Pitwall Brand Study

Measure	You	Comp A	Comp B	Comp C
Share of search	31.8%	38.2%	17.5%	12.5%
Category searches in top 10	4 / 29	22 / 29	17 / 29	6 / 29
News share of voice	36%	27%	21%	16%
Rider net sentiment	+12	+18	+34	+21
Ownership Experience Index	−22	+14	+29	+9
Video review verdicts	71% pos	64% pos	78% pos	52% pos
Mobile LCP (p75, real users)	4.1s	2.2s	2.4s	3.1s
AI assistant recommendations	41%	63%	48%	22%

Services

Five studies. One system. The same measures every time.

Start with a full brand study, a single launch, or a look at a rival. Because every study runs on the same Pitwall codebook and scoring, the results stack up: a launch report sits alongside your brand baseline, and a competitor study can be compared directly with your own.

Study 1

Full brand study

Study 2

Historical bike launch

Study 3

Future bike launch

Study 4

Competitor brand study

Study 5

Competitor bike launch

The complete picture of how your brand is seen, found and talked about online, and how your website performs, compared directly with the brands you compete with for every sale. It shows where you stand, what people think of your content, models and services and those of your competitors, and exactly what to fix first.

We start by loading your brand pillars and key messages, agreeing the competitor set and markets, and building the search and category lists riders actually use in each language. The historical scrape covers the previous twelve months for every brand. Live listening then runs for fourteen days so the study reflects what people are saying now, including the first reaction to anything you or a rival reveal during the window.

The questions it answers

How do riders, owners and the media describe our brand in their own words?
Which of our brand pillars are landing, which are missing and which are contradicted?
Where are we stronger, level or behind each competitor, measure by measure?
Which category searches do rivals, magazines and forums own instead of us?
Do AI assistants recommend us when someone asks for the best bike in our segments?
What do owners say about reliability, servicing, dealers and build quality?
Which of our models and pieces of content get the strongest reaction, and why?
How fast is our site for real mobile users, and what is slowing it down?

What's measured

Brand identity online: how the brand is presented and described across owned, earned and community channels, scored against your pillars.
Demand and share of voice: share of search by market, news share of voice, YouTube engagement and comment volume, against every competitor.
Search visibility and content gaps: live mobile rankings by market for category, comparison and model searches, who owns the results instead of you, and where Google's AI Overview answers without citing your site.
AI assistant visibility: a fixed set of buyer questions asked of the major AI assistants in each market, recording whether your brand is recommended, how it is described and which sources are cited.
Rider and prospect sentiment by theme: design, performance, technology, comfort, price and value, reliability, servicing, dealers, racing heritage, community and more.
Ownership Experience Index: a single score for life after purchase, benchmarked against every rival.
Media versus rider perception: where journalists and riders agree, and where the press loves a bike that owners are unhappy with, or the reverse.
Website performance and technical health: Core Web Vitals from real Chrome users, lab diagnostics for key templates, crawl errors, hreflang, structured data and page content checked against the questions riders actually ask.

What you receive

A management report with executive summary, competitor scorecard and prioritised findings.
A private online study site where every finding opens to its evidence, comments, search data and sources.
An improvement playbook for every negative theme: the cause, the channels that fix it, example content briefs, the owner and the KPI.
Developer-ready tickets for site speed and technical SEO fixes, with estimated savings.
A walkthrough session with your brand, digital and after-sales teams.

A launch you have already run is a goldmine of honest feedback that most brands never read properly. This study goes back through everything said about one model, from the first spy shots and teasers through the reveal, the first media rides, first deliveries and early ownership, and tells you what customers and potential customers really thought.

We split the launch into phases so you can see how opinion moved: the reveal reaction, the response to the price announcement, the shift once journalists had ridden it, and what owners said once the bike was in their garage. Comments from owners and prospects are separated, so you can tell the difference between people who bought it and people who decided not to.

The questions it answers

What was the first reaction to the reveal, and what drove it?
How did people react to the price, spec and colour options?
Which features did riders talk about most, and were they the ones we led with?
Did the media verdict match the rider verdict?
Why did prospects say they chose a rival instead?
What did early owners praise and complain about?
Which launch videos, posts and articles worked, and which fell flat?
What should we do differently for the next model year?

How we read it

Reaction timeline: comment volume and net sentiment day by day, with launch events marked so you can see what moved opinion.
Feature and theme breakdown: design, engine, electronics, ergonomics, weight, price, colourways and accessories, each with net sentiment and quotes.
Video reviews, watched and listened to: each major review is summarised with timestamps, the reviewer's verdict and the positives and negatives, sitting next to that video's comments so you can see whether the audience agrees.
Search demand: model searches by market before, during and after launch, and which sites captured them.
Lost-sale signals: comments where prospects name the bike they bought instead, and why.

What you receive

A launch report with a verdict, a reaction timeline and the evidence behind every point.
A ranked list of what to keep, what to fix in communications and what to feed back to product.
The same online study site format as the brand study, so it sits alongside your baseline.

