in the app under "Consultation & support" and at augenmerk.de/beratung: your results in the application, questions about the method, next steps. Booking runs through Cal.com; confirmation and reminder come from there. Questions by email to service@augenmerk.de are read and answered.

Operations#

augenmerk is developed and operated in Hamburg; the data lives in Frankfurt. The AI systems are queried through their providers' interfaces; the questions go there, not your data. See How we measure.

Updated: 2026-10-10