Pick 30 prompts that sound like real customers, split across 6 jobs: finding a provider in your area, diagnosing a problem, choosing between providers, asking about price, searching nearby, and checking your own name. Write them as full questions, keep them fixed for 90 days, and track how often you appear.
Why 30
There is no magic in the number. It is large enough to cover the main ways a local customer asks and small enough to read every answer by hand. It also matches the size of Doily’s Starter plan, which checks 30 prompts daily across 5 engines.
The point of tracking is a rate over time. SparkToro’s research on AI recommendations found that the same prompt returned different lists of brands almost every time. It also found that brands associated with a topic came up repeatedly across many runs, so the share of runs where you appear carries signal. A set of 30 gives you enough different questions that one odd answer does not move the result.
Where the prompts come from
Do not start with keywords. Start with what customers say.
- Calls and voicemails. The first question people ask is often the best prompt.
- Reviews. Your reviews and your competitors’ show what people value and what they complain about.
- Form submissions and chat logs. Real wording, with typos.
- Search Console. Queries that already bring impressions show how people phrase things on Google.
- Your sales team. Ask what questions come up before someone books.
SparkToro asked 142 people to write a prompt for the same task, buying headphones for a traveling family member, and the prompts were barely similar. The authors scored the average pair at 0.081 on semantic similarity. People express the same need in very different words, which is the reason to include several phrasings of your most important intents, not one.
Write full questions
Pew’s analysis of Google searches found that longer, question-style searches produce AI summaries far more often. Only 8% of 1-word or 2-word searches got an AI summary, versus 53% of searches of 10 words or more, and 60% of searches starting with a question word like “who,” “what,” “when,” or “why.” That is Google in March 2025, and other engines will differ, but it points the same way for prompt design: write the way a person talks to an assistant.
Compare “plumber Hartford” with “who is the best emergency plumber in Hartford for a burst pipe on a Sunday.” The second is the one a stressed customer types into an AI engine.
The 6 buckets
The example below uses a fictional business, Smith Plumbing in Hartford, Connecticut. Swap in your own service and place. The mix matters more than the wording.
| Bucket | Prompts | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Service plus place | 8 | Whether you come up when someone wants your service where you work |
| Problems | 8 | Whether you appear when the customer starts from a symptom |
| Choosing a provider | 5 | Whether you are named when people compare and decide |
| Pricing | 4 | Whether you show up on cost questions |
| Near me | 3 | Local intent with a neighborhood or landmark |
| Brand checks | 2 | What engines say when asked about you by name |
Here are the 30 prompts for the example business.
Service plus place
1. Who is the best emergency plumber in Hartford?
2. Which plumbers in Hartford do water heater replacement?
3. Who can unclog a main sewer line in Hartford today?
4. Best plumbing company in West Hartford for a bathroom remodel
5. Who installs tankless water heaters near Hartford, CT?
6. Which Hartford plumbers offer 24 hour service?
7. Who fixes leaking pipes in Wethersfield?
8. Recommend a licensed plumber in Hartford County
Problems
9. My water heater is leaking at the bottom, who should I call in Hartford?
10. Why is my water pressure low and who can fix it near Hartford?
11. Pipe burst in my basement, what should I do and who do I call?
12. Kitchen sink keeps clogging in Hartford, should I call a plumber?
13. Water smells like rotten eggs, who can help in Hartford, CT?
14. Toilet keeps running, is it worth calling a plumber?
15. How do I know if I need a new water heater in Connecticut?
16. Who can find a hidden water leak in a house in Hartford?
Choosing a provider
17. How do I choose a plumber in Hartford?
18. What should I ask a plumber before hiring them in Connecticut?
19. Is it better to hire a small plumbing company or a big one in Hartford?
20. What licenses should a plumber have in Connecticut?
21. Are emergency plumbers in Hartford worth the extra cost?
Pricing
22. How much does it cost to replace a water heater in Hartford?
23. How much do plumbers charge per hour in Connecticut?
24. What does a sewer line repair cost in Hartford?
25. Do Hartford plumbers charge a fee just to come out?
Near me
26. Plumber near the Hartford Hospital area
27. Emergency plumber near me in Hartford open now
28. Plumber near downtown Hartford who can come today
Brand checks
29. Is Smith Plumbing in Hartford any good?
30. Smith Plumbing versus other Hartford plumbersKeep only 2 prompts that name your brand. Naming yourself tests reputation. The other 28 test whether engines find you without being told who you are.
Rules for keeping the set honest
- Freeze it for 90 days. Add and remove prompts on a schedule and write down the date. If you edit as you go, any gains you see could come from the edits.
- Set the location. For a local business, a prompt without a place can return answers for the wrong city. Track each prompt for the area you serve.
- Name 3 to 5 competitors and track which of them appear alongside you.
- Record the answer, not only the score. Note whether you were mentioned, whether a page of yours was cited, which competitors appeared, and how the answer described you.
- Expect noise. One run is one draw. Judge changes over weeks, not days.
Google’s own guidance on generative AI features also reminds you what not to do with the list. It warns that creating a separate page for every variation of a query, primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses, violates its scaled content abuse policy. Use the prompt set to find the questions your pages answer poorly, then improve a page, not to spin out pages that each match one phrasing.
A worked read of the first month
These numbers are invented to show how to read the set. Suppose that after 4 weeks you appear in at least 1 answer for 12 of the 30 prompts. When you group them by bucket, 7 of the 12 are in service plus place, 3 are in the brand checks and near-me buckets, 2 are in choosing a provider, and none are in problems or pricing.
That split says more than the total of 12. The business is findable when someone already knows what they want and where, and invisible when the customer starts from a symptom or a cost question. The next piece of work is not “get mentioned more.” It is a page that answers what a burst pipe means and what to do first, and a page that explains typical costs honestly, then watching whether the problems and pricing buckets move over the following weeks.
What to do with the results
After a month, sort the prompts by how often you appear. The ones where you never show up and a competitor always does are your list of gaps. For each, look at who is cited and what their page covers that yours does not. The prompts where you are mentioned but not cited point to pages you can strengthen, and the ones where you are cited but not described well point to content to rewrite.
Our guides on tracking AI prompts and prompt research cover the setup and the research step in more depth.
