How to choose the buyer questions to track in AI answers

Every AI visibility number depends on one decision you make at the start: which questions to ask. Pick vague or self-serving questions and you'll get a flattering score that tells you nothing. Pick the questions your buyers actually ask just before they choose, and you'll get a number that tracks real lost and won deals.

This guide shows how to choose those questions. It includes 45 examples across five types and five example businesses, where to find your own, rules for wording them, and how many to track.

The five types of buyer question

Most questions buyers ask AI assistants before a purchase fall into five types. Each type tells you something different, so a good list covers all five.

You can add a sixth type, brand questions like "Is [your brand] any good?" or "[your brand] pricing", to check what engines say about you. They're useful for catching wrong facts, but they don't measure visibility: the answer will name you because the question did.

The examples below use five made-up businesses so the patterns are easy to see: a freelance invoicing app, a project management tool for agencies, a specialty coffee roaster selling online, HR software for small European companies, and an online bookkeeping service. Real competitor names appear where buyers would use them.

Category questions (9 examples)

These are the broad "best X" questions. They're the hardest to win for smaller brands, but they show whether you're on the shortlist at all.

• Best invoicing software for freelancers in the UK
• Simple invoicing app for a one-person design studio
• Best project management tool for small creative agencies
• Project management software with built-in time tracking
• Best specialty coffee subscription for espresso at home
• Where to buy freshly roasted single-origin coffee online
• Best HR software for a 20-person company in Germany
• Best online bookkeeping service for small ecommerce shops
• Affordable bookkeeping service for freelancers

Add a qualifier buyers really use: a location, a team size, a budget or a type of customer. "Best invoicing software" is a question for the category leaders. "Best invoicing software for freelancers in the UK" is one a focused product can win.

Alternatives questions (9 examples)

People asking for alternatives are often unhappy with their current tool and ready to switch. These questions tell you whether you're considered when a buyer leaves a rival.

• FreshBooks alternatives for freelancers
• Cheaper alternatives to QuickBooks for a sole trader
• Asana alternatives for agencies that bill by the hour
• Monday.com alternatives that are simpler to set up
• Notion alternatives for tracking client projects
• Alternatives to Trade Coffee for espresso beans
• BambooHR alternatives for European companies
• Personio alternatives for a company under 50 people
• Alternatives to hiring an accountant for bookkeeping

Write one for each competitor you lose deals to. If a buyer would add a reason ("cheaper", "simpler", "for agencies"), include it, because the reason changes the answer.

Comparison questions (9 examples)

These name two options and ask the engine to choose. They're where your own comparison pages, and your rivals', matter most.

• FreshBooks vs Wave for freelancers
• Is Xero or QuickBooks better for a small agency?
• Asana vs ClickUp for a 10-person agency
• Linear vs Jira for a small startup
• Atlas Coffee Club vs Trade Coffee
• Personio vs BambooHR for a German startup
• Gusto vs Rippling for a team of 15
• Online bookkeeping service vs a local accountant
• [Your brand] vs [your main rival]

Track at least one comparison against each of your two or three main rivals, and one or two comparisons between rivals that don't name you. If buyers ask "A vs B" and you're a better fit than both, you want to know whether the answer ever mentions you. How to write a comparison page covers the page side.

Problem questions (9 examples)

These are asked before the buyer knows what kind of product they need. Winning them is hard, but it puts you in front of buyers before they've formed a shortlist.

• How do I stop clients paying invoices late?
• How to invoice clients in two currencies
• How do I see which client projects are over budget?
• How to track team capacity across client projects
• Why does my home espresso taste sour?
• How do I run payroll for my first employee in Germany?
• How to manage holiday requests for a small team
• How to get my books ready for tax season as a small business
• What records do I need to keep as a freelancer?

Choose problems your product solves directly. "How do I stop clients paying late?" is a good question for an invoicing app with automatic reminders; "how do I find more clients?" isn't, even if your buyers ask it.

Use-case questions (9 examples)

These describe a specific situation. They're usually the easiest for a focused product to win, because fewer products fit and the answer leans towards the best fit rather than the biggest brand.

