I don’t need to tell you that AI search is everywhere. It feels like it’s embedded in everything we do. It’s in Google search results through AI Mode and AI Overviews. It’s been integrated into social media apps. It’s being discussed across our LinkedIn feeds, in blog posts, and in team meetings. Folks all over the world are using AI agents like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and more in their everyday lives. 

And I don’t know about you, but sometimes it has me going “I get it! AI is here to stay!” just like you’re probably thinking “I get it! AI is everywhere” after this intro.

So … What am I getting at? The reality is that search has changed, and will continue to change, just like it always has. Admittedly, it sometimes feels like it is changing at a whirlwind pace these days. And you are likely getting questions from your boss, client, team, and stakeholders in general, like “what are we doing about it?” and “how are we going to compete in this new evolution of search?” or “Should we be investing in GEO (generative engine optimization)?” Because users aren’t just Googling their questions anymore. The search journey often starts in LLMs and then leads to additional searches. 

And if you’re not showing up in AI-generated responses, you may be missing out on visibility.

The good news is that if you’ve built a strong foundation for content creation that is rooted in SEO best practices and features creative, data-driven perspectives, you’re already moving in the right direction. As industry expert, Lily Ray, has said:

Fundamentally, if you’ve been investing in SEO, brand building, and content marketing, you’re already doing GEO. If you haven’t, now’s the time because it definitely matters for AI search.

And the great news is that you can now do your GEO and SEO tasks in the same tool with Moz Pro’s newest features. We’ve recently rolled out an AI research toolkit that can help you tackle AI search visibility in a tangible way. I’ve put together a five-step workflow that moves from research to refinement all within the tool suite you already use. 

We start by researching prompts that are important to your business. We track your presence in AI-generated responses. Then we use competitor information and organic data to identify high-impact opportunities for content creation and updates. I’ll then show you how to monitor your progress over time. And finally, you can review and adjust as needed to stay agile and competitive as the world of marketing and search shifts.

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It’s probably not a surprise that the first step in our workflow is research, but where do you start? My best advice — start with what you know!

AI search starts with a prompt. An AI prompt is a specific set of instructions or a question entered into an AI tool to guide its logic and tell it what you want to know, create, or do. It is a conversation between a user and an LLM. And when users interact with LLMs, they typically do so in a conversational way. But how are people talking, conversationally, about your brand, industry, and niche? This is where Prompt Suggestions comes in handy.

In the Prompt Suggestions tool, you can enter any term or topic related to your brand to receive a list of suggested prompts people may use in LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini to discover and learn about your brand. This allows you to research how your brand shows up in AI-generated responses.

To get started, simply enter your topic or term and click Analyze. Not only will the tool give you a list of prompts you may want to research and track further, but it will also provide a snapshot of the organic search metrics associated with the topic cluster.

The Organic search snapshot is based on - you guessed it!- organic search data and SERPs. Seeing this data alongside your suggested prompts allows you to make a fully informed decision about prompt targeting and content strategy. You can even click Analyze topic in Keyword Suggestions to see organic data for the full cluster in our Keyword Explorer tool.

But why is it important to consider organic data when doing AI research? 

AI-generated responses aren’t the same as organic search. Well, as I noted earlier, SEO and GEO are in the same realm. In fact, Lily Ray has estimated that GEO and SEO tasks overlap by about 90%. This likely means that if you target a topic for AI search, it will also impact how you show up in organic search. And while things like search volume and Difficulty may not directly impact your decision to track a prompt, it could help you determine where your time and effort is best spent for content creation and maintenance. Including Search Intent will also help you determine the types of content people are looking for related to your topic, so you can better cater to their needs. 

Once you’ve identified the prompts you want to track and work with, you can move on to step 2. Or, if you’re looking for ways to expand your prompt research, I highly recommend checking out Tom Capper’s Whiteboard Friday episode on fan-out prompts below. Or if you’re curious about the science behind query fan-out, Dr. Pete Meyers has published an excellent article all about it, and Web Guide, right here on the Moz Blog.

Now that you’ve identified prompts that are important to your business, you can add them to your AI Visibility Dashboard to track. 

Why should I track AI prompts?

Prompt tracking allows you to monitor how your brand appears in AI-generated responses, which is critical to understanding brand reach and visibility. So just like you track rankings in SERPs, you should also track your AI visibility. By doing so, you’ll get a complete picture of how your audience is finding you and spot ways to improve your brand’s presence in the marketplace. By not tracking AI visibility, you’re missing out on understanding a huge piece of the new search landscape puzzle. 

Now, you could track your selected prompts manually by going to each LLM (like Gemini), entering the prompt, and then noting what brands are being mentioned in the response. 

But let’s be honest, nobody has time for that.

AI Visibility in Moz Pro allows you to track prompts to see where and when your brand shows up in the AI-generated responses. You can also track your visibility alongside 3 competitor brands to get a better idea of how you stack up in your industry.

There are a few ways to add prompts to track in your dashboard. If you’re working in Prompt Suggestions and you’ve spotted some prompts you want to track, select them using the checkboxes on the left and then click Track prompts in AI Visibility. 

You can then select the AI Visibility dashboard you’d like to track them in. Or if you haven’t set up a dashboard yet, take a detour to step 2.5 below.

Alternatively, you can add prompts from within the Settings menu of your dashboard by querying a new list of prompts or entering them manually. Entering prompts manually allows you to track specific prompts that you may have researched or discovered outside of the tools.

Step 2.5: Setup

I know, I know. I said this was a five-step process, and now I’ve snuck in a sneaky half step. Think of this as a mini step rather than an actual step. If you have already set up an AI Visibility Dashboard, you can skip this step. But if you haven’t, now is a great time to do so! It’s easy to get started and will help immensely with the overall workflow.

