Acceptance of Circumstances, AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, GEO, keeping up with trends, keywords, local search, Marketing Planning, organic SEO, prompt research, prompts, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEM, SEO, SEO tags, staying current

What’s The Difference Between Keyword Research and Prompt Research?

Over the years, we’ve talked a lot about both keywords and keyword research in our digital marketing agency’s blog (you can view a list of those keyword-related blog posts at https://allintheresults.com/category/keywords/), so we won’t repeat all of the valuable information about the keyword-research benefits shared there. Such research is just one piece, but an important piece, of an overall SEO/GEO/AEO strategy, and often is the foundation of all other SEO/GEO/AEO (search engine optimization/being found online) tactics, particularly when it comes to being found in traditional search engines.

Keyword research and prompt research differ on a number of fronts, including the factors outlined below.

How Keyword Research and Prompt Research Differ

  • Nature of What Is Entered In Search Tool By Searcher/Prompter: Traditional keyword research is/was all about discovering what topics (in the form of one word or several words (a phrase or statement)) individuals, in geographies your organization serves) are/were entering into traditional search engines on an average monthly basis. Eventually, keyword research expanded to “light” question research, using tools like Answer The Public. Prompt research is about discovering the various questions vs. statements or phrases that individuals are putting into an AI search/answer engine, like Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, or ChatGPT, to get an answer to a specific question.
  • Geographic Focus: as discussed above, keyword research is/was focused on understanding what terms/phrases/words target audiences in an organization’s geography were entering into traditional search vs. AI search tools to determine which phrases the target audiences were using most. With prompt research, there is far less geographic/physical-location focus, and it is far more difficult to obtain what questions individuals specifically in your geography are putting into an AI search tool, like ChatGPT, to get their question answered.
  • Ultimate Search Engine Optimization (SEO/GEO/AEO) Goal/Objective: Keyword research is all about helping an organization “rank well” in relevant search results fo relevant searches. Prompt research is about identifying the types of questions anyone anywhere is entering in an AI/answer engine that are either directly, tangentially, or very indirectly related to the products or services your organization offers.
  • How Research Is Used: Keyword research is used to inform the content that one includes on their website — whether it be post or page content — but particularly, the words used in/the phrasing of headers and subheaders, and behind-the-scenes meta/SEO tags. Prompt research is about identifying which content on your own website or a competitor’s website is being cited (linked to) by AI search engines, and therefore, being served up to “prompters” in the answer they spit back. This research can help inform the format and content nature of future blog posts or Q &A (housed in an FAQ website page). In addition, a different set of prompt research should be conducted to learn the exact phrasing/the nature of prompts that your target audiences are regularly putting into AI search/answer engines.
  • Tools Used To Conduct Research: Free and paid tools exist to conduct keyword research, and our team uses the free keyword planner tool in Google Ads to conduct such research. Prompt research involves the two types/branches described above and can be conducted by 1) adding the “first user source” dimension to your Google Analytics “pages and screens” report (see image below) and entering the names of various AI search engines, such as Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, into the search query bar so you can see to which pages/posts on your site AI search engines are referring visitors. If you have a visitor coming to a specific post/page on your website, then the AI engine in-question must have cited (provided a link to) the website page or post in-question; and 2) using a paid tool like SEMRush which has a distinct “prompt research” tool within it to gather broader/more general target-audience prompt behavior, and therefore, behavior that goes on beyond your particular website.
This image is a print screen from a Google Analytics report where the page report has an added dimension of the first user source name so the user can see what AI search engine is referring traffic to which pages and posts of their website.

Need Help Conducting Prompt Research Or Keyword Research?

Reach out today for a complimentary discussion regarding keyword research and prompt research to support an overall SEO/AEO/GEO strategy!

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Why One Or More Business Directory Listings Could Be Your Ticket To AEO Success, i.e., Being Mentioned or Cited In AI Search Engines

While the focus of this blog post is on getting a Better Business Bureau (BBB) listing, because it’s an organization that most consumers and business owners, and AI search engines, like ChatGPT trust as far as being a neutral/objective party that has vetted the organization in-question before posting information about it, other business directory listings can also support your organization being cited or mentioned in AI search results as well. Read why business directory listings send signals to search engines that your organization is trustworthy!

How You’ll Benefit From A Better Business Bureau Listing

I have spoken with or e-mailed many of my clients about the value of getting accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and having a paid vs. free listing to get the backlink from their website to the client’s website which is very valuable related to SEO and being found on AI search engines these days. That’s because AI search engines are looking for signs of your organization’s credibility/trustworthiness before they feel comfortable mentioning your name or serving up your website in “prompts” entered by relevant searchers into their tool. A listing on the Better Business Bureau will serve you well from a-being-found-in-AI-search-engines standpoint if you have a paid listing vs. free one. 

