Skip to main content

Setting up Successful Context

Complete guide to configuring the Context tab for accurate brand analysis, including brand setup, personas, competitors, alternative names/websites, and country targeting

Updated over 2 weeks ago

Overview

The Context tab is critical to how Scrunch analyzes your data and identifies your brand in AI responses. Properly configured Context ensures accurate presence tracking, citation detection, and competitive analysis.


Before You Start

Why Context configuration matters:

Inaccurate Context settings directly impact your brand presence tracking. If your brand is mentioned as "IBM" in AI responses but you haven't added "International Business Machines" as an alternative name, you'll miss those mentions entirely.

What proper Context setup enables:

  • Accurate brand presence detection across all variations of your brand name

  • Complete citation tracking across all your owned domains and properties

  • Reliable competitive intelligence with full competitor mention tracking

  • Precise geographic targeting for persona-specific prompts


Initial Brand Setup

When you create a new brand using the + Create brand button, Scrunch auto-generates:

  • Brand description

  • Competitor list

  • Personas

  • Topics

The initial brand setup also includes the Primary Country field, where you set the default country for data collection and analysis.

You can edit any of these auto-generated elements at any time.


Additional Context Configuration

After initial brand creation, review and configure these elements that are not part of the automated setup:

Primary Country

The primary country is set during initial brand setup and can be updated at any time from the Context tab.

❗Important: Changes to primary country only affect new data collection moving forward — meaning future prompt runs will use the new country setting. Historical data cannot be retroactively updated with new country settings, and existing prompts will need to be re-run if you want them to reflect the new geographic targeting.

Primary Brand Settings

  • Alternative names: Add variations of how your brand name appears in responses

  • Alternative websites: Add additional domains, subdomains, or specific URLs to track as brand citations

Personas

  • Persona-specific country: By default, personas inherit the brand's primary country ("All countries"). To override, specify a country within a persona to target that geography for assigned prompts only.

Competitors

  • Alternative websites: Add competitor domains or specific URLs to track their citation presence


How to Use Personas and Topics

Personas

Personas serve three primary functions:

  1. Filtering prompts by target audience

  2. Applying country-level targeting to specific prompts (overrides brand primary country)

  3. Providing context for AI-generated prompts (detailed persona descriptions improve prompt quality)

Topics

Topics help you organize and categorize prompts for easier filtering and reporting. Unlike Personas, Topics don't affect data collection or targeting — they're purely organizational.

Best practices for Topics:

  • Create a consistent taxonomy that mirrors how your team thinks about the business (product lines, use cases, customer journey stages)

  • Use Topics to group related prompts for easier reporting and analysis

  • Assign multiple Topics to a single prompt when it spans categories

  • Keep your Topic list manageable — too many Topics makes filtering harder, not easier


When to Use Alternative Names (Primary and Competitor Brands)

Alternative names ensure accurate brand presence detection when your brand can be mentioned in multiple ways.

When to use Alternative Names:

  • Spacing variations or alternate spellings: Disney Plus, DisneyPlus, Disney+, Disney +

  • Acronyms: IBM, International Business Machines

  • Common abbreviations or nicknames

Case Sensitive Matching

Enable Case Sensitive Matching when your brand name is a common word that could appear out of context.

Example: "Apple" vs. "apple"

  • With case matching enabled, only "Apple" (capitalized) counts toward brand presence

  • Without it, every instance of "apple" (including the fruit) would count

Case matching applies to both the brand name and all alternative names.


When to Use Alternative Websites (Primary and Competitor Brands)

Alternative websites expand citation tracking beyond your primary domain.

How citation matching works:

  • Primary Website: Uses domain-level matching — any URL on that domain automatically counts as a Brand Citation

  • Alternative Websites: Uses path-level matching — only the exact page (or pages beneath it in the site's hierarchy) counts as a Brand Citation

Example: If you add linkedin.com/company/yourbrand as an alternative website, only that specific page and its child pages count as brand citations. Other LinkedIn URLs (like competitor pages) won't be counted as yours.

When to use Alternative Websites:

  • Additional domains you own: Including redirect domains or legacy brand domains

  • Subdomains: Track specific sections separately (blog.yourbrand.com, support.yourbrand.com)

  • Owned media properties:

    • Medium or Substack publications

    • YouTube channels

    • Company LinkedIn pages

  • Third-party authority sites:

    • Wikipedia pages

    • Industry directory listings (G2, Capterra, etc.)

  • Partner and reseller sites: Where your products or services are featured

  • Documentation and support sites: Developer docs, API references, knowledge bases

You can add alternative websites for both your primary brand and competitors.


Common Mistakes to Avoid

Adding Too Many Broad Alternative Names

Adding overly generic variations can create false positives. For example, if your brand is "Apple Records," adding just "Apple" as an alternative name will incorrectly count mentions of Apple Inc., apple fruit, etc.

Solution: Be specific. Use case-sensitive matching when needed, and only add alternative names that genuinely refer to your brand.

Not Using Case-Sensitive Matching for Common Words

If your brand name is a common word (like "Apple," "Target," or "Amazon"), you'll capture irrelevant mentions without case-sensitive matching enabled.

Solution: Enable case-sensitive matching so only capitalized mentions count as brand presence.

Forgetting Competitor Alternative Websites

Tracking competitor citations requires adding their alternative websites just like you do for your own brand. Without this, your competitive intelligence will be incomplete.

Solution: Add the same types of alternative websites for competitors — their owned domains, LinkedIn pages, Wikipedia entries, etc.

Changing Country Settings and Expecting Immediate Results

Country changes only affect new data collection. Your existing prompt data won't automatically update.

Solution: After changing country settings, plan to re-run key prompts if you need them to reflect the new geographic targeting.


Historical Data & Context Changes

🔎 What can be retroactively applied:

Changes to names or websites in Context can be applied to historical data. Scrunch can re-evaluate your existing dataset after these updates.

What cannot be retroactively applied:

Changes to primary country or persona-specific country only affect new data collection going forward.


💡 Key Takeaway

You can update the Context tab at any time to improve accuracy. Regularly review and refine your Context settings as your brand evolves or as you discover new variations in how AI platforms reference your brand.

Did this answer your question?