To set up your AI Visibility Dashboard:

1. From within Prompt Suggestions, click Create a new AI Visibility Dashboard or from the AI Visibility tool of Moz Pro, click Add new dashboard. 
2. Enter your brand name and any terms associated with your brand (like iPhone for Apple or Dinky Decker for Cadbury).
3. Enter up to three competitors (optional but highly recommended). Pro tip! Don’t know who your competitors are? Check out the True Competitor tool.
4. Enter topics important to your brand (like “crochet patterns” for Hobbii or “best phones for photography” for Apple).

5. Click Generate Prompts.

6. Select prompts from the list generated and click Save & Continue. You can add and remove tracked prompts after setup, and you can also add prompts manually, which allows for additional flexibility (especially if you’re following any of Tom’s prompt ideas).

Now that your new dashboard is gathering data, it’s time to move on to our next step.

Pro tip! Need more help? Be sure to check out our Help Hub article that walks through setup and all the modules included in your dashboard.

To recap, you’ve now selected prompts that matter to your business and have started tracking them to see how your brand shows up in AI-generated responses as compared to your competitors. Now it’s time to identify opportunities for content creation and updates.

If there is a specific prompt or topic that you and your stakeholders are particularly passionate about, you can move forward to step 4. However, if you’re looking for additional ideas or don’t know where to start, I recommend checking out the Prompt Performance module in AI Visibility.

This handy module will show you which AI-generated responses you and your competitors are featured in for your tracked prompts. This is a great opportunity to see exactly how you and your competitors are referenced in these responses, so you can make informed decisions about content creation and updates. 

Not only can you see which tracked brands are mentioned (and whether your brand is mentioned first, second, or third, etc.), but you can also see the actual response generated by the AI agent. 

By reviewing your tracked prompts alongside when and how you and your competitors are being referenced, you can identify content opportunities and gaps.

In the example above, the brand I’m tracking is not being featured in the prompt response for “are ethical brands adopting size-inclusive clothing ranges?”, and neither are the competitors I am tracking. This could be a great opportunity to add content to my about page, blog, or USP that specifically addresses this prompt to gain additional visibility and brand reach.

Alternatively, if there is a prompt where the brand I’m tracking is being referenced farther down in the response than my tracked competitors (second, third, or fourth) or where I am not happy with the way my brand is being referenced in the response itself, I can use that information to explore content refresh opportunities.

Review your prompt performance regularly to spot competitive shifts and discover opportunities to improve your brand awareness.

Once we’ve identified prompts we want to focus on in our content strategy, we are going to use AI Content Brief to generate a comprehensive, SEO-informed brief.

To get started, add your prompt(s) into AI Content Brief, select your Content Type, and click Generate.

AI Content Brief will outline everything you need in order to create content for your chosen topic including target audience, suggested headers and structure, and questions or facts to consider. You can edit the brief as needed and then export to .pdf or .docx to give to your writers, marketing team, or yourself if you are the one planning to write the content.

I recommend adding your domain under the Your Existing Content section prior to exporting your brief. This will allow the tool to identify content you already have on your website that may be performing for this keyword. You can use that information to identify content you can update to better serve your audience and search intent based on your newly generated brief, rather than creating all new content from scratch. 

One caveat I do want to mention is that this tool is not specifically designed to create content for AI search. It is part of our Keyword Research toolset, and the data used to create these briefs is based on organic search data.

But Meghan, why should I create content based on and for organic search if my goal is to show up in AI search?

This is a great question! As I mentioned previously, GEO and SEO are closely related, and what you create for AI search may (and likely will) impact your organic search traffic. 

This leads me to the concept of out-of-model responses in LLMs. My colleague, Tom Capper (you remember him), did an excellent job of explaining this in a Whiteboard Friday episode that I’ve added below. But just to recap (T-Cap), out-of-model responses are ones where AI agents like Gemini and ChatGPT pull information from the web by performing external searches (things like “what’s the best phone for taking pictures at night?” or “How likely is Harry Styles to extend his tour into 2027?”). And these types of queries are ones where you have a better chance of influencing how you show up in the responses, faster, because the timeline for updates is based on how quickly Google can crawl and index your content, rather than how quickly the LLM’s underlying training set is updated.

Since LLMs often search the web to provide real-time answers (essentially acting as a super-user of Google), building a brief based on organic SERP data is actually the most logical way to influence those LLM responses. This is one of the most direct levers we have when it comes to showing up in AI-generated responses.

So essentially, by creating content that ranks well and is optimized for organic search, you can positively impact your ability to show up and AI-generated responses for these types of queries. And if you’re looking for additional ways to influence visibility in these types of responses, make sure you take the time to watch Tom’s full episode.

We’re almost there! You’ve made it to the final step. Now that you’re tracking prompts and have created content (or updated it), it’s time to monitor, review, and adjust.

Let’s pop back into our AI Visibility Dashboard. If you’ve just created one in step 2.5, be sure to wait until your first data collection has populated. Within your dashboard, you can see how your brand’s visibility in AI-generated responses has changed over time. We offer multiple charts to help you keep track of how you and your competitors are performing so you can continue to make adjustments to your strategy. This data includes how often and how prominently your brand appears.

So now you’re done! Just kidding. Just like monitoring and adjusting your strategy for organic search never ends, the same is true for AI search. So I hope you hold onto this workflow and return to it from time to time to ensure you’re still meeting the right intent with your content, finding new ways to improve your visibility, and being mentioned where it matters most.

In conclusion, continuing to create great, perspective-led content that helps your audience is still the primary way to build brand awareness and visibility. People are naturally curious - make sure you’re answering their questions, and they’ll be sure to find you. And Moz Pro is here to help you find out what those questions are and how to format your content efficiently.