You can learn more about the above here: https://www.bbb.org/all/business/business-tips/why-bbb-accreditation-may-help-you-be-more-visible-in-ai-search/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

BBB Accreditation and Plans:

I recently had a lengthy conversation with one of the accreditation experts at one of the BBB offices serving MA and here’s what getting accredited with BBB, in general, would buy you (but important to check out the various plans that I linked to below to see what each provides):

  • A listing/profile on their site with e-mail, website, and contact information; plus, you could include photos, videos, licensing, logo and more
  • A link from their site back to your site as part of that listing (backlink)
  • Some free legal services
  • Ability to participate in their request-a-quote program where consumers request quotes from BBB-accredited businesses
  • An app that you can use to request customers/clients to write a BBB review for you
  • You can participate in cable advertising program, but would have to pay for that
  • A physical certificate will be mailed to you that you can place at your office/physical location to display you are a BBB member
  • A seal to add to your website indicating you are a BBB member will be provided

There are a variety of plans available, but to really reap extensive, diverse benefits, it would be ideal to pursue the BBB+ plan since you could have a more extensive/larger presence on their website: https://bbb-membership-plans.222-0021.org/, but starter plan would still provide great benefits and far as trust establishment goes. It’s just with the BBB+ plan you get more marketing opportunities — more tools, more resources, more opportunities for your Profile to be shown. 

this show the back of the head of a dark-haired man with a gray dress shirt on pointing to something on his computer tablet which has content open on it.

What Other Business Directories Should You Join?

  • Other Certification Directories (Beyond BBB): think ones that demonstrate what skills your organization is certified in.
  • State or City/Town Business Directories: If there is a business directory for the state(s) in which your business operates, such as the there is for Massachusetts businesses like ours in the form of the Massachusetts Business Network, you should consider joining those. If the city or town where you operate also maintains an online listing of the businesses operating there, you should take the necessary steps to get listed online.
  • Civic or Local Directories: examples include Rotary or Chamber of Commerce directories, or yellowpages.com or Yelp listings where individuals are searching to identify an organization who offers the products and services you do.
  • Industry/Professional Association Directories: examples include CPA Association, Relator Association, and BAR Association directories; for example, our organization belongs to SmarketingConnect – a marketing professionals networking group. Such professional directories could also include industry directories like Angi, Etsy, Fiverr, or Houzz.
  • Vendor/Partner/Supplier/Franchise Directories: these are relevant if your organization is a seller, representative or distributor of another organization’s products or services, or you have some kind of partnership with them, such as you use or support their technology.

And of course, some directories can fall into one of more of the above categories!

Learn about other ways you can support your organization being found in AI search engines.

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How To Appear In ChatGPT? Here’s What I’ve Been Telling My Clients

Let’s face it, the world of AI/answer engine search is still rapidly evolving, and fellow marketing and SEO experts and I will still need to keep an extremely close eye on it, and test various tactics related to organizations (we work with or for) appearing on AI engines. But, in the meantime, if I had to suggest four steps/tactics to take now while we continue to monitor how businesses and organizations are impacted by the growing use of AI search/answer engines like ChatGPT (and I do regularly suggest the following to clients), the steps and tactics to support your organization mentioned or being cited in ChatGPT and other AI engines, would include the below. As you’ll see, we’ve already shared and explained these tactics/steps in distinct blog posts dedicated specifically to the step/tactic.

  1. Continue to ask happy customers for Google Reviews so AI search engines view your organization as creditable and a leader among your competitors. Also, ask for reviews or recommendations on Yelp and/or platforms where individuals can post reviews of organizations in your particular industry. And, don’t forget about nextdoor.com if you’re a business with a strong local presence. A recommendation by a “neighbor” is always beneficial from a marketing standpoint.
  2. Pitch stories to reporters/media to support getting PR/publicity/media backlinks to your website.
  3. Join industry and civic organizations, and as part of your membership, ensure you get a backlink to your site to their site and share on your site that you belong to such organizations via a badge and/or mention of the organization and link back to their site. The same goes related to promoting accreditations/certifications you have and any business listing directories you belong to, such as the Better Business Bureau.
  4. Continue to publish blog posts and questions and answers housed under an FAQ page of your site that answer questions that your target audiences have directly and indirectly related to their services, or even something that’s more tangential, but important to your customers.
This is a powder blue rectangular image that runs vertically that says at the top "how to appear in ChatGPT and Other AI Serach Engines" and then contains a numbered list that mentions asking for online reviews and recommendations, seeking publicity, getting listed in appropriate online directories and answering questions online that your target audiences ask or research.

Ultimately, all of the above, establish your creditability/trustworthiness with AI search engines, and that’s required to succeed at the AI/answer engine search (AEO/GEO) game!

Need Help Being Found In AI Search Prompt Results?

Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion with an SEO expert!

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Our Journey With LLM Advertising: How To Optimize and Set Up ChatGPT Ads

We never like to recommend, or try to implement, a new form of online advertising, until we’ve tried/tested it with our own business. That way we can understand the pros and cons of running advertising on a new advertising vehicle, plus all the “inputs” we’ll need to provide to the tool to launch the campaign. That makes it easy to know what questions we need to ask of our clients related to a new ad campaign launch on a vehicle that is new to them, or what we need their approval on.

We waited to try this new vehicle until they offered pay-per-click (PPC) vs. just pay-per-impression (CPM) advertising because, quite frankly, most of clients are small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and nonprofits and they have far smaller marketing/advertising budgets than large firms and need their ads to really work for them and generate leads and sales vs. just awareness-generation!

This gray image that runs horizontally is a print screen of Results Communications & Research's ad running on ChatGPT and It is truncated but says "Looking For Expert Advice For Bein..Learn How We Help Organizations Appear in AI and Traditional Search..." and contain a small powder blue image that says "SEO."
Results Communications & Research’s ChatGPT Ad

As of the original publish date of this blog post, It’s been about 1.5 weeks since we rolled out ads for our own business, Results Communications & Research, on the ChatGPT LLM-powered (large-language-model-powered) answer engine/AI search platform. We’ve documented below — and will continue to document — our 2026 journey with this new form of online advertising. So, be sure to check back!

  • Days 1 & 2 (June 11 and June 12) – set up our ad and associated targeting for our campaign at ads.openai.com (ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI) — it was not a large lift at all! Needed to determine and document in OpenAI’s ad tool how much we were initially wanting to spend for a click (we initially put this at $3.50) and our daily budget ($25), plus in what geographies (Providence RI and Boston MA) we wanted the ads to appear. And, also provide context hints (OpenAI instructions explained this exercise this way: “describe the conversations, topics, or keywords where your products or services may be relevant; these hints guide matching, but aren’t exact-match targeting rules.” We also documented the images and content we wanted to use in our ads. We are testing two ads — one with longer and one with shorter headlines — but to keep something consistent, so we’d feel comfortable drawing conclusions about our headlines, we used the same image in both ads. We also had to share with the ad platform what page of our website we wanted ad clickers to land on (we created a brand new page on our WordPress website for such purposes — which is an online advertising best practice).
  • Day 2 (June 12) – launched our campaign by activating it in our OpenAI Ads dashboard.
  • Day 5 or 6 (June 15 or 16) – of course, being the digital marketing and analytics geeks that we are, we checked our advertising dashboard at openai.com countless times to see if the ads were being served up and generating impressions and/or clicks. Seeing zero movement on either the impressions or clicks front, we decided to expand our geography to NYC and our daily budget to $35 and what we were willing to spend for a click to $5.00, in case what we were willing to pay for a click (and the competition to have ads shown by competitors in the same geography for the same types of prompts) was causing the ads to not be shown or we needed a bigger geography to have enough opportunities for our ads to be shown to relevant “prompters” on ChatGPT.
  • Day 7 (June 17) – we saw in our advertising dashboard that our ChatGPT ads were starting to accrue impressions, and therefore, were being served up, but not to any great degree.
  • Day 8 (June 18) – we increased what we were willing to pay for a click to $7.50, and also added in the whole state of New Hampshire to our geographic targeting.
  • Day 9 (June 19) – seeing an alert in the OpenAI ads platform that we were often being outbid by competitors because of what we were willing to pay for a click, we increased our click bid to $10.00 from $7.50 – our first 2 clicks were achieved somewhere between the 18th and 19th, and at that point, our ads had a 0.66% click-thru rate (meaning less than 1% of individuals having our ad served up to them, clicked on it — not surprising for reasons outlined in the next bullet.)
  • Day 12 (June 22) – we just checked this morning and the increase in budget and what we are willing to spend for an ad click, plus the expanded geography seems to be paying off! As of this morning, our ChatGPT ads have generated 2,762 impressions (been served up that number of times), 13 clicks (a 0.47% click-thru rate), and an average cost-per-click of $6.44. We aren’t surprised by any of this. We had seen competitors running ChatGPT ads in our space when we were entering relevant prompts into ChatGPT, so we knew as a business-to-business advertiser we were more likely to have to pay more for a click than a business-to-consumer advertiser might. We also know that ChatGPT is a different animal than Google Search ads — the new form of ads discussed in this post is served up to individuals entering prompts into ChatGPT that might indicate they’d be interested in our services, but it’s not the same as someone entering “keywords” into Google and then Google serving up ads to those individuals because an advertiser provided those keywords as ones they wanted their ads to be served up for. We changed our daily budget to $50.00 today — we should have increased the daily budget a few days back in keeping with our increasing the amount we were willing to pay for a click! We also paused the shorter of our two ads since the longer ad was performing far better. To-date, we have not generated any leads — in the form of phone calls, e-mails, or appointment set-up — from these ads. We’re not discouraged by this at all, since, when it comes to a business engaging a firm for B2B services — or even reaching out to them — there can be a long lead time!
  • Day 17 (June 27) – we paused our ads today. Not because they weren’t generating impressions or clicks, but simply because we are a small marketing agency/SEO company who deliberately keeps our fees/rates very reasonable so that small businesses and nonprofits can afford to work with us. Going into this pilot, we planned to only spend about $300, but ended up letting the ads run until ChatGPT ads had spent $364.12, based on our daily budget and what we were willing to spend per click.

