Sentiment Analysis
The polarity of a brand mention — an L3 quality component of Share of Voice.
What is sentiment analysis in SOV?
Sentiment analysis is the polarity of a brand mention — positive, neutral or negative — measured as an L3 quality component of the SOV pyramid. It asks not just whether the brand is cited, but in what light.
Sentiment turns a citation count into a reputation signal: being mentioned is good, being mentioned favourably is better.
For each brand mention the platform classifies the tone of the surrounding answer as positive, neutral or negative. Aggregated across a run, this becomes the sentiment component of L3 Quality in the SOV pyramid. A brand cited often but critically has high presence and poor sentiment — a very different situation from one cited approvingly.
Sentiment matters because AI answers shape perception directly. When an engine writes "X is a strong choice for enterprise" versus "X has been criticised for cost", the citation count is identical but the buyer impact is opposite. Measuring polarity is what lets the loop catch a reputational problem that volume metrics would miss.
Sentiment sits at L3 with PWC, First Mention Position and Citation Authority Score, completing the quality picture: how prominently (PWC), how early (FMP), by how trusted a source (CAS) and in what light (sentiment) the brand is cited.