Quickstart: add your first brand

Adding a brand takes one field and a few confirmations. Ranqo reads your site, drafts the profile, researches your market while you choose engines, writes the prompts and runs them. The wizard shows "About 3 minutes end to end" on its first screen.

Open Brands and choose Add Brand, or pick Add New Brand from the brand switcher at the top of the sidebar. The wizard runs full screen, with a four-step bar across the top: Identify, Confirm, Plan and Launch.

1. Identify: enter your website

   Type your website into the Website field and choose Analyze my site. Ranqo reads the homepage and drafts your brand profile, including the brand name, so the website is all you enter.

   While it reads, the card shows a live timer and a short map of what comes next. If you arrived from the free AI visibility checker, the field is already filled in with the site you checked. Nothing runs until you press the button.

2. Confirm, part 1: Is this your brand?

   Check what Ranqo drafted. The pill in the corner reads Drafted from your domain when the site was read.

   • Brand name: click the name to edit it. Change takes you back to enter a different website.
   • What you do: the plain-language description AI sees when it asks about you.
   • Category: the shelf AI puts you on, such as "CRM Software".
   • Aliases: other names that should count as a mention of you, such as an abbreviation. Each alias is matched literally, so add only real variants. Suggested variants appear below the field; click one to add it.
   • Advanced options: a Logo URL override, if the logo your site declares is not the one you want.

   Choose That's us.

3. Confirm, part 2: Where your buyers are

   Pick who you sell to. This applies to every question Ranqo asks.

   • Worldwide: questions are asked globally, tied to no one market.
   • One country: every question is asked like a buyer in that country. Pick it under Target country.
   • City or region: asked like a buyer in one metro area, for local services. Type it under Target location.

   Language sets the language your prompts are written in and the language Ranqo asks the engines to answer in. The choices are English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese. The dashboard itself stays in English. When the country you pick usually searches in another language, a suggestion such as "Buyers there search in German" appears beside the field; click it to switch.

   The line under the fields states what your choice does, for example "Prompts written in German · every check asked from Germany". Choose Looks right.

4. Confirm, part 3: How buyers find you

   Keep the keywords that describe what buyers search for and remove the rest. Type a keyword and press Enter to add one, or choose Suggest more. You need at least 2 keywords to continue.

   The example questions on this card are illustrations only. Your real prompts are written from market research after you confirm.

   Choose Start research & see my plan. This creates the brand and starts researching your market.

5. Plan: pick themes and engines

   The Plan step opens straight away. While research runs, a progress strip shows how far along it is, and you can already choose engines under Platforms.

   • Themes arrive pre-selected. Each theme is a set of buyer questions built from the research, with a few of the competitors AI often names for it. A Trending tag marks a theme the research found gaining attention. Click a theme to leave it out.
   • Platforms lists the engines your plan includes, with a default set already selected; click an engine to turn it on or off. Agency plans choose any 4 of 6. Engines your plan does not include are shown locked, with the plan that adds them on hover and an Unlock more engines link.

   The summary line shows how many prompts, themes and platforms you picked. The first run asks up to 20 prompts, spread across your themes, or fewer if your account has less prompt allowance left.

   Choose Generate prompts & start tracking.

6. Launch: watch the first run

   Ranqo writes your prompts theme by theme, then asks each one on each engine you picked. The live feed shows every question with a verdict per engine as the answers arrive: a check and a rank when AI named you, a dash when it did not.

   When the last answer is in, Ranqo scores the run and shows your visibility score. Go to my dashboard opens the Visibility page; after a short pause it opens by itself.

You do not have to watch. Continue to dashboard in the top bar leaves at any point, and the run keeps going. The Visibility page shows the same live progress until the first run completes.

If the site could not be read#

Some sites block automated reads, time out or return an error. In that case the pill reads From AI knowledge and a note on the first card explains what went wrong. The fields then come from what AI already knows about your brand, so check them carefully. If there was nothing to draft from, the fields are empty and you fill them in.

If theme research fails#

When Ranqo cannot build custom themes, the Plan step says so and offers two ways on:

• Use standard starter set skips themes and tracks a general set of 10 prompts.
• Try again reruns the research.

Leaving and coming back#

Save & exit in the top bar takes you to Brands. What happens next depends on how far you got.

• Before the brand is created (Identify and Confirm), your answers live only in that browser tab. Reopen the wizard in the same tab to carry on.
• After you chose Start research & see my plan, the brand exists and its research is saved. Its card on Brands reads Finish setup, and opening it, or switching to it in the sidebar, returns you to the Plan step. This works from any device. Until you finish, the pages that need a run to show anything, such as Visibility and Competitors, show Finish setting up tracking with a Finish Setup button.
• Once the brand exists, reopening the wizard in the same tab offers Resume setup or Start a different brand.

Finishing a setup never counts against your brand limit a second time: the brand already holds its slot.

If you choose Start research & see my plan for a website that already belongs to one of your live brands, Ranqo opens that brand, or its unfinished setup, rather than creating a second one.

Adding back a brand you removed#

If the website belongs to a brand you removed, choosing Start research & see my plan shows This brand was previously removed, with its prompts, runs, competitors and sources counted.

• Restore Data brings the brand back with its history and opens its Visibility page. There is no new setup.
• Start Fresh replaces it with a new brand and runs the setup again.

Until your account has a paid subscription, during a free trial for example, a removed brand that completed an analysis still holds a brand slot. It can be restored but not started fresh. When removed brands are what fill your brand limit, the Add a brand page lists them with a Restore button instead of opening the wizard. See Billing and trials.

Next steps#