Diagnose
"Diagnose" is a vague word, so let's pin it down. Diagnose takes one question a buyer might type into ChatGPT (or Claude, or Gemini, or Perplexity), runs it against the live models, and writes you a brief explaining why the answer looks the way it does. It is the page you open when you want a verdict on a single prompt, not a market scan and not a site audit.
The framing matters because AI-search visibility tends to fail for a small set of reasons: there is no clean answer for the model to lift, the schema or markup is too thin, your pages aren't getting cited where AI actually looks, or a competitor is just phrased better in the model's eyes. A diagnosis is Trakkr deciding which of those is true for this specific question, and producing the brief you would otherwise pay a consultant a week to write.
Diagnose vs Research vs Prompts
These three pages get blurred together because they all touch prompts and rankings. The difference is what you are trying to learn.
| What it's for | |
|---|---|
| Research | "What questions are even worth tracking?" Wide market scan across ~500 prompts. |
| Prompts | "How are my chosen questions trending over time?" Daily monitoring across all eight models. |
| Diagnose | "Why am I (or aren't I) ranking on this one question, and what would fix it?" Deep brief on a single prompt. |
You don't pick between them, you use them in sequence. Research surfaces the prompts that matter, Prompts watches the ones you care about every day, and Diagnose is what you open when one of those prompts deserves a real explanation. Optimize is the sibling tool for the site side of the same question: Optimize audits your pages, Diagnose audits a single AI answer.
How a diagnosis runs
Type a question, hit Diagnose, wait about a minute. Behind the scenes a lot more is happening than that suggests.
A run does two things in parallel. First, it sends your query to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and captures the live answer each one gives, including your position if you appear and the brands listed alongside you. Second, it gathers every other signal Trakkr already has on this prompt:
- Your canonical visibility score from the daily Prompts pipeline, so the diagnosis cannot drift from the number on your dashboard
- Your ranking trajectory over recent weeks, classified as rising, declining, stable, or volatile
- Phrasing variants of the question, to surface cases where AI ranks you completely differently depending on wording
- The citation sources behind the AI answers, including which domains keep showing up
- Your own pages on the topic, including the content and schema they actually carry
- Brand perception themes pulled from prior AI responses
- Reddit threads that influence model answers in this category
- Any prior diagnoses you have run on this prompt, so the brief can talk about change
All of that gets handed to a single Gemini Flash synthesis call, which writes the brief against a strict schema. One prompt, one consolidated explanation. The point of the architecture is that nothing on the page is invented: every claim in the brief points back to a specific piece of evidence, marked inline as a clickable [r1] chip.
Reading the brief
The completed page reads top to bottom as a single argument. Don't skim, the order is the order Trakkr thinks the answers should arrive in.
The headline and explanation
The first thing you see is a one-sentence headline: the brief's verdict on this prompt. Underneath, a paragraph of supporting explanation, with inline [r1] reference chips linking out to the evidence behind each claim. The chips are clickable, so if a sentence makes a claim you want to verify, the proof is one click away (a specific report, a citation source, a page audit, a variant ranking, a competitor profile, and so on).
Three signals to watch
A three-column strip surfaces the most distinctive Trakkr signals for this prompt.
| Signal | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Phrasing | How much your ranking swings when the question is rephrased, plus the strongest and weakest phrasings. A big swing is a phrasing blind spot, not a content gap. |
| Trajectory | Rising, declining, stable, or volatile, with a sentence on the recent shape of your movement. |
| Perception | If we have Perception data on this brand, the dominant theme AI seems to associate with you for this kind of question. |
Columns whose backing evidence is missing collapse into a "not enough data yet" cell, so the layout stays stable on light brands.
Competitive landscape
A dense table: every brand AI mentioned for this prompt, with their position per model and an aggregate score. Your row is highlighted. The header shows a model-agreement percentage, which tells you whether you are looking at a clear consensus across models or a noisy market where different AIs tell different stories.
Gaps
This is the section most people scroll to. Each gap is a single root cause behind your current position, ranked by severity.
| Severity | Read it as |
|---|---|
| Critical | The biggest reason you are not where you want to be on this prompt. Fix this first. |
| Significant | A meaningful contributing factor. Fix once Critical is addressed. |
| Moderate | A smaller drag worth knowing about, lower priority. |
Each gap collapses to one line and expands to a YOU / LEADERS evidence grid (what you are doing on this front vs what the brands beating you are doing), plus a recommended action with a first step, an owner (Content, Marketing, Dev, Product, or Partnerships), and a timeframe. An "Add to Actions" button on the action card drops it straight into your Actions queue.
