AI search platforms decide whether to cite your content or a competitor's based on entity clarity, content structure, and topical authority. This prompt pack gives you 20 ready-to-use queries to test your visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini. Each prompt targets a specific dimension of citation readiness: brand recognition, category authority, content-specific extraction, and competitive positioning.

How to use this prompt pack: Replace the bracketed placeholders with your company name, service category, and target keywords. Run each prompt across all 5 platforms. Log who gets cited, whether you appear, and what the AI says about you. Repeat monthly to track progress. The methodology behind this pack maps directly to the AEO optimization framework and the broader SEO for B2B SaaS strategy of building visibility across both traditional and AI-powered search.

38%

Software buyers start research with AI chatbots

Gartner 2026

AI search platforms to monitor for citations

Industry standard

Prompts covering brand, category, and comparison queries

This prompt pack

Section 1: Brand Awareness Prompts

These four prompts test the most fundamental question in AI search: does the AI know who you are? If a platform cannot accurately describe your company, your entity clarity needs work. Run all four on every platform and compare the responses side by side. Inconsistencies between platforms reveal gaps in your structured data and content architecture.

Brand Awareness Prompts

Test whether AI platforms recognize your brand and accurately describe what you do.

What is [Your Company]?

The baseline entity recognition test. If the AI cannot describe your company accurately, you have an entity clarity problem. Look for: correct company description, accurate service categorization, up-to-date information. Run on all 5 platforms and compare responses. Inconsistencies reveal where your entity signals are weakest.

What does [Your Company] do?

Tests whether AI platforms associate you with your actual services versus a generic category. Look for: specific service descriptions that match your positioning, correct vertical or market focus, and whether proprietary frameworks or methodology get mentioned. If the AI says you do 'digital marketing' when you specialize in AEO, your schema and content need sharper signals.

Who founded [Your Company] and what is their background?

Tests author and founder entity recognition. If the AI cannot identify your founder or key team members, your Person schema and sameAs links need work. Strong responses will reference professional background, relevant expertise, and published work. This prompt also reveals whether your leadership has enough public signal for AI systems to build confidence in your organization.

[Your Company] vs [Competitor] — which is better for [your use case]?

Tests competitive positioning in AI responses. Note how the AI frames the comparison: does it position you as a specialist or a generalist? Does it reference your methodology or just your name? If competitors get detailed descriptions while you get a generic mention, their content structure is providing better citation signals than yours.

Section 2: Category Authority Prompts

Category prompts test whether AI platforms cite you when users ask about your service area without mentioning your brand. This is the difference between being known and being authoritative. If the AI names competitors in response to category queries but not you, your topical authority needs strengthening through structured content and consistent entity signals.

Category Authority Prompts

Test whether AI platforms cite you for your service category and market terms.

What is [your primary service category]?

Tests whether you are cited in category definitions. Replace the bracket with your core service (e.g., 'What is AEO?' or 'What is B2B SaaS SEO?'). If the AI defines the category and cites a competitor as the source, that competitor has stronger entity-to-category association. Your definition content needs to appear earlier on the page, use direct 'X is Y' format, and be backed by schema that maps your brand to the category.

Best [your service type] agencies for [your target market]

Tests listicle and recommendation citations. Note which companies the AI mentions, in what order, and with what level of detail. Companies described with methodology details and specific differentiators have stronger citation signals than those mentioned by name only. If you are absent entirely, your content lacks the structured comparison data that AI platforms extract for recommendation queries.

How to [key process you help with]

Tests methodology citations. Replace the bracket with the process your service addresses (e.g., 'How to optimize content for AI search' or 'How to build a B2B SaaS content engine'). Look for: are your frameworks referenced? Are your step-by-step methodologies extracted? Numbered frameworks with bold step names get cited as complete blocks. Prose-based methodology descriptions do not.

[Your industry] trends in 2026

Tests whether your thought leadership content gets cited in trend discussions. AI platforms weight freshness heavily for trend queries — content with recent dateModified signals and current-year data gets priority. If competitors with older content still outrank you, their topical authority (content depth and breadth) is compensating for their staleness. Publish original research and analysis, not summaries of other people's predictions.

