The MRCA scorecard

Score every answer in four stages, in order: was your brand Mentioned, was it Recommended for the need, was one of your own pages Cited, and was what the answer said about you Accurate? This is Echorank's MRCA scorecard. It replaces a single visibility number with four answers, and the stage where you drop out points to the fix.

The four stages

Score stages in order, but record each one independently. An answer can cite your page while recommending someone else, or recommend you while getting your prices wrong. Those combinations are the most useful findings in the whole exercise.

Competitor presence and share of answers

Your score means little on its own. For every answer, also record which other brands were mentioned and recommended. Over a cycle, share of answers is the number of answers that recommend you divided by the number of answers that recommend anyone. It shows whether you are gaining ground against named alternatives, which your own score alone cannot.

Scoring rules that keep the numbers honest

• Score branded prompts separately: they mention you by definition and would inflate the Mentioned stage.
• A mention inside a list of ten is still a mention; a recommendation needs the answer to steer toward you.
• Cited means your own domain. Reviews, directories and press about you count as evidence, not citations of you.
• Accuracy needs a source of truth: compare every claim with a dated internal record, and mark uncertain claims as unverified rather than guessing.

Worked example: Northwind Dental

Northwind runs its panel twice on two engines. For “Which dentists near Riverside see children in the evening?” the scores look like this. Mentioned: yes in most runs. Recommended: rarely; a competitor with many recent reviews is usually suggested first. Cited: never; the answers cite a directory and the competitor's site. Accurate: no; the hours quoted are last year's.

The scorecard turns that into three separate jobs. Accuracy comes first, because wrong hours send patients to a closed door: update the directory listing and put the hours in text on the site. Citation comes next: publish a page about children's appointments that answers the question in its first paragraph. Recommendation is the slow one, and lessons 9 and 10 cover the evidence that moves it.

A simple scoring sheet

One row per answer is enough: prompt id, engine, locale, date, run number, then a yes or no for each MRCA stage, the competitors mentioned, the competitors recommended, the sources shown and a note on anything inaccurate. Keep the full answer text in a linked column. A plain shared sheet works; what matters is that every answer is scored the same way by the same rules.

Reading a scorecard over time

One cycle gives you a baseline, not a verdict. After each cycle, compare stage by stage and engine by engine. Look for answers that moved from one stage to the next, and tie each movement to the change you made. When nothing moves after several cycles, revisit the diagnosis rather than doing more of the same.