In this article 4
Short answer
A screenshot shows that one day someone saw something. It does not say with which exact question, in which session, with which settings or what was below the crop. For an AI data point to hold up in front of a manager, a client or a competitor, you need a complete observation: platform, date and time, the literal question, the full answer, the brands mentioned in order, the sources cited and a status. And you need to be able to repeat it.
What a screenshot cannot answer
- What was the exact question? One word changes the list.
- Was web search on?
- Was it a clean chat or a session with memory and history?
- From which country, and in which language?
- What did the answer say below the crop?
- Which sources did it show?
- Did it happen again the next day?
Without those answers, the screenshot is good for a slide. Not for a decision.
The minimum fields of an observation
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Platform and visible version | Each platform is a different product |
| Web search on or off | It changes the mechanism and the sources |
| Date and time | It lets you repeat and compare |
| Language and country | They change the index and the answer |
| Literal question and its version | Any change to the text makes it another question |
| Full answer | A summary of an answer is not the answer |
| Brands mentioned and their order | Mention, recommendation and position are different things |
| Sources cited (domain and URL) | They are what you can work on |
| Status: valid, error, unavailable | An error is not a zero |
| Who reviewed it | Someone is accountable for the transcript |
How to keep it without any tools
A spreadsheet with those ten columns, one row per observation, and a folder with the full text of each answer. Twelve questions on two platforms make twenty-four rows. The screenshot can go along as an attachment, to check layout and context, but the row is what gets compared.
How to tell whether a report gets it right
Ask to see the row behind any figure. If the report says “34% mention rate”, ask what the numerator and the denominator are and which specific answers count. If it cannot show you, the figure is not data: it is an opinion with decimals.