Add prompts

Prompts are the questions you want to be the answer to. There are three ways to get them into your workspace, and you will use all three over time.

What you'll learn

• How to add a prompt and put it in the right topic
• How discovery proposes prompts, and how to judge them
• How many to run, and what to do when you hit your limit

Before you start

You need your business profile set up, which onboarding does. If your category or markets are wrong, fix those first: they are what discovery reads, and a wrong market produces prompts nobody in your area would ask.

Write one yourself

1. Open Prompts.
2. Add a prompt. Write the whole question the way a buyer would say it out loud.
3. Assign it to a topic. Topics are how the lens groups the list and how reporting rolls it up, so group by buyer problem rather than by phrasing.
4. Save. It joins the next check cycle.

Keep your own name out of it. See your first prompts.

Accept a proposed prompt

Discovery proposes prompts from your site, your category and the answers already read on your behalf. Review them rather than accepting the lot:

• Accept anything a buyer would plausibly type, especially anything where a rival already appears.
• Reject anything that reads like a search phrase rather than a question.
• Reject anything too broad to name a specific business, since the answer will name nobody and measure nothing.
• Edit before accepting when the shape is right and the place or the buyer is missing.

Take one from what you are losing

Ask the assistant "Which prompts am I losing, and who is taking them?" A rival winning a question you do not track is a gap you cannot see, so contested prompts are usually the strongest candidates for the next batch.

Topics

A topic is a group of prompts about one buyer problem. Use them:

• The Prompts landscape is a list of topics, not a list of prompts, so topics are how you navigate.
• Reporting rolls up by topic.
• A topic where every prompt loses is a content project. A topic with one losing prompt is an edit.

Limits and cadence

Every prompt is checked on every surface your plan covers, on your plan's cadence. That means a prompt costs coverage every cycle, whether or not it is a good prompt.

When you reach your plan's prompt allowance, the honest move is usually not to upgrade immediately. Retire the prompts that have never produced a citation or a competitor sighting, and reinvest the room. See coverage and credits.

Try this in Outercite

Open Prompts and count how many of your prompts you could imagine a real buyer saying out loud. That number, not the total, is your real prompt set.

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