Prompt Research: 7 Places to Find Buyer Questions, and What Each One Misses

Why No Tool Has the Full List

The engines keep the questions to themselves. OpenAI gives advertisers aggregated numbers such as views and clicks, never the conversations. Google's generative AI report in Search Console breaks impressions down by page, country, date and device, and lists no queries. Microsoft comes closest, and even it says of the phrases it shares: “They are not full user questions or prompts.” Some products sell panels of real conversations, but a panel is a sample of people, not your buyers.

Keyword habits won't fill the gap, because prompts tend to run long. In a study of donated chat histories, nearly 80% of the prompts it looked at ran past 20 terms, while the searches the engines wrote from them were far shorter. The people in it chose to take part, so it isn't a picture of everyone. Google says AI Mode queries are on average three times longer than traditional searches. Real wording is worth collecting, and these seven places are where it turns up.

The 7 Places

Work through them in this order. Places 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 show words real people used. Bing shows the phrases the AI searched with, and place 7 mainly helps you spot gaps.

1. Sales calls and demos

Go through your last 20 or so sales calls, or ask whoever runs them. Write down how the buyer describes the problem before anyone on your side rephrases it. Then add one question to your discovery script: “What did you search for or ask before you found us?” If they used an AI tool, ask them to open the chat and read out what they typed.

The wording is the point. Google's SEO guide notes that people who know a topic search with different words from people new to it, and your team knows your topic too well to guess.

What it misses: You only hear from people who reached you, and they're remembering rather than reporting. It tells you nothing about buyers who asked AI and never heard your name.

2. Support, chat and site search

Export a few months of support tickets and live chat, plus your site's search log if it keeps one. Pre-sales chats are the most useful part: the person hasn't bought yet and is describing what they need in their own words.

To use a support question, rewrite it as what the person would have asked before they knew you. “How do I export contacts from your app” becomes “crm that exports contacts to a spreadsheet.”

What it misses: Buyers who never contacted you. It also leans toward existing customers and how-to problems, and how-to questions were the wording least likely to get an answer naming a rival, as the data further down shows.

3. Search Console

Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the normal Web report, so the Performance report is a good place to read long queries. Open it, add a Query filter, choose Custom (regex) and paste this, which keeps queries of eight words or more:

^\S+\s\S+\s\S+\s\S+\s\S+\s\S+\s\S+\s\S+

Then narrow it to pages AI already shows. The generative AI report, rolled out to all sites on 31 August 2026, counts your impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, though a site without enough impressions may not see it yet. Note its top pages, filter the Performance report to each one, and read that page's long queries. This is our own workaround, not a method Google describes. You'll see what people searched to reach those pages, but not which question triggered an AI impression.

What it misses: Every question you're absent from, because it only returns queries your site appeared for. Google also hides queries that aren't issued by more than a few dozen people over two to three months, which probably removes many of the longest ones.

4. Bing AI Performance

The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows grouped phrases the AI used to retrieve content it then cited, across Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and partners it doesn't name. You can pick 7 days, 30 days, 3 months or a custom range, and export the list.

In October 2026 Microsoft added a beta called Topics Portfolio. Its Opportunity Queries list queries where other sites appear and yours doesn't, within topics where you already have some presence. Most of the other places on this list can only show you where you already appear, so it's worth a look.

What it misses: The questions themselves. These are general phrases from a sample of activity, so treat each one as a topic to look for in the other places. A topic you're absent from altogether won't appear. Smaller sites may not see Topics Portfolio, and Microsoft calls its numbers directional. The partners aren't named either, so don't read this as data about ChatGPT.

5. Google Ads search terms

If you run search ads, Google Ads already holds a list of what people typed when your ads showed. In your account, go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. It doesn't depend on your organic rank, so it can show demand Search Console can't.

What it misses: Anything your ads didn't match. Google lists only terms used by “a significant number of people” and leaves out others for privacy. The terms are also short and written for Google, so add the buyer's situation from your calls or chats when you turn one into a question. If you don't run ads, skip this one.

6. Reddit, forums and reviews

Search for the problem, not your category name, and read the threads where someone asks what to buy or complains about what they have. Reddit's search takes operators, such as subreddit:smallbusiness payroll. On review sites, read what people say they were looking for and what they switched from. Note the wording that keeps coming up, situation included.

Read these as any visitor would, to learn how people describe the problem. Don't scrape threads into a tool or copy posts into your own content: Reddit's content policy allows non-commercial use and asks commercial users to talk to it first.

What it misses: Quieter buyers. These are the people who post, so complaints and strong opinions get overrepresented, and many of them aren't your buyers. One vivid thread doesn't show that many people ask this.

