AEO dies in the leadership meeting for one reason: it is presented with screenshots instead of metrics. Here is the scorecard that survives questions.
The five mandatory metrics
- Mention rate: percentage of the question set where your brand appears. That is the headline.
- Average position in the answer: appearing first is not the same as appearing fifth.
- Share of voice: your mentions versus the top three competitors, as a percentage.
- Cited sources: how many distinct domains cite you and which are new this month.
- Coverage by intent: performance in discovery, comparison, price and objections separately. A good overall number can hide zero presence in buying questions.
How to connect it to the business
Do not promise direct attribution: in most cases there is no click. What you can correlate:
- Movement in brand traffic (branded searches and direct visits).
- Volume of forms or demos stating they arrived "on a recommendation" or "via an assistant".
- Mentions in the sources you worked on that month.
Present the link as honest correlation and explain the lag: entity fixes take weeks, new content one to two months.
A monthly report structure that works
- One sentence headline: the mention rate and its change.
- A six-month trend chart.
- Share of voice against competitors.
- What changed and why: actions taken last month.
- Three actions for next month, prioritised by effort and impact.
- An appendix with the questions, answers and sources.
Reporting mistakes that cost credibility
- Changing the question set and presenting the lift as real.
- Showing only the questions where you appear.
- Confusing content volume with results.
- Promising guaranteed positions: nobody controls a model's answer.
The one-line summary
If your report can answer "are we mentioned more than three months ago on the questions we get bought on, and why?", you have a scorecard. If not, you have screenshots.