Topics and prompts

Prompts and topics are the building blocks of AI search visibility tracking in AnswerixAI. A prompt is a question you want AI engines to answer with your brand, and a topic groups related prompts so you can see which themes you win and which you lose. This page explains how both work and how prompts drive suggestions and content opportunities.

What is a prompt?#

A prompt in AnswerixAI is one natural-language question that a potential customer might ask an AI engine. AnswerixAI asks every active prompt once a day on each AI engine selected for it and stores each answer. Typical prompts look like this:

• "best CRM for small business"
• "how to automate email marketing for ecommerce"
• "alternatives to Salesforce for startups"

AnswerixAI asks every active prompt once a day on each AI engine selected for it. Each answer is stored with its mentions, citations, sentiment, competitor mentions and your position in the answer. These answers feed the Visibility score described in Visibility scoring.

Which AI engines can a prompt run on?#

The engines available to your prompts depend on your plan. Starter includes ChatGPT and Perplexity. Growth and Business include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Grok (currently paused). Claude is available on Enterprise on request.

You pick the engines for each prompt under Platform & Models when you add it.

What is a topic?#

A topic in AnswerixAI is a label that groups related prompts by theme, product area or buying intent. Each prompt belongs to at most one topic, so topics let you compare how visible your brand is across themes such as pricing, integrations or alternatives:

What is the topic Visibility Rate?#

The Topics page shows a Visibility (30d) column for each topic. This is the topic's Visibility Rate: the share of the topic's prompts with results where AI answers mentioned or cited your brand at least once in the last 30 days. Use it to find the themes where you are strongest and weakest, then open a topic to see the prompts behind the number.

How do prompts get into AnswerixAI?#

You can add prompts to AnswerixAI in four ways: the setup wizard when you create a brand, Add Prompt, AI Generate, and accepting Prompt Suggestions. Every tracked prompt counts toward your plan's prompt limit.

1. Setup wizard: when you create a brand, AnswerixAI writes five prompts for each topic you select, and you review them before tracking starts.
2. Add Prompt: on Prompts, or on your brand's manage prompts page, click Add Prompt, enter the prompt text, choose a Topic, and choose the engines under Platform & Models.
3. AI Generate: on your brand's manage prompts page, click AI Generate, select one or more topics, and AnswerixAI writes five optimized prompts for each selected topic.
4. Prompt Suggestions: accept a suggested prompt from the Prompt Suggestions card on Prompts.

Every tracked prompt counts toward your plan's prompt limit: 50 on Starter and Growth, 200 on Business, and custom on Enterprise.

How do prompt suggestions work?#

The Prompt Suggestions card on Prompts recommends new prompts to track. Suggestions are generated on demand: click New to generate a fresh set (or Generate Suggestions when the list is empty). Each set of suggestions is generated with a 48-hour lifetime, but the list keeps showing the current set until you replace it by clicking New.

To choose suggestions, AnswerixAI looks at your tracked prompts, their estimated AI search volumes, your existing topics, and the competitors that appear most often in your tracked AI answers. When Google Search Console or Google Analytics 4 is connected, it also uses real search queries and landing pages from those accounts. See Google Search Console and GA4.

Each suggestion comes with a topic, a reason and an estimated monthly AI search volume. To track a suggestion, click its add button (Add to tracked prompts).

How are topics created?#

AnswerixAI topics are created in three ways: from the topics you select or type in the setup wizard, automatically when prompt suggestions use a topic name your brand doesn't have yet, and manually with Add Topic on your brand's manage topics page.

• Setup wizard: the topics you select or type during setup become your first topics.
• Prompt suggestions: when suggestions are generated with a topic name your brand doesn't have yet, AnswerixAI creates that topic.
• Manually: on your brand's manage topics page, click Add Topic.

On the manage topics page you can also rename a topic (pencil icon) or delete it. Deleting a topic keeps its prompts; they simply no longer have a topic. Topics can't be merged, so to combine two topics, move the prompts into one topic and delete the other.

How do prompts become content opportunities?#

After each tracking run, AnswerixAI automatically generates content opportunities for your prompts. Each opportunity is tied to one prompt and has an opportunity score from 0 to 100, weighted 40% search volume, 30% visibility gap, 20% competitor gap and 10% intent.

Open Content to review opportunities. To act on one, open it and click Generate Content Brief. Briefs are generated only when you ask and count against a monthly quota: 10 on Starter, 30 on Growth, 50 on Business, and custom on Enterprise.

Can I send briefs to other tools?#

Yes. Click Send to Workflow on an opportunity to post it to a webhook URL you configure. Webhooks are generic, so you can connect any tool that accepts an HTTP webhook, for example an automation platform such as Zapier or Make, or your own CMS. See Content and Webhooks.

What does a typical workflow look like?#

A typical AnswerixAI workflow moves from topics to content: find your weakest topics, find the prompts where competitors appear and you don't, generate content briefs for those prompts, and send the briefs to your content team's tools.

1. Open Topics and sort by Visibility (30d) to find your weakest topics.
2. Open a weak topic and find the prompts where competitors appear and you don't.
3. Open Content, pick the opportunities for those prompts, and click Generate Content Brief.
4. Click Send to Workflow to hand the brief to your content team's tools.
5. Open Prompts and review Prompt Suggestions to expand your tracked prompts.