We work with you before the bike is revealed to plan and prepare a launch built on what riders actually care about, advise on how and what to do for maximum impact, then listen to the reaction live and tell you exactly how the launch went down afterwards.

The preparation is grounded in evidence rather than instinct. We study how your previous launches and your competitors' recent launches landed, which messages and formats earned the strongest reaction, which questions riders asked that nobody answered, and which search terms and channels prospects use in each market. That becomes a launch plan your brand team, agencies, importers and dealers can work from.

Before the reveal

Prepare

Audience and segment research, lessons from your past launches and rival launches, the questions riders will ask, message testing against real rider language, search and AI readiness for the model page, and a channel and content plan for reveal day.

Reveal to day 30

Listen live

Live monitoring from the first teaser, with quick-read updates in the first 72 hours so you can respond to emerging concerns, answer recurring questions and adjust paid media and community replies while it still counts.

After day 30

Report

A full launch report measured against the goals we set together: reaction, sentiment by theme, share of voice against rivals, search capture, media versus rider verdict and what to carry into the next launch.

Launch readiness checks

Message fit: your launch claims compared with the words riders use when they praise or criticise bikes in this segment.
Unanswered questions: the service intervals, seat height, weight, range, price and finance questions riders will ask in the first hour, with answers prepared.
Search and AI readiness: the model page checked for speed, structured data, titles and factual, citable content so Google and AI assistants can describe the bike correctly from day one.
Competitor calendar: rival launches and events that could crowd out your reveal, and how to position against them.
Dealer and importer readiness: what local teams need to say, show and answer when prospects walk in or call.

What you receive

A written launch plan with recommendations, messages to lead with and pitfalls to avoid.
A 72-hour quick read after the reveal, with actions for the following week.
A full 30-day launch report and debrief, built on the same measures as your other studies.

A deep study of a single competitor's brand, bikes and models, told from the outside the way their customers see it. You learn where they are strong, where riders and owners are unhappy, which models carry the brand and which drag it down, and where the openings are for you.

It uses the same codebook and measures as our full brand study, so if you already have a Pitwall baseline the competitor results line up directly with your own. If you don't, it stands on its own as a clear briefing on a rival.

The questions it answers

What do riders love and dislike about this brand?
Which of their models get the strongest and weakest reaction?
Where are their owners unhappy with reliability, servicing or dealers?
Which searches, media and AI answers do they own?
How strong is their content, and which formats work for them?
Where do their customers mention our brand, and in what terms?
Which of their weaknesses can we credibly answer in our marketing?
How does their website perform against ours on real mobile devices?

What you receive

A competitor profile with model-by-model sentiment, ownership themes and media verdicts.
Their search, share of voice and AI visibility, with the gaps you can target.
A conquest opportunities list: their weaknesses matched to your strengths, with suggested messages, content and channels.

When a rival launches a new model into your segment, you need to know quickly and honestly what people think of it. This study tells you how riders, prospects and the media reacted to a competitor's new bike, what they liked, what put them off, and how it changes the conversation about your own models.

For a launch that has already happened, we go back through the reaction from teaser to today. For one that is coming, we set up listening before the reveal and report at 72 hours and 30 days, so your sales, product and marketing teams can respond while it matters.

The questions it answers

Was the reaction strong enough to threaten our model?
Which features and specs got riders excited?
How did people react to the price against ours?
Are prospects comparing it with our bike, and who is winning?
What did the media say, and did owners agree?
What objections will our dealers now hear?

What you receive

A reaction report on the rival model, with evidence behind every point.
A head-to-head comparison of how riders talk about their model and yours.
Response recommendations for marketing, sales scripts, dealer briefings and paid media.

Why brands commission Pitwall

The conversation that sells your bikes happens without you.

Most brand and marketing decisions in the motorcycle industry are still made on internal assumptions, dealer anecdotes, a small survey or an agency's opinion. Meanwhile the real conversation that shapes buying decisions happens somewhere else entirely: in the comments under a launch video, in a forum thread about service costs, in an owner review left after a dealer visit, in the questions people type into Google, and increasingly in the answers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews give when someone asks which adventure bike they should buy.

That conversation is public, it is enormous, and it is honest. Riders do not soften what they say in a YouTube comment the way they do in a focus group. Prospects say exactly why they chose a rival. Owners describe the moment a dealer won or lost them for life. Very few brands read it systematically, and almost none compare it against their competitors in the same way.

Pitwall reads it at scale, in every major market and language, and holds it up against what your brand intends to stand for. Every theme falls into one of three groups:

Reinforced. People say what you want them to say. Protect it and put it in front of more prospects.
Missing. You say it, but it is not landing. The message needs a different channel, a different proof point or a different voice.
Contradicted. People say something that works against the brand. These are the findings that cost sales, and they each get a playbook.