The root causes Diagnose keeps finding
After a few diagnoses you'll see the same handful of patterns recur. Naming them upfront helps you read a brief faster.
| Pattern | What it looks like in the brief |
|---|---|
| No crawlable answer | Competitors have a dedicated page or section addressing this question and you don't. Action: create the content. |
| Thin or missing schema | Your pages exist, but they lack the structured markup (FAQ, Product, Organization) that helps AI lift answers. Action: add schema, tighten metas. |
| Crawlers can't see you | GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot are blocked, or your llms.txt is missing or stale. Action: unblock, publish llms.txt. |
| No citation footprint | The AI answers cite a stable set of sources and you are not on them. Action: get listed, pitch the right publications. |
| Cited page is hurting you | You are being cited, but the page AI is pulling from is outdated or off-message. Action: update the cited page. |
| Phrasing trap | You rank well on one phrasing of the question and badly on another. Action: track the losing variants and write supporting content. |
| Competitor wins on substance | A specific competitor wins on content depth, recency, or authority for this question. Action: read the gap, decide whether to chase. |
A single diagnosis usually surfaces two to four of these, ordered by how much they are costing you. The action behind each gap routes into your Actions queue with the right type baked in, so the queue knows whether it is a content brief, a schema task, or an outreach pitch.
Acting on a diagnosis
A brief that goes unread is a Gemini call wasted. Three things to do once a diagnosis lands.
Add to Actions. Each gap has a recommended action with an owner and a timeframe. Click "Add to Actions" on the ones you want to commit to, and they show up in your Actions queue tagged to this diagnosis. The status of each action stays in sync, so when you come back to the diagnosis later, you can see what is done.
Track the prompt. The "Track" button in the header adds this query to your active Prompts list, so you start watching it daily across all eight models. If a prompt is interesting enough to diagnose, it is usually interesting enough to monitor.
Re-run after you ship. The "Re-run" button kicks off a fresh diagnosis on the same query. Use it a few weeks after you have shipped the fix the brief recommended, to verify the movement actually happened.
When to reach for it
Diagnose is a deliberate, single-question tool. Reach for it when:
- A specific prompt jumped out of Research or Prompts and you want to know why. A big drop, a missing position, a competitor you didn't expect at #1, anything that triggers a "what is going on here?"
- A stakeholder asks. "Why don't we show up when people ask about X?" One diagnosis, forwarded, usually settles it.
- Before you commission content. Spending a week on a new pillar page is much easier to justify when a diagnosis says specifically why your existing coverage is not winning the prompt.
- After you ship a fix. Re-run the diagnosis a few weeks later to see whether the movement materialized.
You don't run a diagnosis on every prompt. The daily Prompts pipeline answers "is this trending the way I want", a diagnosis answers "what would change it."
Limits and quota
Diagnoses are capped per month by plan, with a counter visible next to the search input.
| Plan | Diagnoses / month |
|---|---|
| Free | 0 |
| Growth | Limited (see counter) |
| Scale | Limited (see counter) |
| Enterprise | Unlimited |
If you re-run a recent diagnosis on the same query within 30 days, Trakkr routes you to the existing brief instead of burning another credit, unless you explicitly hit "Re-run".
Common questions
Why does Diagnose use 4 models when Prompts uses 8?
Diagnose targets the four major chat models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) where most buyer questions land. The daily Prompts pipeline fans out wider so the visibility score reflects the full market. The brief uses your canonical Prompts visibility as the source-of-truth number, so the two pages never disagree on "how visible am I", they just sample different surfaces.
Why does the brief sometimes say "not enough data yet"?
Each section of the brief is backed by a specific evidence pack: phrasing variants, perception, citations, your own pages, and so on. If a pack is sparse or missing (new brand, no Perception runs, no audited pages), the brief calls that out honestly instead of inventing detail. As you use more of Trakkr the sparse sections fill in.
Can I diagnose a competitor instead of myself?
Not directly. Diagnose is brand-scoped to your active brand: the verdict is always "why are you (not) ranking here". To look at a competitor's position, run the query for your own brand and read the competitive landscape table, your competitors appear there with their position per model.
Will diagnosing affect my visibility score or my tracked prompts?
No. Diagnose runs on its own pipeline and writes to its own table. Your daily Prompts run is untouched, and a diagnosis doesn't consume prompt slots.
What happens when I click "Track"?
The query gets added to your active Prompts list and starts running through the daily pipeline tomorrow. If the same prompt is already tracked, the button shows "Tracked" and is a no-op.
Why does the recommended-action owner say "Content" or "Dev" instead of a person?
The brief assigns each gap to a functional owner (Content, Marketing, Dev, Product, Partnerships) so the team that needs to act knows it is theirs. Trakkr doesn't try to guess your org chart, your team triages from there.