• Invoicing tool for freelancers who bill by the hour
• Invoicing for a photography business that takes deposits
• Project management for a remote video production team
• Tool to share project progress with clients without giving them a login
• Wholesale coffee supplier for a small independent cafe
• Decaf coffee beans that taste like regular coffee
• HR software for a company hiring in several EU countries
• Bookkeeping service for Shopify stores
• Bookkeeping help for a startup preparing to raise money

In our 20-brand test, smaller brands rarely won the broad questions but did come up for specific ones that matched what they're best at. Use-case questions are where to look for early wins.

Where to find your own questions

Don't invent questions at your desk. Collect them from places where buyers already describe what they want.

1. Sales and demo calls. What did the prospect say they were looking for, in their own words? What other products did they mention?
2. Support and onboarding. Ask new customers what they would have typed to find a product like yours.
3. Your search console. The longer queries that bring people to your site are often close to the questions they'd ask an AI assistant.
4. Review sites. Read reviews of you and your rivals. The "what problem were you solving?" answers are full of buyer wording.
5. Community threads. Look for "what do you use for..." and "X or Y?" posts in the communities your buyers use. The Reddit playbook covers how to find them.
6. Lost deals. Which rival won, and why? That's an alternatives or comparison question waiting to be tracked.
7. Related questions in search results. The questions a search engine suggests for your category are a good list of phrasings.

The free AI visibility check also writes 5 buyer questions from your homepage. You can edit the category it guesses before it runs, and the questions it writes are a reasonable starting point to refine.

Rules for wording questions

• Use buyers' words, not yours. If buyers say "time tracker" and you say "workforce productivity platform", track "time tracker".
• One need per question. "Cheap invoicing with time tracking and payroll for agencies" mixes three needs. Split it.
• Keep your brand out of category, problem and use-case questions. Including your name makes the answer name you, which tells you nothing.
• Write it the way it would be typed. Short, a bit informal, sometimes not a full sentence. "Best CRM for real estate agents uk" is realistic.
• Include the qualifiers that matter. Location, team size, budget, industry. They change the answer.
• Avoid leading questions. "Which invoicing tool has the best currency support, like Acme?" isn't a fair test.
• Fix the wording once you start. Changing a question resets its history. If you want to try a new phrasing, add it as a new question.

A template to fill in

Copy these patterns and fill in the brackets:

• Best [product type] for [buyer] [in location / under budget]
• [Rival] alternatives for [buyer or reason]
• [Rival A] vs [Rival B] for [buyer]
• Is [Rival] or [You] better for [use case]?
• How do I [problem your product solves]?
• [Product type] for [specific situation]

How many questions to track

More questions give a steadier number, but each one should earn its place. A rough guide:

Pick your top 10

Not every question matters equally. Choose about 10 that are closest to revenue: the category questions for your core buyer, the alternatives questions for your two biggest rivals, and the use cases you win most. On Citemark's Starter plan ($19 a month, up to 50 questions on ChatGPT and Gemini), your top 10 are checked daily and the rest weekly. Pro ($49 a month) adds Claude and up to 3 brands.

A balanced starter list

For a list of 20, a balanced mix looks like this:

• 4 category questions, with the qualifiers your best customers use
• 4 alternatives questions, one or two per main rival
• 4 comparison questions, against your main rivals
• 3 problem questions your product solves directly
• 5 use-case questions for the niches you serve best

Common mistakes

• Only tracking the head term. "Best project management software" will be won by the biggest brands for a long time. Track it, but don't judge yourself by it alone.
• Questions nobody asks. Questions written to match your feature list rather than your buyers' needs give you a number that doesn't relate to sales.
• Too many near-duplicates. Ten slight variations of one question weight that question ten times. Two or three phrasings of your most important question is enough.
• Never revisiting the list. Review it every quarter. Add questions from new lost deals and new rivals; retire questions that no longer fit, but keep their history.

Next step

Write your first 20 questions using the templates above, then see where you stand. Run the free AI visibility check for a first snapshot, read how the score works, and when you're ready to track the full list on a schedule, see pricing. Pro comes with a 7-day trial and no card.