  Continuous gravitational-wave (CW) signals such as emitted by spinning
neutron stars are an important target class for current detectors. However, the
enormous computational demand prohibits fully coherent broadband all-sky
searches for prior unknown CW sources over wide ranges of parameter space and
for yearlong observation times. More efficient hierarchical "semicoherent"
search strategies divide the data into segments much shorter than one year,
which are analyzed coherently; then detection statistics from different
segments are combined incoherently. To optimally perform the incoherent
combination, understanding of the underlying parameter-space structure is
requisite. This problem is addressed here by using new coordinates on the
parameter space, which yield the first analytical parameter-space metric for
the incoherent combination step. This semicoherent metric applies to broadband
all-sky surveys (also embedding directed searches at fixed sky position) for
isolated CW sources. Furthermore, the additional metric resolution attained
through the combination of segments is studied. From the search parameters (sky
position, frequency, and frequency derivatives), solely the metric resolution
in the frequency derivatives is found to significantly increase with the number
of segments.
