Define and manage the questions sent to AI models to monitor your brand's visibility and ranking.

Overview

Prompts are the foundation of everything in AEO Optima. A prompt is a question or query that gets sent to AI answer engines — the same kinds of questions your potential customers are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI tools every day.

By defining the right set of prompts, you control exactly what you're monitoring. Every snapshot, every visibility score, and every trend line traces back to the prompts you've configured.

Why Prompts Matter

When someone asks an AI model "What is the best project management tool?", the AI generates a response that may or may not mention your brand. AEO Optima lets you define that exact question as a prompt, send it to multiple AI models on a regular schedule, and track whether your brand appears — and where it ranks — in the responses.

The quality and coverage of your prompts directly determines the quality of your visibility data.

Creating Effective Prompts

Different prompt types reveal different aspects of your AI visibility. Use the table below as a guide when building your prompt library.

Prompt Type	Example	What It Reveals
Brand Awareness	"What is [Your Brand]?"	Whether AI models know your brand exists and how they describe it
Brand Comparison	"Compare [Your Brand] vs [Competitor]"	How AI positions you head-to-head against a specific competitor
Problem / Solution	"How do I solve [problem your product addresses]?"	Whether AI recommends your product when users describe a pain point
Feature Specific	"What CRM has the best email automation?"	Whether your brand surfaces for specific feature searches
Alternatives	"What are alternatives to [Competitor]?"	Whether AI suggests your brand when users are looking to switch
Pricing	"How much does [Your Brand or Competitor] cost?"	How accurately AI represents your pricing and value proposition
How-To	"How to set up [Your Brand's product]?"	Whether AI can guide users through your product, indicating deep knowledge
Review Based	"Is [Your Brand] good?"	The general sentiment and reputation AI associates with your brand

Prompt Segmentation (Branded vs Non-Branded vs Competitor)

Every prompt is automatically classified into one of three segments based on whether it mentions your brand name, competitor names, or neither:

Segment	Definition	Example
Branded	Prompt mentions your brand name, no competitors	"What is TechShu?", "Is Podar a good school?"
Non-Branded	Prompt mentions neither your brand nor competitors	"Best luxury resort in Greece", "Top TMT bar in India"
Competitor	Prompt mentions your brand AND a competitor, or uses a "vs" comparison	"TechShu vs WebFX", "Compare INT. to Cyient"

Why Segmentation Matters

Without segmentation, branded prompts inflate your visibility scores. A query like "What is [Your Brand]?" will almost always mention your brand — that's not organic discoverability, that's expected. By filtering to Non-Branded prompts only, you see your true organic AI visibility: how often AI recommends you when users aren't specifically asking about you.

How Auto-Detection Works

When you create or import a prompt, AEO Optima automatically:

Checks if the prompt text contains your brand name (fuzzy matching handles abbreviations and variants).
Checks if any competitor names from your competitor configurations appear in the text.
Detects "vs" or "versus" patterns that indicate a comparison query.

The detected segment is shown as a badge on the prompt. You can always override the auto-detection by manually selecting a different segment.

Using the Segment Toggle

Every analytics page includes a Segment Toggle at the top: All | Branded | Non-Branded | Competitor. Switching segments filters all charts, KPIs, and data on the page to show only data from prompts in that segment. The toggle is URL-synced, so filtered views are bookmarkable and shareable.

Segment in Reports and APIs

Reports: Choose a segment when generating a report to focus on branded-only or non-branded-only metrics.
API: All analytics endpoints accept a ?segment=all|branded|non-branded|competitor parameter.
CSV: The prompt_segment column is included in CSV exports and recognized during imports.

Setting Business Priority

Every prompt can be assigned a Business Priority score from 1 to 10. This score helps you focus your attention on the prompts that matter most to your business outcomes.

