Comparative prompt
A comparative prompt asks an AI platform to weigh options against each other: two brands, two products or two ways of doing something.
A comparative prompt asks an AI platform to weigh options against each other. "Fernhill or Kestrel for an office?" is comparative. So are "Beans or pods for a small office?" and "Is a coffee subscription cheaper than buying from the supermarket?"
People ask these once they've narrowed things down. They know the options and want help choosing, so the answer often settles which way they go.
Brands, products and approaches
A comparison doesn't have to name brands. When it does, it's a competitor prompt, and the question is which brand wins. When it compares kinds of product or ways of doing something, no brand is in the question, but the answer often names some.
For example, "Should our office use pods or a bean-to-cup machine?" may come back with a recommendation for bean-to-cup and then two suppliers to look at. If you sell beans for those machines, you want to be one of them.
What the answer is built from
Answers to comparative prompts lean on pages that already compare things: list articles, review roundups, comparison tables and "X vs Y" pages. A platform answering "Fernhill or Kestrel?" will often read a page that put the two side by side.
So it's worth knowing which comparison pages exist in your category, whether they include you, and whether they get your details right.
In AnswerOrbit
When you click Generate prompts in Topics, you choose the mix of learning, comparing and buying questions. Give your comparison prompts a tag so you can read their numbers on their own. In Sources, the Pages tab shows each page's type, such as a list article or a comparison, so you can see which comparison pages the answers use.