The gaps are expensive. A servicing or reliability story nobody is answering will lose more buyers in a year than a study costs. So will a category search where two competitors and a forum own Google's first page and your brand does not appear, or a model page that takes four seconds to load on a phone and never mentions the running costs that every prospect asks about.

Pitwall is built to find those gaps, prove them with evidence and size them, so the conversation in the boardroom moves from opinion to fact. It also does something a one-off survey cannot: because every study uses the same codebook, the same measures and the same competitor set, a quarterly re-run shows exactly what has moved. It becomes the scoreboard for brand, content, SEO, social and agency spend.

And because the same system can be pointed at a single model, it answers the questions marketing teams lose sleep over at launch time. How did the reveal really land? What did prospects think of the price? Did the media and the riders agree? What did people say about the rival that launched the same month?

Pitwall measures what people say when nobody is asking them. It sits alongside the brand tracking and representative research you may already run rather than replacing it, and it gives that research the voice, the evidence and the competitor context it usually lacks.

How the system works

Five stages, from raw comments to a fix with an owner.

Pitwall automates the heavy lifting of collecting and sorting public data so our team can spend its time where the value is: reading the evidence, judging what it means and writing what you should do next.

Stage 1

Collect

Collectors pull thousands of video reviews and their comments from official, competitor and independent channels, global news via GDELT, Google News and RSS, owner, dealer and product reviews, forums, public social comments, live Google results by market and device, search demand, AI assistant answers and real-user site speed.

System

Stage 2

Code

Every item is tagged against our motorcycle codebook: brand, model, theme, sentiment, market, language, whether the speaker is an owner or a prospect, ownership stage and racing context. Spam, bots and off-topic items are removed. A random sample is hand-coded by an analyst to check the tagging.

System + analyst check

Stage 3

Score

The system calculates share of search, news share of voice, net sentiment by theme, the Ownership Experience Index, category search visibility, Core Web Vitals and a competitor scorecard that marks each measure class-leading, competitive, behind or in need of action.

System

Stage 4

Analyse

Our team reads the comments behind every number, tests them against your brand pillars and launch messages, and writes each finding: what is happening, why it matters, the evidence, the fix, who owns it and how progress will be measured.

People

Stage 5

Publish

You get a management report, a private online study site where your teams can open any finding and read the real comments behind it, and an action plan grouped by team that can go straight to your agencies and dealer network.

People

Inside the platform

What your team sees when the study is delivered.

Alongside the written report, every client gets a private Pitwall study site. It is built from the same data as the report, so any number in a slide can be clicked through to the comments, videos, search results and sources behind it. These screens show the main views with sample data.

pitwall · overview

Where to act first

1 · Missing from 9 of 10 adventure searches (UK)Critical

2 · Mobile LCP 4.1s on model pagesCritical

3 · Servicing cost is top negative owner themeIssue

4 · Dealer response time complaints (DE, FR)Issue

5 · Design and heritage strongly reinforcedStrength

Study at a glance

Items collected48,216

Videos watched1,284

Findings with fix and owner31

Overview and prioritiesThe five things to fix first, each linked to its evidence, plus the size of the study behind them.

pitwall · comments · servicing

ServicingOwnersAll marketsNegativeLast 90 days

"Third service in and it's still the dealer, not the bike, that's the problem."Owner · forum · UK · source ↗

"Le prix de la révision des 30 000 km m'a refroidi."Owner · YouTube · FR · "The price of the 30,000 km service put me off." · source ↗

"Valve check interval is longer now, nobody seems to know that."Prospect · YouTube · US · source ↗

Showing 3 of 1,126 comments · net sentiment −37 · n=1,126

Comment explorerEvery coded comment, filterable by theme, brand, model, market, speaker and sentiment, quoted word for word with a translation and a link to the original.

pitwall · videos · launch

Video reviews · 30 days from reveal

First ride review · UK mediaPos · 9 points

Walkaround and price reaction · US creatorMixed · 7 points

Track day test · IT mediaPos · 11 points

"Why I didn't buy one" · owner vlogNeg · 6 points

Head-to-head vs Competitor A · DE mediaMixed · 12 points

Most-mentioned themes

Engine82%

Price64%

Video libraryEvery video in scope with its verdict, timestamped points and audience reaction, sortable by reach, market and sentiment.

pitwall · action plan

Web development

Preload hero image, fetchpriority=highest. −0.9s

Serve AVIF/WebP at phone sizesest. −0.6s

Content and SEO

Adventure touring category hubKPI: top-10 count

Ownership section on model pagesKPI: theme coverage

After-sales and dealers

Publish fixed-price service menuKPI: OEI

Dealer reply standard for reviewsKPI: review rating

Action plan by teamEvery fix grouped by the team that owns it, with the KPI that will show progress at the next quarterly update.

Our evidence promise

Real people. Real words. Real evidence.

You will never be asked to trust a chart on its own. Everything in a Pitwall report traces back to something a real rider, owner, prospect or journalist actually said or did in public.

