What the ± on a score means

AI answers vary

Ask an engine the same question twice and the answer can name a different set of brands. A single run is an observation, not a rate. So every score AEOTrack shows carries a range — "62 ±8" — that says how far the number could move if the same check ran again.

How it is computed

The range is a 95% interval on the score itself (scoring version 5, since 22 September 2026). Three estimates are computed and the widest is shown:

1. A question-level bootstrap. The tracked questions are resampled with replacement 2,000 times, each question carrying its engine answers intact, and the score is recomputed each time. This answers "how much does the score depend on which questions happen to be in the set?" and needs at least two tracked questions.
2. A within-answer bootstrap. The individual engine answers inside each question are resampled, which answers "how much would the score move if this same check ran again?"
3. A floor from the mention rate. A Wilson interval on how often you were named at all, rescaled onto the score. This keeps the range honest at the small sample sizes a real account has — ten questions across five engines is fifty answers — and it is why a score of 0 is never shown as "0 ±0": with no mentions the floor uses what a first mention would earn.

The band is re-centred on the score and clamped to 0–100. Fewer usable answers means a wider range; a check where two engines were dark is less certain than a full one, and the number says so. Answers that were cut off before naming anyone are excluded rather than counted as misses.

Older points on a trend keep the interval their scoring version produced, so ranges are only compared across points with the same version.

How to read a change

Compare ranges, not points. A move from 40 ±8 to 46 ±8 is inside the noise; a move from 40 ±8 to 58 ±7 is real. The trend chart shades the range so this is visible at a glance, and the "What changed" card only lists movements that cleared it.

Why alerts wait for it

Score-change alerts fire only when the move is at least your threshold and the new range no longer overlaps the old one; a move measured on a check where engines were dark never fires at all. That is deliberate: an alert on every fluctuation trains you to ignore alerts. If you have not had one in a while, it is because nothing significant happened, which is information too. The Automation guide has the full rules.