Workspaces and topics
A is where a brand competes: a named set of - the demand space, such as "Website governance" or "UK business banking" - plus the identity brand whose workspace it is. Every Presence screen is scoped to one workspace, chosen with the workspace selector in the top-left toolbar, and the workspace's identity brand is who its numbers are about: when a screen reports visibility or average position, it is reporting them for that brand across that workspace's topics.
Topics are the arenas where you want to be visible, and the unit of measurement. Every subject topic belongs to exactly one workspace, chosen when you create it. A topic cannot be moved to another workspace or shared between two, so a workspace is a clean boundary: everything inside it belongs to it alone.
A topic includes its qualifier. "Wellness" is too vague; "wellness centers in the Austin, Texas area" is an arena with a clear conversation and a clear set of contenders. Two arenas usually mean two topics.
Subject topics and brand topics
Most topics are subject arenas: products, services, programs, or issues people ask about without naming you.
A brand can also have a brand topic - an arena whose subject is the brand itself ("who is City of Meridian?", "is Helios Energy a good employer?"). Same measurement machinery; it answers reputation questions about the brand rather than discovery questions about a workspace. Your brand and your competitors can both have one.
A brand topic sits in the same workspace as the brand it is about. It is deliberately excluded from headline visibility and position figures, so naming yourself in an answer to "who is Silktide?" cannot inflate your competitive standing. Sentiment is the exception, and that page explains why.
The identity brand
Every workspace names one identity brand: the brand whose workspace it is. Headline figures, KPI cards, and strategy briefs are written from that brand's point of view.
The identity brand does not have to be winning, or even present. Targeting a workspace before you launch into it - watching who owns it today and how they are described - is a core use case, not an edge case.
You can look at the same workspace from someone else's chair with View this workspace as… in the workspace selector. That swaps the perspective on single-brand screens without changing the workspace itself; it is a way of looking, not a setting, and it is not remembered.
Who you are compared against
A workspace has an explicit competitor roster: the brands whose rows and columns appear on that workspace's screens. Nobody joins it on their own - you decide.
You are not left guessing who to add. The Brands screen suggests names that keep turning up in your own answers, drawn from what assistants actually said rather than from a generic industry list, and you accept or ignore each one. Search in that list finds names already seen in answers; it does not invent a competitor from an unmatched query. Removing a competitor is remembered: Silktide will not suggest that name again for this workspace unless you add it back.
Two details are worth holding on to:
- The roster controls the field, not the arithmetic. Share of voice is divided among every brand you track in scope, whether or not it is on this workspace's roster. What the roster decides is who appears - and therefore rank, which is a placing among the brands the workspace compares you against. A rival you leave off cannot take a place in the ranking.
- Only tracked brands get metrics at all. Names assistants use that you have never added appear under Entities with no share of voice, because dividing the conversation among thousands of incidental names would leave everyone near zero and tell you nothing.
Workspaces in practice
One brand can front several workspaces, and an agency can run one workspace per client.
| Organization | Example workspaces | Example topics (each belongs to one of them) |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | iPhone; MacBook; Apple TV | Smartphones; wireless earbuds; laptop computers; streaming devices |
| Northbridge University | Academic programs; Campus life; Research | Undergraduate nursing programs; campus housing; climate research |
| City of Meridian | Resident services; Public safety; Mobility | Recycling collection; building permits; public transit routes |
| Helios Energy | Residential energy; Commercial; Sustainability | Home solar installation; business power contracts; carbon reporting |
If two workspaces genuinely need the same arena - say both Campus life and Academic programs care about campus housing - create the topic twice, once in each. They are measured separately and reported separately, which is what you want when the two workspaces answer to different people.
Measurement runs on topics and their , so the number of prompts is what you pay for. Two workspaces tracking the same subject means two sets of questions asked, not one.
How many topics is right
Fewer than you first want. Each topic needs enough prompts to produce a trustworthy sample, and a thin sample spread across twenty arenas is worth less than a solid one across five.
Start with the arenas where you are genuinely competing for customers this year. Add more when the first set is answering questions rather than raising them. Your prompt allowance will tell you when you have overreached - the Plan step of the workspace wizard, and Settings → Plan, both show where you stand.
Markets
A is an optional folder for topics inside a workspace. Use it when one workspace spans several distinct competitive spaces. Filing a topic in a market does not change what is measured, and most workspaces never need one. Create and file them from the Topics screen.
For Silktide, create workspaces for Accessibility, SEO, AEO, Performance, and PDF, with sensible topics in each.
I'll list your existing topics and workspaces first, then add missing arenas such as web accessibility platforms, SEO platforms, AI answer engine optimization, Core Web Vitals, and PDF accessibility testing, and place them in those five workspaces with Silktide as the identity brand.
Related
- How Presence works
- Brands and competitors
- Permissions - who can see and admin workspaces
- Prompts
- Workspace screen - name, identity, measurement, and access for the selected workspace
- Topics screen - managing topics, their prompts, and optional markets