What AI Prompts Are and Why You Should Track Them

SEO is no longer just about keywords. As more users turn to large language models (LLMs) to ask questions, research products, and make decisions, prompts have become a critical focus for SEOs. If you are not tracking which prompts surface your content, or whether your competitors dominate the conversations, you are missing a critical layer of brand visibility.

In this blog post, we break down what AI prompts are and explain why tracking them is essential for understanding your brand’s visibility in AI search.

What Are AI Prompts?

Prompts are queries or instructions that users type into an LLM to generate a specific response. In SEO, prompts serve a similar purpose to keywords. However, while keywords are often short and fragmented, prompts reflect more conversational language. They are often longer and shaped by how people actually speak.

For example, a keyword might be “best rank tracking tool”, while the equivalent prompt could be “Which SEO tool is best for rank tracking?”

Let us take a look at some examples of different prompts.

Examples of AI prompts

To help you understand the different ways people search in LLMs, we divide AI prompts into five categories: informational, comparative, task-based, brand/product-related, and evaluative prompts. A single prompt can fall into more than one category, depending on its form and purpose.

Informational prompts are used when users want to understand a concept, process, or topic. They are typically phrased as questions and often include words like “what is” and “explain.”

Example: What is rank tracking in SEO?

Comparative prompts compare products, tools, services, or methods, helping users weigh their options. They often include brand names and words like “compare” or “vs.”

Example: AccuRanker vs. Semrush

Instructional prompts are used when people want the LLM to perform a task or provide instructions. They often include “how to” or more instructional words like “write” and “create.”

Example: How to get mentioned in LLMs?

Brand/product-related prompts are used when users want to research a product or brand, such as pricing, features, or other specific details. They typically include a company or product name.

Example: Describe AccuRanker’s features

Evaluative prompts are used when users want to assess whether something is valuable, trustworthy, or a good fit. They often ask for opinions or pros and cons.

Example: Is AccuRanker a good tool?

Let us explore why you should track prompts in your SEO work and what insights these prompt categories deliver.

Why You Should Track Prompts

Prompt tracking matters because LLMs are becoming a parallel search experience. Users may never visit a search engine if the LLM provides the answer they need. Thus, if you only focus on keywords, you are missing a large and growing part of how users discover, compare, and evaluate brands.

Tracking prompts lets you understand how your brand shows up, or fails to, in AI-generated answers. You learn which queries mention your brand and where competitors dominate instead, helping you identify content gaps. The various prompt types offer different insights:

• Informational prompts help you identify content opportunities where your expertise can earn citations.
• Comparative prompts reveal how your brand is evaluated alongside competitors, allowing you to assess whether you need to refine your positioning.
• Instructional prompts inform you about what your audience aims to accomplish, helping you align your educational content with their needs.
• Brand/product-related prompts reveal how LLMs describe your brand and product, enabling you to assess and refine how the LLMs present your brand.
• Evaluative prompts expose potential reputation concerns you can address by reinforcing your value points to strengthen your reputation.

With prompt tracking, you are not guessing; you work from real, observable data. But prompt tracking should complement, not replace, your keyword tracking. Together, they provide a fuller, more accurate picture of your brand’s presence across traditional and AI-powered search.

Acting on Prompt Insights

Tracking different prompts is only the beginning. The real value comes from acting on the insights — whether the LLM answers include you or not.

If the response to one of your high-priority prompts does not mention you, you can analyze the content cited and examine what makes it effective. Is it a guide? A feature page? A review? This helps you understand what the LLM prefers for that prompt, so you can improve your content to match those preferences.

If the LLM answer presents your brand, but not accurately or in your preferred way, you can use this insight to adjust your messaging, update your content, or add clarifying information across platforms to attempt to correct how the LLM presents your brand.

By analyzing how and where your brand appears in AI-generated answers, you gain the necessary insights to refine your content, correct misrepresentations, and improve your visibility in AI search.

Start Tracking AI Prompts

Prompts and LLMs are shaping the future of search. If the LLM responses to your high-priority prompts do not include your brand or content, you risk losing visibility to your competitors. That is why prompt tracking is essential for SEOs who want to stay visible in the age of AI-generated answers.

With AccuLLM, you can monitor your presence in AI-generated answers, understand which sources the LLMs frequently cite, and start improving your AI visibility. Want to see how it works? Request a demo with our team today.