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Whether you’re just getting started or exploring a specific feature, this page answers the most common questions about Pharos. If you don’t find what you need here, use the Help menu inside the app to contact support.

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Getting started

Pharos is an AI visibility and brand monitoring platform. It tracks how your brand is represented across AI assistants — including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — by running your prompts against those platforms and analyzing the responses. You get a visibility score, sentiment analysis, competitor rankings, citation tracking, and content recommendations, all updated on a recurring schedule.
Pharos currently monitors ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and Perplexity. Additional providers may appear in your dashboard depending on your plan and the providers available in your region. On the Prompts page, under Responses, you can filter results by provider to see how each platform responds to your prompts individually.
The first analysis typically takes 15–30 minutes, depending on how many prompts you’ve added and how many AI providers are being queried. You can follow the progress on your Dashboard — a banner shows the current stage (querying providers, calculating scores, generating recommendations). Once complete, the banner disappears and your charts populate automatically.
If the progress banner has been showing for more than 45 minutes without advancing, see Analysis stuck in progress in the troubleshooting guide.
After the initial analysis, Pharos re-analyzes your brand on a recurring schedule — typically once per day. The exact cadence depends on your plan. Your Dashboard shows a “Last analyzed” timestamp in the top-right corner so you always know how fresh the data is. You can also add or edit prompts at any time; new prompts are picked up in the next scheduled run.

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Visibility & scores

The AI Visibility Score is a weighted percentage that reflects how consistently your brand appears in AI responses across the prompts you’re tracking. It accounts for the number of prompts where your brand is mentioned, the providers that mentioned you, your semantic rank (how prominently you appear compared to competitors), and the recency of each analysis. A score of 100% would mean your brand appears in every tracked response, in a positive framing, as the top result.
A score of 0% most often means one of three things:
  • Your first analysis hasn’t finished yet. Wait for the setup progress banner on your Dashboard to clear.
  • You haven’t added any prompts. Pharos can’t track your visibility without prompts to run. Go to Prompts and add at least a few questions your customers might ask AI assistants.
  • Your brand genuinely doesn’t appear in AI responses for the prompts you’ve added yet. This is normal for newer or niche brands. The Recommendations page will suggest content improvements to help change that over time.
A 0% Organic Mention Rate is also common when starting out — it’s not a sign of an error.
A mention is counted when an AI response explicitly names your brand in a relevant context — for example, recommending it, describing it, or listing it alongside competitors. Pharos uses semantic analysis to distinguish genuine mentions from incidental ones (such as your brand name appearing in a different context). You can review the exact response text for any analysis on the Responses tab of the Prompts page.
The Organic Mention Rate is the percentage of non-branded AI responses that mention your brand. “Non-branded” means prompts that don’t include your brand name — for example, “best project management tools” rather than “is Acme the best project management tool.” This metric measures how often AI platforms surface your brand unprompted, which is a stronger signal of organic discoverability than branded queries. You can find this metric at the top of the Prompts page.

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Prompts & data

The number of prompts you can add depends on your plan’s prompt quota. You can see your current usage in Settings → Billing. If you reach your limit, Pharos will stop accepting new prompts and show an upgrade prompt. Existing prompts continue to be analyzed on the regular schedule until you upgrade or remove some prompts.
A prompt shows “Pending” when it hasn’t been analyzed yet. This happens in two situations: the prompt was added recently and hasn’t been included in a scheduled run, or it was added during an analysis that’s still in progress. Prompts are picked up in the next scheduled run automatically — no action is needed. If a prompt stays “Pending” for more than 24 hours after an analysis has completed, try editing and re-saving it to queue it for the next run.
Yes. On the Prompts page, click Add Prompts and select the import option. You can paste a list of prompts or upload a CSV file. Each prompt should be on its own line (or row if using CSV). Imported prompts are added to the queue and analyzed in the next scheduled run. You can also assign topics and personas to imported prompts after the import completes.
The heatmap on the Prompts page shows brand visibility across two dimensions: topics (rows) and AI providers (columns). Each cell displays a score indicating how often your brand appears in AI responses for prompts in that topic, on that platform. Darker cells mean higher visibility. Click any cell to jump to the Responses tab filtered to that specific topic-provider combination. Topics with too few analyzed responses are hidden to avoid misleading scores.

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Account & billing

Yes. Pharos supports multiple brands within a single account. You can switch between brands using the brand selector in the sidebar. Each brand has its own prompts, competitors, visibility scores, and settings. Billing quotas (such as prompt limits) apply per organization, not per brand, so prompts across all your brands count toward the same quota.
Go to Settings → Team and enter the email address of the person you want to invite. They’ll receive an invitation email with a link to join your organization. The link expires after 7 days — if it does, you can resend the invite from the same page. New members can access all brands in your organization based on the role you assign them.
Pharos has four roles:
  • Owner — Full control including billing and the ability to delete the organization. There is one Owner per organization.
  • Admin — Same access as Owner except billing management. Can create and delete brands, manage team members, and edit all data.
  • Member — Can view all data and edit prompts, competitors, and personas, but cannot change brand settings or manage the team.
  • Viewer — Read-only access to dashboards, prompts, responses, and reports. Cannot make changes or access billing.
You can change a member’s role at any time from Settings → Team. See the team management guide for a full breakdown of each role’s permissions.