AI Search Setup

To use Conductor Intelligence’s AI Search Performance reporting in the AI Search Performance report, you must add the brands and topics you want to track so that the platform can gather mentions and citations of your brands and personas in AI search results for the tracked topics—and understand how your actions are affecting your AEO / GEO performance. Note that you can perform all this configuration from the Topics and Prompts activity in the Settings menu, rather than the AI Search Performance report. However, you can easily access Topics and Prompts from the report using the Settings button in the report header. Settings > Topics and Prompts

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Configure the brands, topics, and prompts you want to track

Add your brands, topics, and prompts in a seamless guided workflow:

1. In the Topics and Prompts activity, click the Add Topics button.
2. Choose the brands you want to associate with the topics you add. Add brand names that are most closely tied to your company’s identity or key product offerings. If you have previously added brands to your account, you will see them added automatically. Enter any other brands you want to track.

1. Click Next: Select AI Search Engines.
2. Choose the AI Search Engines you want to monitor for your topics. You can choose from the following engines, but keep in mind that tracking multiple AI engines for each topic will use more credits, each according to their specific credit usage.

• ChatGPT (Auto)
• ChatGPT (Search)
• Claude Sonnet
• Gemini
• Google AI Mode
• Google AIO
• Grok (Auto)
• Microsoft Copilot
• Perplexity

1. Click Next: Tracking Settings.
2. In the Tracking Settings tab, select the Location & Language (and, optionally, a city or state), Tracking frequency, and Number of prompts per topic. Note:

• Currently, Conductor supports the following engines across over 160 countries. City-level tracking is not available for prompts tracked on Google AI Mode.
• Tracking frequency can be set to Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. See What’s the difference between Daily, Weekly, and Monthly tracking? for guidance on choosing the right cadence and what to expect from each. Note that Daily tracking will substantially increase your credit usage for the prompts you track at a daily frequency.
• Available cities and states reflect the same list Conductor Intelligence uses for our keyword tracking. If there are specific locations that are not available, contact Support to request the location be added. To add specific cities or states, you’ll need to select the country and language first—a link to add more specific locations then appears below.
• The number of prompts per topic is used to estimate your credit usage, and can be tailored to each topic in a later step.

1. Review your Credit Usage Forecast. Set the number of topics you want to track and then see whether your remaining credit budget will cover the forecasted usage. Conductor will indicate when you don’t have sufficient credits to cover topic tracking.
2. Click Next: Select Topics.
3. Add topics you want to track. You can:

• Choose from suggested topics generated by Conductor’s AI engine, based on a combination of LLM models with your existing keyword data in Conductor.
• Add your own topics.
• Fine-tune the topics you want to generate by adding custom instructions for topic generation with the Provide instructions button. Just click Regenerate Topics after adding your instructions.
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  Guide Conductor’s AI

  Use the Provide instructions button to provide guidance to Conductor’s AI engine. For example:

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  Establish hard constraints

  “Focus 100% on B2B topics; exclude any B2C or retail-oriented ideas.”

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  Shape the purpose behind prompts

  “Focus on problem-aware topics that highlight industry pain points rather than product features.”

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  Set context

  “Follow this pattern: [Technology] + [Industry] + [Outcome]. Example: ‘Blockchain in Logistics for Transparency’.”“Focus on emerging trends for the next 6 months. Do not suggest evergreen or historical topics.”

1. For each of your topics, choose the number of prompts you want to track. Note: The number of topics and prompts you track is limited based on your AI Response Credit budget. Learn more.
2. Click Next: Configure Prompts.
3. In the Prompt Types tab, select whether you want to track Branded Prompts, Non-Branded Prompts, or both. Selecting this option will tell Conductor to generate prompts that do not mention specific brands (yours or others’).
4. In the Search Intents tab, select the search intent prompts for your topics should reflect. Conductor will generate prompts based on this guidance.
5. In the Personas tab, select the personas that prompts for your topics should reflect. Conductor will generate prompts based on this guidance.

1. In the Instructions tab, enter any custom instructions you want to guide Conductor’s generation of prompts for the topics you are adding.
2. Click Next: Review Prompts. Conductor will generate prompts for your topics. This may take some time.

• Fine-tune the prompts you want to generate by adding custom instructions for prompt generation with the Provide instructions button. Just click Regenerate Topics after adding your instructions.
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  Guide Conductor’s AI

  Use the Provide instructions button to provide guidance to Conductor’s AI engine. For example:

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  Establish hard constraints

  “Always include the keyword ‘organic’, never mention price or cost.”

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  Shape the purpose behind prompts

  “Focus on ‘How-to’ questions.”

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  Set context

  “Model prompts after: ‘Best [Product] for [Persona] in [Year].’ Keep the structure consistent across all results.”“Align all prompts with the 2026 Winter Holiday season and specific regional shopping traditions in Northern Europe.”

1. Once generated, review the prompts in the table. You can select prompts to delete or edit them to your specifications.

1. Click Next: Final Review.
2. The Credit Usage Forecast now reflects the specific credit usage your tracked topics and prompts will require and the amount of time you’ll be able to track data before your account runs out of credits.

1. Click Start Tracking (or Submit for Approval, if you are a Standard user and Admin Approval is enabled). Conductor will begin collecting data for the prompts and will publish data in the AI Search Performance report once it has been collected.