Every voice is humanFeedback comes from real riders, owners, prospects and motorcycle journalists. We remove bots, spam, giveaway chains and duplicates before anything is counted. We never generate, paraphrase or invent a customer comment.
Quoted word for wordComments are shown exactly as written, in the original language with an English translation alongside, with usernames, emails, phone numbers and links removed.
Linked to the sourceEvery quote and data point carries its source, platform, market and date, with a link to the original comment, video, article or search result so your team can check it for themselves.
Read and written by peopleSoftware does the collecting, sorting and counting. Our team reads the evidence, makes the judgements and writes every finding and recommendation. A hand-checked validation sample and its agreement rate are published in every report's method section.

Video and review intelligence

We watch the videos so you don't have to. All of them.

YouTube reviews, first rides, launch walkarounds, owner vlogs and long-term tests are where riders make up their minds. A single model can attract hundreds of videos and tens of thousands of comments in its first month. Pitwall watches and listens to every one in scope, in any language, and turns each into an in-depth, timestamped report your team can check in seconds.

For every video, Pitwall processes the full soundtrack and what is shown on screen, with or without subtitles. It records what the reviewer said, when they said it, which part of the bike or the brand it was about, and whether it was positive, negative or mixed. Each point carries a timestamp that opens the video at that exact second, so your product, marketing and PR teams can go straight to the moment and see it for themselves.

The report then sets the reviewer's verdict next to the audience. We code every comment under the video with the same themes, so you can see where viewers agree with the reviewer, where they push back, and which points they repeat to each other. A journalist praising the electronics while the comments fill with service-cost complaints is exactly the kind of gap a brand team needs to know about.

1,000s

of videos per study, across every market in scope

100%

of each video watched and listened to, start to finish

Every

point timestamped and linked to the second it was said

What each video report contains

The reviewer's overall verdict and the reasons given for it.
Every positive and negative point, coded by theme and timestamped.
Spec claims, prices and comparisons mentioned, checked against the facts.
Which competitor bikes were compared, and which came out ahead.
Audience reaction: comment sentiment by theme, and agreement with the reviewer.
Reach and engagement: views, likes and comment velocity over time.

pitwall · video intelligence · review #0418

18:42

"Long-term test: 6,000 miles on the new adventure flagship"

Independent UK reviewer · 412k subscribers · 238,000 views · 1,904 comments · English

Reviewer verdict: positiveAudience: mixedAgreement 58%

01:12Engine "the best thing about the bike", smooth low-down and strong overtakingEngine
03:47Semi-active suspension praised on broken B-roads, two-up and loadedHandling
06:20Screen buffeting above 70 mph for riders over six footComfort
09:05Fuel economy 46 mpg, below the claimed figure but "fine for the class"Running costs
11:38First service cost discussed in detail, described as "eye-watering"Servicing
14:02Compared with Competitor A: wins on engine and tech, loses on priceComparison
17:15Final verdict: "would buy one with my own money"Verdict

+44Comment net sentiment on engine and handling

−37Comment net sentiment on servicing, repeated in 212 comments

Pitwall video report. Sample layout with illustrative content; in a client report each timestamp opens the original video at that second.

Video comments

Comments and replies on official brand channels, competitor channels and independent reviewers and media, in every language.

Forums and communities

Owner clubs, model forums and rider communities where long-term ownership, faults and dealer experiences are discussed in detail.

News and media

Global news and motorcycle press by market and language, so you can see what journalists wrote and how riders responded to it.

Social and reviews

Public social comments on your own channels, owner and dealer reviews, product reviews and the search results people see in every market.

Sample data and comments

What a Pitwall study looks like inside.

These panels show the format of a Pitwall report: how findings, scores and comments are presented. Client studies are confidential, so the brands are anonymised and the figures here are illustrative.

Illustrative sample. The numbers and comments on this page show how a report is laid out. They are examples of the format, not quotes from real people about a real brand. In a client report every comment is a real person's words, verbatim, with a link to the original.

Net sentiment by theme

Your brand · owners and prospects · −100 to +100 · n = 4,812 coded comments

Design & styling

+62

Engine & performance

+56

Racing heritage

+48

Electronics

+24

Comfort

−8

Price & value

−19

Reliability

−26

Servicing costs

−41

Dealer experience

−33

The pattern is common for premium brands: riders love the product and the image, and the brand loses ground after purchase. That gap is where the Ownership Experience Index and the playbooks focus.

Launch reaction: first 30 days

One model · daily comment volume (bars) and net sentiment (line)

Sentiment fell sharply on price day and recovered once journalists had ridden the bike. The report pairs each turn in the line with the comments that caused it.

Sample comments

"Love the bike, but the dealer quoted me nearly twice what I expected for the first major service. Nobody mentioned that when I bought it."

Servicing costsOwnerForumUKSource link

"Rode one at the demo day expecting to hate the electronics. Came away thinking it's the most confidence-inspiring bike I've ridden in the wet."