Section 3: Content-Specific Prompts

These prompts test whether specific pages on your site get extracted and cited. If the AI knows your brand but never references your actual content, you have a structural extraction problem — your content exists but is not formatted for citation.

Content-Specific Prompts

Test whether specific pages and frameworks on your site get cited directly.

[Exact title of your top blog post]

Tests direct content citation. Enter the exact title of your highest-performing blog post or guide. If the AI knows your content exists and cites it, entity-to-content association is working. If it summarizes similar ideas without citing your page, you likely have a generic content problem — 10 other pages say the same thing with the same structure, so the AI has no reason to pick yours.

Explain the [your proprietary framework name]

Tests whether named frameworks are attributed to you. Replace the bracket with a framework, methodology, or coined term your company uses (e.g., 'Explain the Pipeline Gap' or 'Explain the Entity Authority Stack'). If the AI explains the concept but does not cite your site as the source, your entity-to-framework association needs strengthening through consistent naming in schema, headings, and body copy across multiple pages.

What is the difference between [X] and [Y]?

Pick a comparison topic where you have structured comparison content (e.g., 'What is the difference between SEO and AEO?' or 'SEO vs PPC for B2B SaaS'). AI platforms extract comparison tables at a higher rate than prose-based comparisons. If you have an HTML table with clear column headers and specific data in each cell, you have a strong citation signal. If your comparison is embedded in paragraphs, restructure it.

[Technical question your content answers directly]

Pick the question your best content answers most directly — ideally a question where the first sentence of a section provides a self-contained 40-60 word answer. Run this prompt and see whether the AI extracts your answer. If it pulls the answer from a competitor, compare their content structure to yours. The difference is usually formatting: they lead with the answer, you lead with context.

Weak Citation Signal

“Your company is mentioned vaguely ('some agencies offer this service') with no link, no attribution, and no specific methodology referenced. The AI treats you as interchangeable with other providers.”

Strong Citation Signal

“Your company is cited by name with a link to your site, specific framework referenced ('the [Framework Name] approach'), and positioned as an authoritative source for the topic. The AI treats you as the definitive source.”

Section 4: Comparison and Decision Prompts

Decision prompts simulate what buyers ask AI platforms when evaluating vendors. These queries carry the highest commercial intent — if you are cited here, you are in the consideration set. If you are absent, buyers never see your name during the evaluation phase.

Comparison and Decision Prompts

Test whether AI cites you in purchase-decision and vendor-evaluation contexts.

How do I evaluate [your service type] providers?

Tests whether your evaluation criteria and buying guidance get cited. If you have content that defines what to look for in a provider (specific criteria, red flags, evaluation frameworks), the AI should reference it here. If competitors define the evaluation criteria instead, they control the buying narrative. Publish structured content that defines the criteria — numbered lists with specific, non-obvious factors.

[Your category] for [specific vertical or use case]

Tests vertical expertise citations (e.g., 'SEO agency for fintech startups' or 'content marketing for B2B SaaS'). AI platforms cite specialists over generalists for vertical-specific queries. If you claim vertical expertise but your content reads like a generic service page with the vertical name swapped in, AI systems will cite a competitor with deeper vertical content instead.

What should I look for in a [your service type]?

Tests whether your differentiators surface in buying advice. This prompt overlaps with the evaluation prompt but focuses on features and qualities rather than process. Look for: does the AI mention the specific attributes that differentiate you? If it lists generic qualities ('experience, track record, case studies'), your differentiation signals are not reaching AI systems. Create content that names and defines what makes your approach different.

Is [your service type] worth the investment for [your target market]?

Tests ROI and value content citation. This is where data-backed content wins — specific cost ranges, timeline expectations, and ROI benchmarks from authoritative sources. AI platforms extract concrete numbers and attributed data at a much higher rate than qualitative claims. If your ROI content uses 'significant results' instead of specific benchmarks, restructure it with real numbers.

Section 5: Monitoring and Analysis Prompts

These meta-prompts help you understand how AI platforms perceive your authority relative to competitors. They do not test specific content extraction — they reveal the broader authority signals that determine who gets cited for any given query in your category.

Monitoring and Analysis Prompts

Analyze how AI platforms perceive your authority and position relative to competitors.

What sources are most authoritative on [your category]?

