Prompt
A prompt is the text — question or instruction — submitted to an artificial intelligence to get an answer. It's the starting point of every interaction with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity.
In tracking a brand's visibility, the prompt is the basic unit of measurement: a series of prompts representative of the questions real customers ask is tested — "what solution should I choose for...", "who do you recommend for..." — rather than directly asking "tell me about [my brand]", which measures nothing useful.
How a prompt is phrased strongly influences the answer obtained: a slight rewording can make a brand appear or disappear from the answer. That's why a serious pre-diagnostic relies on several varied prompts, not a single question.