ElectronicsProspectYouTube commentUKSource link

"Ich habe mich am Ende für die andere Marke entschieden. Nicht wegen des Motorrads, sondern weil der nächste Händler 140 km entfernt ist."

Dealer networkProspect · lost saleReview siteDETranslated: "In the end I chose the other brand. Not because of the bike, but because the nearest dealer is 140 km away."

"That reveal video gave me goosebumps. First time in years a launch actually made me want to go and sit on the bike."

Launch contentProspectYouTube commentUSSource link

"Spec is great on paper but at that price I'd want cruise and heated grips as standard, not in a pack."

Price & valueProspectYouTube commentAUSource link

"Every magazine says it's the best in class. Three of us in our club own one and two have had the same sensor fault."

Media vs ownerOwnerForumUKSource link

Sample finding

Search visibility · UK · owner: SEO + Content

Your brand is missing from 9 of 10 adventure category searches in the UK

CriticalBehind median

What we found

For category searches made before people choose a brand, your site does not appear on Google's first page on mobile. These searches total roughly 66,000 a month. Two competitors, a magazine and a forum answer instead, and Google's AI Overview appears on nine of them without citing you.

Evidence

"adventure bike"	12,100/mo · #34
"best adventure motorcycle"	12,100/mo · not ranked
"adventure touring motorcycle"	5,400/mo · #18
Competitor A	10 of 10 in top 10
Competitor B	8 of 10 in top 10

Why it matters

These are the moments when preference is formed. Not appearing lets competitors and third parties define the category for you.

Recommended fix

Build an adventure touring hub that explains the category through your brand's lens, linked from the main navigation and every adventure model page.
Use the category language riders search for in headings and titles, and add structured data.
Publish factual, citable comparisons and specs so AI Overviews and assistants can quote you.

KPI

Tracked adventure category searches with your site in the UK top 10. Baseline 1 of 10. Target 6 of 10 by the third quarterly update.

Website performance

Core Web Vitals · p75 · real Chrome users on phones · 28 days

LCP

4.1s

Poor · good is ≤ 2.5s

INP

290ms

Needs work · good is ≤ 200ms

CLS

0.06

Good · good is ≤ 0.1

Top fixes: preload the hero image with fetchpriority="high" and stop lazy-loading it (est. 0.9s), serve AVIF/WebP at phone sizes (est. 0.6s), defer chat, video and tag scripts until interaction or consent.

AI assistant visibility

"What's the best adventure bike for touring two-up?" · 40 runs per assistant · UK

Competitor A

63%

Competitor B

48%

Your brand

41%

Competitor C

22%

Share of answers that recommend each brand. The report lists the sources each assistant cited, which shows exactly which pages and publications shape the answer.

Search, demand and data

The numbers behind the opinions.

Comments tell you what people think. Search data tells you how many people are looking, what they type, which markets are growing and who they find when they search. Pitwall pulls search volume, live rankings, AI answers and site performance into the same study, so every finding about perception is backed by the size of the demand behind it.

Illustrative sample. Charts on this section show the format and the kind of data each study contains. Brands are anonymised and figures are examples.

Category keywords by monthly search volume

UK · mobile and desktop · average monthly searches, last 12 months · your site's live rank

Bars show search volume. The right-hand column shows where your own site ranks on Google for each term today. Yellow marks a top-10 result; grey means you are not on the first page.

Share of search, 12 months

Branded search volume as a share of the competitor set · UK

Search volume by market

Monthly branded plus model searches, your brand vs the competitor median

Where your site ranks

520 tracked keywords across category, model, comparison and ownership searches

Each block is a tracked keyword. The report lists every keyword in the "page 2" and "not ranked" groups with the page that should win it and what that page needs.

Seasonality of demand

Category search volume by month, indexed to the yearly average (100)

Used to time launches, content and paid media around when riders are actually looking.

What the study is built from

Items collected and coded in a typical full brand study

Every data source in a Pitwall study

Data	What it gives you	Refresh	Granularity
Search volume	Average monthly searches and 12-month trend for every category, model, comparison and ownership keyword	Monthly	Keyword × market × language
Live search results	Who ranks in the top 100 on Google for each keyword, AI Overview presence and which sites it cites	Each study, weekly in live windows	Keyword × market × device
DC Intelligence	Our own domain, keyword, backlink and site audit data: organic visibility, traffic estimates, competitor keyword gaps and technical health	Each study	Domain × market
AI assistant answers	Whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity recommend your brand for buyer questions, and which sources they cite	Each study, 40 runs per question	Question × assistant × market
Video and comments	Video reviews watched, transcribed and scored, plus every comment coded by theme and sentiment	Daily in live windows	Video × timestamp × theme
News and media	Coverage volume, share of voice and media verdicts by market	Daily in live windows	Article × market × language
Forums, reviews and social	Owner discussion, dealer and product reviews, public social comments on your channels	Daily in live windows	Post × theme × market
Real-user site speed	Core Web Vitals for your site and every competitor from real Chrome users	28-day rolling	Origin and URL × device
Lab performance	Diagnostics and estimated savings for key templates	Each study	URL × device
Your analytics (optional)	GA4 and Search Console, read-only, to tie perception to traffic and conversions	Daily	Page × query × market

Platform and API

Your study data, wherever you need it.

