Why Topics and Prompts Matter in NextNet AI

NextNet AI measures how visible your business is inside AI generated answers. To make that measurement useful, the platform needs to understand two things:

What your business wants to be known for?
What real customers are likely to ask AI tools?

That is where topics and prompts come in.

What are topics?

Topics are the main categories your business wants to be visible for.

Think of topics as the major service, product, or market areas that matter most to your business.

For example, a window company may care about topics like:

Replacement windows
Impact windows
Window installation
Energy-efficient windows
Local window contractors

A topic should represent something your business actually sells, serves, or wants to be discovered for.

If the wrong topics are tracked, your visibility data may look low or misleading because the platform is measuring areas that are not truly relevant to your business.

What are prompts?

Prompts are the actual questions or searches that AI engines are tested against.

Prompts are what tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity respond to. NextNet AI uses these prompts to understand whether your brand appears, whether competitors appear, and what sources the AI system trusts.

For example, under the topic replacement windows, strong prompts may include:

What are the best replacement window companies near me?
Who installs energy efficient windows in Tampa?
What should I look for when hiring a window replacement company?
Which companies offer impact windows in Florida?

The topic is the category.

The prompt is the real world question being tested.

Why both topics and prompts matter

Topics help organize your visibility data.

Prompts determine what the AI engine actually answers.

That means both need to be accurate. A good topic with weak prompts can produce poor or misleading results. A good prompt under the wrong topic can also make reporting harder to understand.

For the most accurate AI visibility measurement, each topic should include prompts that reflect real buyer questions, service intent, and local market behavior.

Share of Voice measures how often your brand appears compared to competitors inside AI-generated answers.

However, Share of Voice is only useful if the topics and prompts being measured are relevant to your business.

For example, if a window company tracks a topic like “car bumpers,” its Share of Voice would likely be very low. That does not mean the company has poor AI visibility. It means the wrong market was being measured.

The same applies to prompts. If the prompts do not match how customers actually search, the visibility data may not reflect real business opportunity.

Best practices for choosing topics

Use topics that match your core business.

Good topics are usually:

Products or services you sell
Problems your customers are trying to solve
Categories where you want to beat competitors
Local service areas that matter to your business
High-value offerings that drive revenue

Avoid topics that are too broad, unrelated, or not tied to your actual business model.

Best practices for writing prompts

Good prompts should sound like real customer questions.

Recommended prompt guidelines:

Use natural question format when possible
Focus on customer intent, not internal company language
Include location when local visibility matters
Vary the buying stage, such as research, comparison, and ready-to-buy questions
Avoid forcing your brand name into every prompt
Avoid prompts that only make the brand look good instead of measuring the real market

Why should I avoid using my brand name in prompts?

Using your brand name too often can distort the results.

For example, asking “Is ABC Windows the best window company?” is very different from asking “Who are the best window companies near me?”

The first question already points the AI toward a specific brand. The second question better measures whether the brand shows up naturally when a customer asks an unbiased question.

Brand specific prompts can still be useful in some cases, but they should not be the main way you measure AI visibility or Share of Voice.

Example: good topic and prompt setup

Topic: Impact windows

Strong prompts:

What are the best impact window companies in Florida?
Who installs hurricane impact windows near me?
Are impact windows worth it for Florida homeowners?
What should I look for when choosing an impact window installer?
Which companies replace windows for hurricane protection?

This setup gives NextNet AI a better way to measure how visible the business is for a real customer need.

Key takeaway

Topics tell NextNet AI what market areas matter.

Prompts tell NextNet AI what questions to test.

To get accurate AI visibility, Share of Voice, and content recommendations, you need both:

The right topics
Properly structured prompts

The better these match your real business and customer intent, the more useful your NextNet AI data becomes.