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Everything in answer-engine optimization rests on one decision: which prompts you track. Get the list right and your data maps directly to revenue. Get it wrong and you’ll optimize for questions no buyer ever asks. Prompts are the input to the whole loop, so they deserve more thought than most brands give them.
Track the questions buyers ask - not keywords
The old SEO instinct is to think in keywords: “personal injury lawyer Austin.” But nobody talks to ChatGPT in keywords. They ask full, messy, high-intent questions:
“Who’s the best personal injury lawyer in Austin for a car accident?”
That’s the prompt worth tracking, because that’s the moment an AI names a few firms and a buyer chooses one. Take Brightpath Injury Law in Austin: the keyword tells you a category exists, but the question tells you exactly which answer they need to win.
Cover the intents that matter
A good prompt set isn’t just long - it’s balanced across the ways buyers actually ask. Aim to cover a few distinct intents:
- Best-of / recommendation - “best X for Y,” “top X in [city].” The highest-intent prompts; an AI naming “the best” carries enormous weight.
- Comparison - “X vs Y,” “alternatives to X.” Buyers here are close to deciding.
- Problem-led - “how do I fix / handle / choose X?” These pull in brands as part of the solution.
- Category / definitional - “what is X,” “do I need X?” Lower intent, but they shape early impressions and often cite the sources you want to be in.
Weighting toward best-of and comparison prompts keeps your tracking anchored to money, while a few problem-led and category prompts show you where trust is being built upstream.
How many prompts to track
More is not better. The goal is a set that’s representative and stable, not exhaustive:
- Start with 15–30 high-intent prompts. That’s usually enough to cover your core buying questions across a category without drowning in noise.
- Keep the set stable. Comparable numbers over time require a consistent list. Swap prompts too often and you lose your trend line.
- Expand deliberately. Add prompts for new products, new geographies, or a competitor you want to watch - one clear reason at a time.
Remember every prompt is multiplied across seven engines. Thirty prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Copilot and Claude is already 210 answers to watch - plenty of signal.
Let the tooling do the drafting
Coming up with a great prompt set from a blank page is hard, which is why Monitor generates a starting set for you from your brand, category and competitors, then lets you edit, add and remove. You keep full control over the list; the tool just removes the blank-page problem and makes sure you’re not missing an obvious high-intent question.
The best prompt sets are living documents - reviewed quarterly, trimmed of what stopped mattering, and grown toward where your buyers are heading next.
If you’d rather start from a smart draft than a blank page, Visibility AI’s free trial generates a tailored prompt set for your brand in minutes.