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Add brands to track across topics

By default, Conductor will generate one or more relevant brands for your web property. However, if you want to add a new brand name to your topic tracking:

1. In the Topics and Prompts activity, click Add Brand Names.
2. Enter the brand or brands you want to associate with the topics you track in Conductor.
3. Click Add Brand Names.

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Looking to add brand names for Comparison Web Properties?

Conductor generates brands for your Comparison Web Properties by default. You can add more from the Web Properties activity in Settings. Refer to these instructions to learn how.

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Use personas to provide context for Conductor when generating prompts

If you wan to add a persona to help provide Conductor context about your audience when it generates prompts for your tracked topics. By default, you’ll see a “Broad Audience” persona, which you can keep, edit, or delete.

1. In the Topics and Prompts activity, click Add Personas.
2. Enter a Persona Name and Description for your persona.
3. Click Save.
4. If you want to add more than one persona, click Add another and repeat the steps above.
5. When you are finished, click Close.

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Edit a previously-created persona

You can also edit a persona to align your prompt generation with your organization’s audience over time.

1. From Topics and Prompts, click Add persona.
2. Above your listed personas, click the Edit (pencil) button.
3. Find the persona you want to edit and click its Edit button.
4. Update the Persona Name and Description as necessary.
5. Click Update.

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Review your tracked topics

The table on the Topics tab includes a list of each topic you have tracked in Conductor. Review information including:

• Tracking status lets you Stop or Start tracking the topic. Tracking monitors the responses of the AI Search engine to actively tracked prompts at the defined frequency.
• Frequency. Frequency indicates whether the topic is collecting data Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Switching to Monthly schedules the next collection for the beginning of the following month. This setting applies to the entire topic and cannot be adjusted for individual prompts.
• Tracker Prompts indicates the number of active prompts tracked for the topic.
• Tracking Started indicates when tracking began or was last restarted.
• Tracking Started By indicates the user who tracked the topic.
• Last Updated indicates the most recent date that the topic’s reporting or tracking settings were updated.
• Last Updated By indicates the user who updated the topic most recently.

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Organize the Topics table

As with other tables in Conductor, you can use the controls above the table to:

• View and clear filters set on table columns.
• View and clear sorted table columns.

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Track topics on more search engines after you start tracking them

If you want to start tracking a previously-tracked topic on another search engine, just click the three-dot icon in the table and select Add Search Engine or Location.

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Stop or start tracking topics you’ve configured in Conductor

1. On the Topics tab, find the topic you want to stop tracking in the table.
2. In the Tracking column:

• Click the Stop button if you want to stop tracking the topic.
• Click the Start button (or the Request Start button, if you are a Standard user and Admin Approval is enabled) if you want to start tracking the topic again.

You can also stop and start tracking topics in bulk using the check box next to each topic name and the Actions menu above the table. (Note that bulk stopping is not available for Standard users when Admin Approval is enabled.)

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Review your topic’s prompts

The table on the Prompts tab includes a list of each prompt tracked for the topics you track with Conductor. Review information including:

• Tracking status lets you Stop or Start tracking the prompt. Tracking monitors the responses of the AI Search engine at the defined frequency.
• Frequency. Frequency indicates whether the topic is collecting data Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Switching to Monthly schedules the next collection for the beginning of the following month. This setting applies to the entire topic and cannot be adjusted for individual prompts.
• Topic indicates the tracked topic this prompt is collecting responses for.
• Search Intent reflects the underlying purpose or goal behind a user’s search prompt. Learn more about search intent.
• Tracking Started indicates when tracking began or was last restarted.
• Last Updated indicates the most recent date that the prompt’s reporting or tracking settings were updated.
• Tracking Stopped indicates when tracking last stopped for this prompt.

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Organize the Prompts table

As with other tables in Conductor, you can use the controls above the table to:

• View and clear filters set on table columns.
• View and clear sorted table columns.

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Stop or start tracking prompts configured for your tracked topic

1. On the Prompts tab, find the prompt you want to stop tracking in the table.
2. In the Tracking column:

• Click the Stop button if you want to stop tracking the prompt.
• Click the Start button (or the Request Start button, if you are a Standard user and Admin Approval is enabled) if you want to start tracking the prompt again.

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Edit information about your prompts

If you want to customize the specific Prompt Type, Persona, or Search Intent types assigned to prompts in the table:

1. On the Prompts tab, find the prompt you want to customize in the table.
2. Click the Edit icon in the Prompt Type, Persona, or Search Intent column.
3. Choose the prompt type, persona, or search intent you’d like to assign to the prompt.
4. Click the green check mark button to accept and save your changes.

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Add a prompt to or remove a prompt from a prompt group

You can use the Prompt Groups column to view each prompt’s membership in your configured prompt groups. If you want to make changes to a prompt’s group membership:

1. Click the Edit (pencil) icon.
2. Remove the prompt from any groups it is in under Current Groups.
3. Use the Add to Prompt Group menu to add the prompt to any of your other prompt groups.
4. Click Save Changes.

In general, you can configure prompt groups in Prompt Group settings.

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Export your tracked topics and prompts

In both the Topics and Prompts tabs, you can click the Share icon above the table and select Download XLSX to export a Microsoft Excel file with all the data in either table.

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FAQs

Review this feature’s frequently asked questions