Priority Range	Description	Examples
9 - 10	High-intent purchase queries. These are the prompts closest to a buying decision.	"Best [product category] for [specific use case]", "Compare [Your Brand] vs [Top Competitor]"
7 - 8	Comparison and evaluation queries. Users are actively researching options.	"Alternatives to [Competitor]", "What [product type] has best [feature]?"
5 - 6	Category awareness queries. Users are exploring the space but not yet comparing.	"What is [product category]?", "How does [technology] work?"
3 - 4	Informational queries. Broad questions where brand mention is a bonus, not expected.	"What are the trends in [industry]?", "How to improve [general business process]?"
1 - 2	Background monitoring. Low commercial intent but useful for tracking brand perception.	"Is [Your Brand] a good company to work for?", "History of [Your Brand]"

Priority scores are used to weight visibility calculations and to sort prompts in reports, so your most important queries always surface first.

Topics

Every prompt can have a Topic — a short label used to organize and group related prompts. For example, prompts like "What is the best CRM?" and "Top CRM tools for enterprise" might both have the topic "CRM Software".

Topics can be set manually when creating or editing a prompt.
If left blank, a topic is auto-generated from the prompt text by extracting the most meaningful words.
The prompts table shows a color-coded topic column for quick visual grouping.
A Topic filter dropdown lets you view only prompts belonging to a specific topic.

Managing Your Prompt Library

Adding a Prompt

Navigate to Prompts from the sidebar.
Click Add Prompt.
Enter the prompt text exactly as a user would type it into an AI chatbot.
Optionally enter a Topic for grouping (auto-generated if left blank).
Set the Business Priority (1-10).
Optionally set the Prompt Type, Search Volume, and Page URLs.
Click Create Prompt.

Importing from CSV

You can bulk-import prompts from a CSV file. This is the fastest way to add a large number of prompts.

Click Import CSV from the prompts header.
Download the template or drag-and-drop your own CSV file.
CSV format: query, topic, tags — only the query column is required.
Review the preview — valid, duplicate, and error rows are highlighted.
Click Import to create all valid prompts.

Every imported prompt is auto-classified with intent, volume, SDS tier, journey stage, freshness, risk level, and topic. No manual classification needed.

Exporting to CSV

Click the Export button (download icon) to download all prompts as a CSV file with full metadata including query, topic, tags, type, intent, journey stage, volume, SDS tier, freshness, risk, and active status.

Editing and Archiving

Click any prompt text in the table to inline-edit it directly.
Use the row action menu to open the full edit page, take a snapshot, or delete.
Prompts can be deactivated with the Active toggle rather than deleted, preserving all historical snapshot data.

Organizing by Topic

Topics help you group related prompts for easier filtering. Common topic schemes include:

By product line: CRM Software, Email Marketing, Analytics Platform
By competitor: HubSpot Comparison, Salesforce Alternative
By use case: Lead Generation, Customer Retention, Onboarding

Best Practices

Tip: Start with 5 to 10 prompts that cover your most important use cases, or use Import CSV to bulk-add prompts and let auto-classification handle the rest. You can also use Discover Prompts to generate prompts with AI assistance.

Write Prompts Like a Real User

AI models respond differently to conversational queries than to keyword-style searches. Write your prompts the way a real person would ask a question:

Good: "What is the best email marketing platform for small businesses?"
Less effective: "best email marketing platform small business"

Cover Multiple Angles

For your most important topics, create prompts from different angles:

Direct brand query: "What is [Your Brand]?"
Comparative: "How does [Your Brand] compare to [Competitor]?"
Problem-oriented: "I need a tool that does [thing your product does]. What should I use?"

Review and Rotate

AI model responses evolve over time as models are retrained. Review your prompt library monthly:

Remove prompts that are no longer relevant to your business.
Add prompts that reflect new products, features, or competitive dynamics.
Adjust priorities based on what's driving the most business value.

Monitor the Rankings

When your brand appears in a numbered list within an AI response, AEO Optima records your rank position. Track this over time — moving from position 5 to position 2 is a meaningful improvement, even if your overall visibility percentage stays the same.

Prompts & Rankings