what exactly is a prompt and how often does it run?
Updated June 30, 2026 · Reviewed by Mack Grenfell · Asked 66 times
A prompt is a question a real person might type into an AI chatbot, written the way they would actually ask it. Trakkr sends every active prompt to the AI models on your plan once a day, at 3:00 AM UTC, and records whether your brand was named, where it ranked, which sources were cited, and which competitors showed up.
What makes a prompt, not a keyword
In Google's world the unit was the keyword. In AI search the unit is the full question. Trakkr tracks **discovery prompts**, open category questions where the model has to pick which brands to recommend. Good examples:
- What are the best running shoes for marathon training?
- Top project management tools for a remote agency
- Recommended CRMs for a small B2B sales team
What does not fit
- Branded reputation questions ("Is Stripe good?") name the brand for the AI, so there is nothing to win.
- Branded comparisons ("Notion vs Confluence") do the same.
- How-to questions usually do not produce a list of products.
Stick to category-level questions where someone is choosing what to use. You do not need to keep them fresh yourself: once a prompt is active, the daily run keeps the data current.