The definitive authority perception test. Ask each platform which sources it considers most authoritative in your space. Note where you appear in the list (or whether you appear at all). This reveals the AI's internal authority ranking for your category. If you are absent, your combined signals — entity clarity, topical depth, cross-platform presence, and schema completeness — are below the citation threshold.

Summarize the key arguments for [position your content takes]

Tests whether your contrarian positions get cited and attributed. Replace the bracket with a strong opinion your content expresses (e.g., 'why traffic is the wrong metric for B2B SaaS SEO'). If the AI summarizes the position without citing you, your content expresses the idea but lacks the entity signals to get attribution. Strengthen the connection between your brand and the position through consistent repetition across multiple pages.

What are the latest developments in [your field]?

Tests freshness and relevance. AI platforms deprioritize stale content for recency-sensitive queries. If competitors with newer content get cited while your content is skipped, check your dateModified signals, update your statistics to current-year sources, and refresh any 'trends' or 'state of' content with current data. Freshness is a citation signal, not just a ranking signal.

Create a comparison of [your offering type] options

Tests whether your structured comparison data gets extracted into AI-generated tables. When an AI platform builds a comparison table in its response, it pulls from sources with existing tabular data. If your comparison content uses HTML tables with clear headers and specific, non-generic data in each cell, you have a high probability of being the source. Prose-based comparisons get skipped in favor of structured ones.

The Monthly Monitoring Workflow

Running these 20 prompts once gives you a baseline. Running them monthly gives you a trend. The goal is not perfection on day one — it is systematic improvement over time as you strengthen entity clarity, restructure content for extraction, and build topical authority across platforms.

Run Prompts

Test all 20 prompts across 5 platforms

Log Citations

Record who gets cited and why for each query

Identify Gaps

Find queries where competitors are cited but you are not

Fix Content

Restructure content to match citation-winning patterns

Re-test Monthly

Track improvement over time across all platforms

How to Read Your Results

After running all 20 prompts, categorize each response into one of four citation levels. The level tells you exactly what to fix.

Citation Level	What It Means	What to Fix
Direct citation with link	Strong. The AI trusts your content enough to link to it as a source.	Maintain freshness. Monitor for competitors overtaking you.
Mentioned by name, no link	Moderate. The AI knows you exist but does not consider your page the authoritative source.	Strengthen content structure. Add direct-answer first sentences and structured data.
Described without name	Weak entity recognition. The AI references your ideas or approach but cannot attribute them.	Fix entity clarity: Organization schema, sameAs links, consistent naming across pages and profiles.
Not mentioned at all	Invisible to this platform for this query. Your content is either inaccessible, too generic, or outranked.	Check crawler access (robots.txt), content uniqueness, and topical authority depth.

Use this tracking template to log results across all platforms and queries:

Query	ChatGPT	Perplexity	Claude	Google AIO	Gemini	Cited?	Who Instead?
What is [Your Company]?
What does [Your Company] do?
Who founded [Your Company]?
[Your Company] vs [Competitor]
What is [your service category]?
Best [service type] agencies
How to [key process]
[Industry] trends in 2026
[Top blog post title]
Explain [proprietary framework]
Difference between [X] and [Y]
[Technical question]
How to evaluate [service] providers
[Category] for [vertical]
What to look for in [service]
Is [service] worth the investment?
Most authoritative sources on [category]
Key arguments for [your position]
Latest developments in [field]
Comparison of [offering] options

What to Do Next

Start with Section 1 (Brand Awareness). If the AI cannot accurately describe your company across all 5 platforms, nothing else matters — entity clarity is the foundation. Fix that first before optimizing for category or content-specific citations.

For a structural readiness assessment that complements this prompt pack, use the AEO Citation Readiness Checklist. It covers the 43 technical and content checks that determine whether your pages are citation-ready in the first place. This prompt pack tests the outcome; the checklist audits the inputs.

For the full methodology behind AI search optimization — the Entity Authority Stack, the 5-Step AEO Framework, and the Dual-Index Strategy — see the AEO Optimization service page.

If you want help running this audit across your site and building the content structure that earns citations, get in touch. The first thing we do is run these exact prompts with your company name — the gap between what you expect and what the AI actually says is always revealing.