Pitwall runs on Digitally Charged's own cloud infrastructure at the edge. Every study is stored in its own isolated database, and the same data that builds your report and study site is available through a read-only API, so your BI dashboards, CRM, intranet or agency tools can pull findings, scores and comments directly.

How the platform is built

Collectors run on a schedule at the edge and write raw items to object storage, so every number can be traced back to the original source.
The coding pipeline tags every item against the versioned motorcycle codebook and records the codebook version on each row.
The scoring layer calculates every measure from the coded data on demand, so quarterly re-runs use identical maths.
Each client has its own database. Your data is never mixed with or used for another client, and can be deleted on request.
Authors are one-way hashed before storage. Usernames are never kept.

API at a glance

REST over HTTPS, JSON responses, read-only.
Per-client API keys sent as a bearer token, scoped to that client's studies.
Filter by market, brand, model, theme, sentiment, speaker and date.
Cursor pagination for large comment and video sets.
CSV export on every list endpoint for spreadsheets and BI tools.
Optional webhooks when a live window update or quarterly study is published.

Pitwall API · endpoints

GET/v1/studiesStudies available to your key

GET/v1/studies/{id}/scorecardEvery measure vs competitors

GET/v1/studies/{id}/findingsFindings with evidence, fix, owner, KPI

GET/v1/studies/{id}/commentsCoded comments, verbatim, with source links

GET/v1/studies/{id}/videosVideo reports with timestamped points

GET/v1/studies/{id}/keywordsSearch volume, rank and SERP owners

GET/v1/studies/{id}/speedCore Web Vitals and fix list

GET/v1/studies/{id}/actionsAction plan grouped by team

# Servicing comments from owners in the UK, negative only
curl https://pitwall.digitally-charged.com/api/v1/studies/st_2026q4/comments \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PITWALL_KEY" \
  -G -d theme=servicing -d speaker=owner \
     -d market=GB -d sentiment=negative -d limit=2

{
  "study": "st_2026q4",
  "codebook": "moto-1.0",
  "total": 1126,
  "net_sentiment": -37,
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "cm_8f21a",
      "text": "Third service in and it's still the dealer, not the bike, that's the problem.",
      "lang": "en",
      "source": "forum",
      "market": "GB",
      "speaker": "owner",
      "themes": ["servicing", "dealer"],
      "sentiment": "negative",
      "url": "https://…",
      "published": "2026-09-14"
    }
  ],
  "next": "c_MTAy"
}

Example request and response. API access is set up per client as part of a study or programme.

Method and technical detail

How every number is produced.

A study is only worth paying for if you can trust it. This is what Pitwall collects, how it is coded and scored, and where its limits are. The same detail appears in the method section of every report.

Source	What we collect	How	Used for
YouTube	Comments and replies on official brand, competitor and independent media channels; full video reviews	YouTube Data API; video analysis of speech and on-screen content with timestamps	Sentiment, themes, launch reaction, reviewer vs audience
News & media	Headlines and coverage by market and language	GDELT, Google News by market, publisher RSS	News share of voice, media verdicts, media vs rider
Reviews	Owner, product and dealer reviews	Review platforms and dealer listings	Ownership themes, dealer experience
Forums & communities	Owner and model threads	Public forum collection within each site's terms	Ownership, reliability, servicing, lost-sale signals
Search	Demand and live rankings by market, mobile and desktop	Monthly search volume; live Google results by market and device	Share of search, category visibility, AI Overview citations
AI assistants	Answers to a fixed set of buyer questions	Repeated runs per assistant and market, sources recorded	AI visibility and how the brand is described
Site speed	Real-user and lab performance for you and every competitor	Chrome UX Report (field, p75, 28 days); PageSpeed Insights / Lighthouse (lab)	Core Web Vitals, fix list with estimated savings
Technical SEO	Crawl errors, hreflang, structured data, duplication	DC Intelligence site audit, analyst-reviewed	Developer tickets
Your data (optional)	GA4 and Search Console	Read-only access	Strengthens search and content findings

The codebook

Every comment and headline is coded against a fixed motorcycle codebook, built for this industry rather than borrowed from a general listening tool. Each item records relevance, brand, model, theme, sentiment, market, language, speaker type (owner, prospect, journalist, dealer), ownership stage and whether it relates to racing. Themes include design, engine and performance, electronics, comfort and ergonomics, weight and handling, price and value, finance, reliability, servicing and running costs, dealer experience, build quality, accessories and apparel, racing heritage and community.