7. People Also Ask and AI tools

Use these last, to find gaps. Search a question you already have and read People Also Ask and related searches. Google says related searches come from the query and what other people have searched for, so they're closer to evidence, though they're Google searches rather than AI questions. AI tools often suggest a follow-up question under an answer, so note the ones that fit. You can also ask an AI tool what someone would ask at each stage, from noticing a problem to shortlisting options. Our free Query Fan-Out Generator turns one question into keyword variations, which can show angles you've missed.

What it misses: Proof that anyone asks AI this. Google doesn't say how it picks People Also Ask questions, and an AI tool's list is a guess in a model's voice. Use it to spot a gap, then look for that gap in the other places.

How to Word What You Find

Keep the buyer's words and change as little as you can. Our data can't show how real buyers do, because every question in it was written by Ranqo's prompt generator, which favors questions whose answers can name products. It can show how wording changes the answer. Across 29,270 answers in Ranqo's tracking data, five wordings named a rival in at least 84% of answers, and two fell short.

Keep the buyer's situation

A question written in the first person named a rival in 87.2% of answers, against 84.7% for other questions. So there's no need to cut a long, specific question down to “project tool for agencies.”

Don't edit for length

Once “best” and “top” questions are set aside, the share stayed between 83.1% and 85% at every length, so leave a question as long as the buyer made it.

Reword how-to and yes-or-no questions only if the buyer was choosing

These two fell short: 55.8% for how-to questions and 70.1% for yes-or-no questions, and a real buyer's version may do worse. “How do I reduce churn” gets advice, and the answer doesn't have to mention anyone. If the buyer was choosing a product, ask it that way: “what should a small software company use to reduce churn.” If they only wanted to learn, leave it off the list. How-to questions trailed most on Perplexity in these answers, which may not hold on newer models, so check each engine you care about.

Don't turn everything into “best X”

“Best” questions named a rival in 94.3% of answers and questions asking for options in 95.3%, so it's tempting to rewrite the whole list that way. But best-of questions make answers list more names without giving a brand a bigger share of them. Use them for part of the list, and leave your own brand name out of every question.

Test the List Before You Keep It

Ask each question on the engines you care about and read what comes back. Do the answers name companies, and are they the ones you compete with? Our guide to choosing which prompts to track covers how to decide what stays and how many to run.

Don't judge a question on one answer. Answers change from run to run, so if one names no company, ask again on a later day in a new chat before you reword or drop it.

What About Prompt Volume?

Some products sell a volume figure for AI prompts. The ones we could read build it in one of two ways: a panel of people who share their browsing, or a multiplier applied to Google keyword volume. Either way the number usually belongs to a topic or a keyword, not to the question on your list.

One specific buyer question is also a small target for any panel. People use AI for plenty of things: in OpenAI's study of consumer ChatGPT use from May 2024 to June 2025, messages about products to buy were 2.1%, and that may undercount buying questions filed under other topics. Your exact question is a tiny part of even that.

Ranqo's own Volume meter is an estimate too: a 1 to 5 score the writing model gives a prompt when it writes it, which runs never update. Questions you add yourself carry no estimate at all. As our docs put it, “no engine publishes how often a question is asked.” Use a volume figure to sort a list if you like, then decide on two things: did buyers use those words, and do the answers name companies you compete with?

What Not to Do With the List

Don't write a page for every question. Google warns that making separate content for every variation of how people might search, primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses, breaks its scaled content abuse policy. The list is for measuring and for seeing what a page needs to cover.

Don't treat an engine's searches as buyer questions. The searches an engine writes for itself are its own shorthand. They tell you how it looks for an answer, not what anyone asked.

Don't stop at the places that flatter you. Search Console and Google Ads lean toward where you already show up. A list built only from them will make your visibility look better than it is.

How We Measured

The wording figures come from the answers in Ranqo's tracking. Each question goes out with an added instruction asking for specific products and sources, so your own tests may name fewer companies. Read the gaps between wordings rather than the exact shares.

How Ranqo Fits

In Ranqo, the list lives on the Prompts page. Add manually takes one question or a pasted batch, which is where your list goes. Generate with AI writes from your saved brand profile and any research on file, and Themes researches your category. Treat both like place 7: a starting point to check against what buyers say.

Each run then asks your tracked questions on your engines. The Tracking tab shows how often each question's answers name you, which competitors appear and how each engine answered. Difficulty is measured from the latest answers and shows how crowded they are. Volume is the estimate described above, on the questions Ranqo writes. Ranqo doesn't see what your buyers actually typed, which is why these places matter.