Set a filter once.
Brand vs non-brand, a folder, a market — save it as a segment and every Search Performance report follows it until you switch it off.
Rules anyone on the team can read.
A segment is a query group or a URL group built from a small stack of rules where either any or all of them have to match. Five operators cover almost everything anybody builds.
- contains
- The workhorse: "running" catches every query about running.
- does not contain
- The rule that makes non-brand possible. Contains running, does not contain nike.
- starts with
- Made for URL groups — everything under /running/ is one rule. equals and ends with round out the set.
Two rules in, one query out.
You write the rules in plain words, and every Search Performance report then applies exactly the same filter — so it cannot mean one thing on this report and another on the next.
query LIKE '%running%'
AND query NOT LIKE '%nike%'It sticks until you switch it off.
Pick a segment in the toolbar and it stays picked, across every Search Performance report you open, until you switch it off. A saved view remembers which one was on, so a shared report arrives scoped the way you meant it.
Frequently asked questions
What do segment rules actually run against?
The Search Console data Prism has already stored for the property. Your rules become one filter, and that same filter is applied in every Search Performance report you open, so two reports can never disagree about what is in the segment. Rule values are treated as plain text, so a symbol in a query is matched literally rather than doing anything clever.
Do segments use credits?
No. Credits only meter answer-engine calls. A segment is a filter over data Prism already holds, so building one, applying one and every report it scopes cost nothing, on every plan.
What's the difference between a segment and a campaign?
A campaign is a segment with a launch date and a name. Both use the same plain rule language over queries and URLs. A segment scopes the reports you already have and stays on until you switch it off; a campaign adds its own start and end date and is measured as a launch in its own right, over its own window.
The other four features
- Data warehousing Google serves a rolling 16 months and drops the rest. Prism syncs your Search Console data into its own store every day and keeps it, re-pulling the last few days because Google revises recent numbers, so your history carries on past Google's cap.
- Site crawling Prism crawls your whole site, scores each page with Lighthouse, and reads the X-Robots-Tag response header as well as the robots meta tag. Compare any two runs to see exactly what a release changed.
- AI answer monitoring Your prompts put to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity on a schedule. Prism stores the complete answer, so every number on every report traces back to the sentence it came from.
- Smart Campaigns Define a campaign by URL and query patterns, give it a start and end date, and Prism tracks that whole group as one thing. The indexed view rebases every campaign to 100 so a big one and a small one are finally comparable.
Build the non-brand segment first.
One rule — does not contain your own brand name — and your growth number stops being flattered by people searching your name.