What does it mean if we do not appear at all?

Plenty of first scans come back near zero. It is a common result for brands that are perfectly healthy in ordinary search, and it is worth more than a middling score, because a zero is unambiguous.

What we check before reporting a zero

One distinction matters above all others: a zero on a question that was answered is a finding, and a zero on a question where every call failed is nothing at all. The second is a question we failed to ask, and it leaves the denominator entirely rather than being counted as an absence. A tool that quietly counts its own failures as your invisibility is reporting its outage as your problem.

What a genuine zero tells you

• Who is there instead. Every answer that did not name you named somebody. That list, counted across the whole basket, is your real competitive set in this channel — which is often not the set you would have written down.
• Which sources put them there. The pages the assistants drew on are recorded. When the same three sources sit behind most of your category's answers, you have found where the argument is actually being had.
• Which questions are winnable. Not all absences are equal. A question where one rival dominates every assistant is a hard fight. A question where the assistants disagree with each other is unsettled, and unsettled is where a newcomer gets in.

The one thing a zero does not mean

It does not mean the assistants have judged your product and rejected it. In most cases it means the web they read has very little to say about you in the terms buyers use — which is a fixable problem, and a different one from being actively dismissed. Which of the two you have is visible in the answers themselves.