What is sentiment analysis and how does it apply to search results?

Sentiment analysis is the classification of content – a URL, an article, an AI response – on a positive, neutral, negative axis. For reputation work it serves as a tracking signal rather than a decision criterion, because the same content can register different sentiments depending on the model and the prompt. The practical use: each ranking URL on the priority SERPs gets a sentiment score during analysis, and the aggregate sentiment of page one is tracked monthly. Each AI engine response in AIQ™ gets scored per engine, with the trend over time more meaningful than any single snapshot. Sentiment movement is a leading indicator of stakeholder perception movement, particularly when combined with source-attribution data showing which sources are driving the picture. The failure mode is treating sentiment as a goal in itself rather than as a signal of underlying narrative state – the work is on the narrative, not on the score.