A prompt is a question you want to know the answer to, in the sense that a buyer would ask it. Ranksmile puts each one to every engine you track and records what came back.

Picking them well is most of the work. It is also where the common mistake lives.

Do not track your brand name

Ask an engine about your company and it will describe your company. You learn that it has heard of you, which you already knew, and nothing about whether you are winning.

Track the questions asked before anyone knows your name. "Best rank tracker for agencies" tells you who owns the category. "Ranksmile pricing" tells you nothing.

What a useful prompt looks like

—Buying intent
The question someone asks when they are choosing, not when they are researching idly
—Category-level
Names the problem or the category, not a vendor
—Natural
Phrased the way a person types it into an assistant, in full sentences if that is how they would ask
—Specific enough to have an answer
"Best CRM" is too broad to produce a stable answer. "Best CRM for a two-person agency" is not.

A good starting set

Ten questions, covering:

  • The category, asked plainly ("what is the best tool for X")
  • The category with your qualifier ("...for agencies", "...for small teams", "...in Poland")
  • The comparison people actually make ("X vs Y")
  • The problem before the category ("how do I stop losing traffic to AI answers")
  • The objection ("is X worth the money")

That's enough to see the shape after a few refreshes. Add more once you can tell which topics you're absent from.

How often they refresh

Every prompt refreshes on your plan's schedule: weekly on Growth, daily on Scale and Agency. There's nothing to set per prompt. When you add or edit prompts, the new and changed ones are scanned right away.

How many

Growth includes 25 prompts, Scale 50 and Agency 100. The limit counts across all your Brand Spaces, and one Brand Space holds at most 50. That's more than most teams can act on, so fill it with questions that matter rather than filling it because it's there.

The test for whether a prompt earns its place

If the answer changed tomorrow, would you do anything differently? If not, it's a vanity prompt. Leave it out and give the slot to a question that matters.

Reading the results

Each prompt comes back with whether you were mentioned, whether you were cited, and who else was. Three of those are about you and one is about the market, and the market column is often the one worth reading first: it tells you which competitors the engines treat as the default answer.

Competitors aggregates that across every prompt you track. Sources does the same for the pages being cited.

Need help?

Write to us and a person answers. See the frequently asked questions first if your question is a common one, or get in touch for anything else.