1. Start with a buying decision

Choose one audience, market and product area for your first prompt set. Write down the decision you want to understand: discovering a category, comparing alternatives or checking whether your product meets a requirement. A focused set makes it easier to interpret changes than a mixture of unrelated questions.

Learn more: Getting started with Citera

2. Gather the questions customers actually ask

Use sales conversations, support questions and your existing website content as inputs. Remove names, private customer details and confidential material before using examples. Translate each question into natural language a buyer would use, rather than repeating the brand name in every prompt. Keep branded and unbranded questions separate so you can distinguish brand awareness from category discovery.

3. Cover different stages of research

Include category questions, problem-led questions, comparisons and buying requirements. For example, a marketing team might ask: Which tools help a small team measure AI-search visibility? How does visibility tracking differ from content execution? What should we check before choosing an AI-search platform?

These are illustrative questions, not evidence that any particular platform recommends Citera.

4. Set the context before measuring

Use your company name, domain, relevant competitors, language and target market consistently. Review any suggested prompts for relevance before relying on the resulting report. Avoid near-duplicate questions that overrepresent one topic. Keep a record of the final wording so the team knows exactly what the measurement covers.

Learn more: How AI models see your brand

5. Establish a baseline and review it

Look at the first answers as a baseline, not a guarantee of future visibility. Record the date, platforms and prompt coverage. Inspect examples where your brand is missing or described incorrectly. If you add or remove prompts later, document that change and avoid presenting a changed sample as a like-for-like performance improvement.

Learn more: Turn visibility gaps into action

Troubleshooting

Missing results

Confirm that the intended prompts are included and that your brand, market, language and date range are correct. Check the scan state before starting another run.

If the scan completed but your brand is absent, review the underlying answer. If it failed or never produced an answer, note the prompt and visible error and contact us.