Topic
In AI visibility tracking, a topic is a group of prompts about one subject, like office coffee, so you can see which subjects you're named for.
A topic is a group of prompts about one subject. A coffee roaster might have topics for coffee subscriptions, office coffee and coffee gifts. Each one holds the questions customers ask about that subject.
Topics let you see where you're strong and where you're missing. Your overall visibility might look fine while you're never named for one subject that matters to you.
What makes a good topic
A good topic is a need your customers have, in the words they'd use. "Office coffee" works because people ask about it. "Q3 campaign" doesn't, because no customer asks about your campaign.
Keep each topic to one subject, with enough prompts to cover the different ways people ask. Keep branded prompts, the ones that name you, in a topic of their own, because they name you in almost every answer and would make the rest look better than it is.
An example
For example, Fernhill Coffee tracks three topics. Its visibility is 35% for home subscriptions, 20% for gifts and 8% for office coffee. Overall it's named in a quarter of its answers, which sounds all right. Split by topic, it's clear that office coffee, a growing part of its business, is where the work is.
Topics and tags
Each prompt sits in one topic. Tags let you cut across topics in other ways, such as every prompt about price, or every prompt that compares brands. Use topics for the subjects you report on and tags for everything else.
In AnswerOrbit
Go to Topics in the sidebar to see your topics with your visibility on each. Click Add topic and you'll see a few suggested prompts for it straight away. Open a topic to see its prompts, how you do on each platform, its answers, its sources and the brands named for it. When you move prompts to another topic, we recount their answers, and archiving a topic keeps its history. See Topics and prompts.