What is AI prompt tracking and how does prompt monitoring work?
AI prompt tracking means running the questions your customers actually ask AI, like “what are the best lead generation solutions for functional medicine doctors in Atlanta,” and detecting whether the AI recommends you or your competitors. It’s the answer engine optimization (AEO) version of keyword rank tracking. Instead of a position in a list of links, a prompt monitoring tool measures whether you get mentioned, cited, and described positively inside the answer itself, and benchmarks your share of voice against every rival in the same response.
Best practices:
- Track the questions real customers ask right before buying something like what you’re offering.
- Include a location in your prompts if you’re a location-based business or an international brand, local AI search results differ sharply from national ones
- Include at least one set (Topic) of branded prompts so you get richer sentiment analysis data from each LLM.
- Add your competitors before your first run so share of voice is benchmarked from day one
How to start tracking and monitoring prompts in any LLM
Tracking prompts by hand in a spreadsheet falls apart fast once you have more than a few prompts or more than one client. A prompt tracking tool runs them on a schedule, scores every response, and keeps the history. Next I’ll show you how I track and analyze prompts for my AEO/GEO clients with Cairrot.
3 ways to set up your target prompts
The three most common ways we see customers set up their target prompts are:
- They let Cairrot’s AI-assisted setup suggest high-intent prompts for you.
- They upload contextual prompts in bulk with CSV during setup.
- They add, remove, and analyze prompts from their own AI assistants via MCP server or their internal BI tools via API.
If you’re just trying to get an initial baseline for your website(s), use Cairrot’s assisted setup path when adding a new website and you will have a well-targeted set of Topics populated with Prompts.
If I’m setting up prompts for a new client, I like using the “BULK IMPORT (CSV)” feature during setup. Technical users generally prefer using our API and MCP features to manage and analyze prompts.
Which AI models and answer engines we track
The models worth tracking, and why each one matters
| Model | Run by | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | OpenAI | Biggest share of AI search by a wide margin, so this is usually the number clients care about |
| Claude | Anthropic | Skews technical and enterprise, and it’s increasingly where B2B buyers do research |
| Gemini | Baked into Android, Workspace, and Search, so reach is enormous | |
| Perplexity | Perplexity | Cites more sources per answer than anyone, which makes it the easiest place to win a citation |
| Grok | xAI | Pulls heavily from X, so social presence moves this one |
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek | Open weight models are taking real share, especially outside the US |
| Google AI Overviews | Not a chatbot. It’s the answer sitting above the organic results your SEO already fights for |
Mention, citation, and visibility are not the same thing
Your dashboard shows all of these and people mix them up correctly.
The metrics behind an AI visibility report
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Mention | The AI named your brand in the answer, whether or not it linked you |
| Citation | The AI linked your actual URL as a source |
| Response rate | The share of runs for that prompt where you showed up at all |
| Citation rate | The share of runs where you got linked, not just named |
| Visibility | Your combined score across a topic, blending mention rate, citation rate, and position against rivals |
| Sentiment | How the AI described you, which is why branded prompts matter |
Share of voice: how much of the answer you own
Visibility tells you how often you show up. Share of voice tells you how much of the answer you own compared to everyone else competing for it. When an AI names five vendors and you’re one of them, that’s a very different outcome than being the only one named, but a flat mention count scores them the same. Cairrot benchmarks your share of voice per prompt, per model, and per topic, so you can detect the prompts where a competitor is quietly taking the whole answer.
Analyzing your target prompts
Head to Prompts in the left sidebar of your AEO dashboard.
Every prompt is inside a topic, and each row shows your visibility score, a breakdown by LLM, and where your competitors are ranking in the same answers. Hit Add Prompts and the wizard walks you through it in four steps: picking a topic, type your prompts, add tags and location, then you’re all set.
Drill-down analytics for every prompt
Click and prompt to expand it, You get a per-LLM breakdown showing your response rate and citation rate for each model, plus Query Fanouts, which are the actual searched in AI ran behind the scenes to answer your prompt.
Track prompts by buyer, not just by keyword
Every prompt can carry a buyer profile, so instead of one flat list of questions you’re tracking how the AI answers for a specific type of customer.
Read the raw AI responses
Head to AI Chats under Search and you can see every response the LLMs gave, scored for brand mentions, competitor mentions, and sentiment across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Click any row to read the full raw answer, so when a competitor gets recommended over you, you can see exactly how the AI phrased it.
Related features
Reddit Brand Monitoring & Tracking
See which Reddit conversations AI cites. Track brand mentions, sentiment, and competitor share of voice to understand the threads shaping your visibility.
Learn More
Technical AEO Score
Check how ready your site is for AI search. Score accessibility, technical setup, authority, and content, then see what to fix and track your progress.
Learn More
YouTube Tracking for AI Visibility
Find the videos and channels AI cites in your market. Track YouTube citations across models and compare your channel’s presence with competitors.
Learn MoreFAQ
Is prompt tracking included in every Cairrot plan?
Yes, every paid Cairrot plan includes prompt tracking, per LLM breakdowns, and the raw response viewer, with the number of active prompts scaling by plan.
Can I export my prompt data or send it to my own tools?
Yes. Export any view to CSV, or pull it through our public API and MCP server. We also connect natively to Looker Studio, Databox, and GA4.
How often does Cairrot run my prompts?
Prompts run automatically on a recurring schedule, and you can trigger an Instant Run from your dashboard when you need fresh data now.
What are query fan-outs?
When you ask an AI a question, it quietly runs several web searches to build its answer, and query fan-outs show you those exact searches so you know what content to create.
Try analyzing your target prompts for free
Generate your first AI visibility report with Cairrot in about five minutes. No credit card required to generate your first report.