Research & Credit Scoring
Three decisions eat most of a growth budget: what to write, who to partner with, and where to earn a mention. Most teams make all three on proxy numbers — search volume, follower count, Domain Authority. Research replaces those proxies with measured evidence, and hands you three ranked lists instead of three hunches.
The Challenge Brands Face
The proxies used to be good enough because there was only one system to please. Search volume approximated demand, follower count approximated influence, and Domain Authority approximated trust. Then buyers started asking ChatGPT full sentences, comment sections became the place purchase intent actually shows, and AI engines began citing a set of domains that no link index ranks in that order. Every proxy drifted from the thing it was standing in for.
What makes this expensive is that the three decisions compound. A topic chosen from stale keyword data becomes a brief, becomes a published article, becomes a link-building campaign aimed at domains AI answers never quote, promoted by a creator whose audience does not buy. Nothing in that chain is obviously broken, which is why teams repeat it for quarters at a time before asking why the visibility never arrived.
The evidence is finally collectable. AI answers expose their sources, comment sections are public, and the questions people ask assistants can be observed rather than guessed. Our own July 2026 study of 1,000 Indonesian queries found 7,880 citations concentrated on 1,578 domains — a map that did not exist two years ago and that shifts as models update. Teams that measure now build their target lists from this quarter's reality; the rest keep buying last decade's proxies.
The Research & Credit Scoring services
This pillar is made up of the services below. Open each one for the full detail.
Keyword, Topic & Query Research
Find the exact words buyers type into Google and the questions they ask ChatGPT
Creator Credit Scoring
Score creators on the health of their community, not the size of their following
Domain Credit Scoring
Rank backlink and citation targets by how often AI engines actually quote them
Our Approach
Map the demand with Keyword, Topic & Query Research
We collect the short keywords people type into Google and the full questions they put to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude, then cluster them into topics and tag each one with intent, funnel stage, and a why-now signal. Every query is also checked against the answer that already exists, so the ones answered badly or not at all rise to the top of the queue.
Score the people with Creator Credit Scoring
Creator Credit Scoring reads a creator's posts and their comment section together, then scores four things: growth velocity, community density, comment intent, and fit with your category. A creator with 15,000 followers and three months of accelerating engagement scores above one with 200,000 followers and a flat chart, which is exactly the judgement a follower count cannot make.
Score the sources with Domain Credit Scoring
Domain Credit Scoring measures how often each domain is cited in AI answers for your category, profiles what it is trusted for, and ranks candidates at 70% semantic similarity, 20% citation rate, and 10% citation position. Domains above the 95th percentile of citation rate are filtered out first, because a platform cited in half of all answers is still never going to link to you.
What You Receive
How We Prove Progress
During the optimization period — before conversions fully materialize — these are the metrics we use as proof that the strategy is moving in the right direction.
Who This Is Designed For
This service works best for:
- Teams about to commit a content, KOL, or PR budget and wanting evidence first
- Brands whose keyword list has not been revisited since AI assistants changed how people ask
- Marketers who keep paying for creators on reach and cannot explain the result afterwards
- Anyone doing link building on Domain Authority alone while AI answers cite a different set of sites
What to Expect
Every list your team works from — topics, creators, domains — is ranked by measured evidence instead of a proxy metric.
A full research round takes one to two weeks: query mapping first, then creator and domain scoring, which need enough collected data to be stable. You receive the three ranked lists, not raw exports.
Questions About Research & Credit Scoring
What is the difference between the Audit pillar and the Research pillar?
Audit measures you; Research measures the market around you. The Audit pillar scores your own pages and how AI engines currently describe your brand, producing a fix backlog. The Research pillar looks outward — what buyers ask, which creators hold engaged communities, and which domains AI engines cite in your category — producing ranked target lists. Audit tells you what to repair, Research tells you where to aim next.
What is credit scoring in marketing research?
Credit scoring here means ranking a creator or a domain on observed behaviour rather than on reputation, the way a lender scores a borrower on repayment history rather than on appearances. Creator Credit Scoring uses growth velocity, community density, and comment intent. Domain Credit Scoring uses citation rate in AI answers, semantic fit to your queries, and citation position. Both produce a comparable number with its components visible, so you can see why one candidate outranks another.
Do I need an audit before starting research?
No, but the two work better together. Research can run standalone if you already know your site is in reasonable shape and you mainly need target lists. If AI engines are describing you wrong or your pages are unreadable to crawlers, run the Audit pillar first — otherwise you will send well-researched traffic and citations at a page that cannot convert them. Most brands run Audit and Research in the same first month.
How often should this research be refreshed?
Query research refreshes on your publishing cycle, creator scores monthly, and the domain citation map roughly every quarter. The citation map moves when models update — a domain that dominated answers last quarter can lose ground without changing anything on its own site. Creator scores move faster than that, because growth velocity is the whole point of measuring them.
What does the Research pillar hand over to Optimization and Automation?
One prioritized brief containing three ranked lists: the topics and questions to write against, the creators worth partnering with, and the domains worth pitching. Optimization turns the query list into SEO and GEO content, Automation publishes against it on a schedule, and the creator and domain lists drive partnership and outreach work in parallel.
Interested? Let's Talk.
We start with a short conversation — no template pitch, no generic proposal. We want to understand your brand first.
Or WhatsApp us: +62 819-7712-1092
Website & AI Visibility Audit
See exactly where your brand stands before you spend on fixing it
Optimization
Rank on Google, get quoted by AI, and stay visible as answers change.
Content & Social Automation
Scheduled, AI-driven engines that keep publishing the content your strategy calls for, grounded in your own brand knowledge.