Because the codebook is versioned, a quarterly re-run is coded the same way as the baseline, which is what makes movement meaningful.

Validation

Automated tagging is fast but it is never taken on trust. For every study an analyst hand-codes a random validation sample drawn across brands, markets and sources, compares it with the system's tagging, and records the agreement rate. Themes that fall below our threshold are re-coded by hand. The sample size and agreement rate are published in the report.

Brand-level figures are only reported where at least 15 relevant items support them, and every chart shows its n so you can see how much evidence sits behind it.

Net sentiment

Net sentiment runs from −100 (everyone negative) to +100 (everyone positive) and is calculated per brand and per theme. Racing results are reported separately so a race weekend does not distort product perception.

net = (positive − negative) ÷ (positive + negative + neutral) × 100

Ownership Experience Index

One number for life after purchase, combining what owners say about reliability, servicing and running costs, dealer experience and build quality. Each component is a net sentiment score from owners only, weighted by how often that theme is raised.

OEI = Σ (net_theme × mentions_theme) ÷ Σ mentions_theme
themes = reliability, servicing, dealer, build quality

Share of search and voice

Share of search is your brand's branded search volume as a percentage of the total for the competitor set in each market, a well-established leading indicator of market share. News share of voice is the same calculation on coverage over the study window.

share_of_search = brand_volume ÷ Σ competitor_set_volume × 100

Site performance

Headline speed results use Google's field data from real Chrome users at the 75th percentile, assessed against Google's thresholds: LCP 2.5s or less, INP 200ms or less, CLS 0.1 or less. Lab tests diagnose causes and estimate savings, but because lab runs vary, they are never used for the headline number.

Every finding follows the same structure

The finding in one sentence, plus a plain-English version for non-specialists.
Severity: critical, issue, watch, aligned or strength.
Versus competitors: class-leading, competitive, behind or needs action.
Evidence: the numbers, the comments and the sources.
Why it matters commercially.
The fix, with the team that owns it.
The KPI that will show progress at the next update.
Confidence and source notes, including sample size.

Data protection and limits

We only collect public content and stay within each platform's terms. Usernames are never stored: authors are one-way hashed so we can count unique voices without knowing who they are. Personal details are removed from every quote before it is shown. Data is held on Digitally Charged's own infrastructure, any data you supply stays in your own database and is never used for another client, and everything can be deleted at your request when the work ends.

Online conversation over-represents enthusiasts, so Pitwall is not a representative survey. Competitor Facebook and Instagram comments are not collected in the core study; YouTube, media, reviews and forums are where riders do their research. Search volumes are Google estimates. We state these limits in every report so the findings are read correctly.

Timeline and value

A full brand study in 28 days.

Day 1Day 7Day 14Day 21Day 28

Days 1–2Kick-off. Agree markets and competitors, load brand pillars, set up the codebook and collectors.

Days 3–5Historical scrape. Twelve months of comments, news, reviews, forums and search for every brand.

Days 3–16Live listening. Fourteen days of new conversation, so the study reflects now.

Days 17–25Analysis. Code, validate, score, read the evidence, write findings and playbooks.

Days 26–28Delivery. Report, study site and a walkthrough with your teams.

How Pitwall compares with a typical agency brand study

	Typical agency brand study	Pitwall
Time to report	6 to 8 weeks or more	About 4 weeks
Where the data comes from	Surveys, panels or a listening-tool export	What riders and media say unprompted, plus what people search for and what AI assistants answer
Industry knowledge	General codebook	Built for motorcycles: servicing, reliability, dealers, racing, design, price and value
Evidence	Charts and paraphrase	Real quotes, word for word, linked to every finding
Search, AI and website	Rarely included	Share of search, AI visibility, content gaps, Core Web Vitals and technical fixes
What you do next	High-level recommendations	A fix for every finding, with an owner, a KPI and a content brief
Repeat runs	Started from scratch and priced again	Same measures every quarter, so you see what has moved
Who reads your data	Analysts new to the sector	People with more than twenty years in the motorcycle industry

Who's involved

Built by people who have spent their careers in motorcycles.

Pitwall is run by Digitally Charged. Chris Day and John lead every study, and between them bring more than twenty years each of experience in the motorcycle industry: inside manufacturers, distributors and dealer networks, in motorcycle media, and in the digital marketing that sells bikes today.

CD

Chris Day

Founder, Digitally Charged · Pitwall lead

Chris has worked in sales and marketing since 2001 and has focused on the motorcycle industry since 2007. At MotoDirect he helped build established and emerging brands including RST, Wolf, AGV, Motul and Arai, working across product launches, distribution, retailers, customer acquisition and brand growth before becoming Digital Director.

Working client-side meant buying agency services and seeing how easily broad audience numbers and platform reports could hide weak relevance. He founded Digitally Charged to be the partner he had wanted to brief, and designed Pitwall to answer the questions brand teams keep asking: what do riders really think, how do we compare, and what should we fix first.

