How do you find the questions your customers ask AI?
Start from the questions people ask before they buy, not from your keywords. Collect them from sales, support and Search Console, sort them into four types, and keep the 20 to 30 that come closest to a purchase. That list is what you test in the AI assistants every month.
By Discoverable team
Why the question set matters
AI visibility is always visibility for a specific question. “Are we visible in ChatGPT?” has no answer until you know which questions to ask. A good question set is also what makes measuring AI visibility repeatable: the same questions, asked the same way, every month.
Four types of questions
- Category questions: “Which companies supply industrial pumps in Scandinavia?” The buyer knows what they need, not who to buy from.
- Comparison questions: “What is the difference between X and Y?” or “What are the alternatives to X?” Here you are judged against named competitors.
- Problem questions: “How do we reduce downtime on our production line?” The buyer doesn’t yet know that your kind of product is the answer.
- Local questions: “Who services heat pumps near Aarhus?” Common for businesses with several locations.
Where to find them
- Sales: ask your salespeople which questions open a first meeting and which competitors come up.
- Customer service: the questions customers ask before and right after they buy.
- Search Console: queries phrased as questions, and long queries with “best”, “vs” or “alternative”.
- Lost deals: what the buyer compared you with, in their own words.
How to prioritise
Keep the questions that are closest to a purchase and that you can realistically win. A good mix is roughly half category and comparison questions, and the rest problem and local questions. Write them the way a buyer would type them, in each language you sell in. 20 to 30 questions is enough to see a pattern without drowning in answers.
Example: 20 questions for a fictional company
This is an example, not a real customer: a distributor of industrial pumps and spare parts with three locations.
- Which companies sell industrial pumps in Denmark?
- Who are the best suppliers of pump spare parts in Scandinavia?
- Which pump distributor delivers fastest in northern Europe?
- Where can we buy pumps for food production?
- Which suppliers stock ATEX-certified pumps?
- What are the alternatives to buying pumps directly from the manufacturer?
- What is the difference between centrifugal and positive displacement pumps?
- Is it better to repair or replace an industrial pump?
- Which is better for wastewater: a submersible or a dry-installed pump?
- Who offers pump service contracts for factories?
- How do we reduce downtime caused by pump failures?
- Why does our pump keep losing pressure?
- How often should industrial pumps be serviced?
- What does it cost to service an industrial pump?
- How can we cut the energy use of our pumps?
- Who repairs industrial pumps near Aarhus?
- Which pump supplier has a service team in Copenhagen?
- Where can we get emergency pump repair in southern Jutland?
- Which pump suppliers do engineers recommend?
- Which distributors can supply pumps and spare parts on one order?
What to do with the list
Ask each question in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot, more than once, and note who is named and which sources are cited. Where a competitor is named and you are not, the sources show you why. If you would rather not do it by hand, a free snapshot runs your questions for you.
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