How to choose the questions to track in AI answers

Tracking your AI visibility starts with a list of questions. Pick the wrong ones and the numbers look fine while customers choose someone else. Pick the right ones and every gap points to work worth doing.

Here is a practical way to build the list.

Start from buying moments

Think about the moments when someone is close to choosing a business like yours, and what they would ask an assistant at that point. For a coffee roaster:

• "Where can I buy specialty coffee beans online?"
• "What's a good coffee subscription in the UK?"
• "Which decaf coffee beans taste like regular coffee?"

These are the questions where being named turns into a customer. Questions further from a decision ("how is coffee grown?") are worth answering on your site, but they matter less as visibility measures.

Write them the way customers talk

People ask assistants in full sentences, often with a detail about their situation. "Best running shoes" becomes "What are good running shoes for flat feet on a budget?" Write your questions that way. You will get answers closer to the ones your customers actually see.

A good source of wording is your own inbox: the questions customers send you, the words they use on sales calls, and the searches you already appear for in Google Search Console.

Include the comparisons

If buyers compare you with alternatives, track those questions too: "What are the alternatives to [competitor]?" or "Which is better for a small team, X or Y?" These answers often decide the shortlist.

Cover each core topic

If your business covers several subjects, make sure each one has questions on the list. A tracker that only measures your strongest topic will hide the gaps in the others.

Keep the list small, then grow it

Twenty well-chosen questions you review every week are worth more than two hundred you never read. Start small, look at the answers, and add questions when you see a pattern: a competitor that keeps appearing, or a type of question where you are always missing.

Revisit it

Products, prices and customers change. Every few months, check that the list still reflects what people ask before they buy, and retire questions that no longer matter.

In Rankoya

You add your questions under AI visibility. Rankoya asks each one to five AI engines in every scan and rechecks them daily, so you can see mentions, position, citations and sentiment per engine. Questions where competitors are named and you are not, in two or more engines, show up as gaps, and each gap can become a draft article. See how the measurement works.