A background in computer science and interactive media underpins the systems behind Pitwall. Chris also owns Superbike Marketing, home to one of Britain's best-known motorcycle media brands.

FCIMSales & marketing since 2001Motorcycle industry since 2007

J

John

Partner · Industry and insight

John has spent more than twenty years in the motorcycle industry, working with manufacturers, dealers and riders. He brings a deep understanding of how bikes are launched, sold and owned, and of what riders and dealers say once the marketing stops.

On every Pitwall study John reads the evidence alongside Chris, tests each finding against how the trade really works, and makes sure the recommendations are ones a manufacturer, importer or dealer network can act on straight away.

20+ years in motorcycles

2001

Chris begins his career in sales and marketing.

2007

Chris moves into the motorcycle industry, building brands at MotoDirect across launches, distribution, retail and digital, later as Digital Director.

Digitally Charged

Founded as a motorcycle-specialist agency: websites, advertising across Meta, Google and StackAdapt, SEO, measurement, and software and data systems built in-house, for clients across the UK, Europe, North America and Australia & New Zealand.

SuperBike

Ownership of Superbike Marketing gives the team a live view of the topics, formats and publishing rhythms that attract riders, used only at an aggregated level.

Pitwall

Designed and built by Digitally Charged on our own infrastructure, combining automated collection and video analysis with human reading and judgement. The platform build is our own investment and is never charged to clients.

Questions

What clients ask before they start.

Are the comments really from people?

Yes. Every comment in a report was written by a real person in a public place, and each one is shown word for word with a link to where it was posted. We remove bots, spam and duplicates before counting, and we never write, paraphrase or generate customer feedback. Software helps us collect, watch and sort the volume; people read it and write the findings.

How many videos can you really watch?

Thousands per study. Pitwall processes the full audio and on-screen content of every video in scope, so scale is set by how many relevant videos exist rather than how many hours an analyst has. Each video gets a timestamped report, and our team reviews the most influential ones by reach and relevance in person.

How is this different from a social listening tool?

A listening tool gives you a dashboard and leaves the reading to you. Pitwall watches video content as well as reading text, uses a codebook built for motorcycles, adds search, AI assistant and website performance data that listening tools do not cover, benchmarks you against a fixed competitor set, and is read by people who know the industry. You get findings, fixes, owners and KPIs, not just charts.

Which markets and languages do you cover?

We work in the markets that matter to you. Typical studies cover a mix of the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, the Nordics and Japan. Comments and videos are analysed in their original language and quoted with an English translation.

What do you need from us?

Sign-off on scope, your brand pillars or key messages, confirmation of priority markets and competitors, a named contact, and optionally read-only access to GA4 and Search Console. For a future launch we also need the launch timeline and key messages under NDA.

Can we run it every quarter?

Yes, and that is where Pitwall is most valuable. Quarterly updates use identical measures, so you can see exactly what has moved and whether the fixes are working. Launch studies slot into the same programme.

Is a competitor study legal and ethical?

We only use public content, within each platform's terms, and never store usernames. A competitor study is an analysis of what the public says about a rival's brand and bikes, the same information any rider can read, organised and measured properly.

How much does a study cost?

Every study is scoped to your markets, competitors and timeline, and data and processing costs are included. Tell us what you need below and we will send a written proposal with a fixed price.

Discuss your brief

Tell us what you need to know.

Pick a study, add your markets and a line about what you want to find out. We'll reply with a scope, a timeline and a fixed price.

digital@digitally-charged.com

0115 786 0680

Know what riders really think of your bikes.

Five studies. One system. The same measures every time.

The questions it answers

What's measured

What you receive

The questions it answers

How we read it

What you receive

Launch readiness checks

What you receive

The questions it answers

What you receive

The questions it answers

What you receive

The conversation that sells your bikes happens without you.

Five stages, from raw comments to a fix with an owner.

Collect

Code

Score

Analyse

Publish

What your team sees when the study is delivered.

Real people. Real words. Real evidence.

We watch the videos so you don't have to. All of them.

What each video report contains

What a Pitwall study looks like inside.

Net sentiment by theme

Launch reaction: first 30 days

Sample comments

Sample finding

Your brand is missing from 9 of 10 adventure category searches in the UK

Website performance

AI assistant visibility

The numbers behind the opinions.

Category keywords by monthly search volume

Share of search, 12 months

Search volume by market

Where your site ranks

Seasonality of demand

What the study is built from

Every data source in a Pitwall study

Your study data, wherever you need it.

How the platform is built

API at a glance

How every number is produced.

The codebook

Validation

Net sentiment

Ownership Experience Index

Share of search and voice

Site performance

Every finding follows the same structure

Data protection and limits

A full brand study in 28 days.

How Pitwall compares with a typical agency brand study

Built by people who have spent their careers in motorcycles.

Chris Day

John

What clients ask before they start.

Tell us what you need to know.