How Successful Was Our ChatGTP Ads Campaign?

Because businesses often take some time before purchasing business services, and therefore, like to research a number of companies before they decide to reach out to the one organization or the few organizations whom they are most interested in, we have yet to receive any inquiries from our ads, but still hope to get some inquiries from those who have clicked on the ads. At least we’ve generated some “awareness” among appropriate parties. We’ve also found in our many years of running online ads for our own business, that often, fellow marketing agencies/competitors click on our ads to see what we are offering and what we are all about. We did ensure our landing page for our ad clickers adhered to best practices, such as demonstrating why we are experts, including “social proof,” therefore, a review or testimonial, and much more!

Ultimately our ChatGPT ads yielded:

  • 11,321 impressions (this number of sets of eyeballs viewed our ads as part of entering an appropriate prompt into ChatGPT)
  • 46 clicks
  • 0.41% CTR (we aren’t concerned or scared off by this low click-thru rate — we’ve seen similar with Reddit and nextdoor.com ads
  • Average cost-per-click (CPC) of $7.92 – not horrible for a B2B (business-to-business) lead

As we recommended at the top of this blog post, keep coming back to learn more about our ChatGPT advertising journey! We’re all in this together when it comes to understanding this particular form of new advertising and how effective it will be in generating leads and sales, not just awareness, and if ROI makes sense for advertisers like our clients who need their ad $$ to work for them pretty quickly.

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The Marketing & Sales Downfall of Focusing Too Much On Appearing In Answer Engines (AI Search)

I’ve attended a decent number of webinars about AI search and how to get your organization’s name or a link back to your website (citation) to be shared by an answer engine in response to a topic-relevant user’s prompt. To-date I’ve heard the following list of key tactics mentioned related to how to get your organization’s name or page served up by answer engines like ChatGPT:

This is a very brightly colored image with question marks of different colors in the background and then the words, where, what, when, why, how, and who in brightly colored captions bubbles -- yellow, blue, pink, red, green, and orange.

What Types Of Organizations Benefit The Most From Appearing In Answer Engines/AI Search Engines?

For bigger brands who offer services and products throughout the whole U.S., or even the world, it makes great sense to want your organization’s name and links back to your website to appear in answer engine results related to relevant-topic searches. But for organizations who only offer services or products locally, i.e., in one city or town, in one state, or in one region (such as New England), there will likely be far less value to your organization to your organization from being found on answer engines than there would be for a national or international organization. Why? Because many individuals entering prompts into an answer engine just want their question answered. They aren’t looking to buy a product or pay for a service. And, the answer engines are more concerned about serving up content that easily/readily answers the question, regardless of the geography of the content producer or of the individual who is looking to get their question asked or answered. Unless, of course, the searcher/prompter includes their geography in the prompt, such as a prompt like “who’s the best digital marketing agency in Braintree MA.”

The Big Mistake That Organizations Who Need To Rank Locally Are Making Related To AI Search

Let’s face it, smaller, local organizations have far smaller budgets than a national brand like Progressive Insurance. They also have far smaller marketing teams. When they put the majority of their marketing dollars and energy into producing content that will be found in AI tools like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT, they are missing out on other opportunities which might better help them be found locally, since, as we shared above, many individuals to whom their website content or name will be served up by answer engines won’t be in their geography.

What Are Some Marketing Tactics That Help Organizations Be Found Locally?

  • Nextdoor Business Profile and Advertising – you can’t get more local than that!
  • Google Search Ads – where you’ve selected a geography appropriate for your business
  • Display Advertising – Google, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), other social media advertising – again, where you’ve selected a geography appropriate for your business
  • Publicity in Local Newspapers and/or on Local Media websites
  • Community Event Participation and Sponsorships – in communities your organization serves
  • Social Media Strategy and Posting – like with AI/answer engine search – you can reach local individuals and businesses who follow you this way, but there’s always some “waste,” where you are reaching individuals who can/will never become a client or customer because of geography or for other reasons
  • Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile — this is your best opportunity to be found locally and have your organization served up for “near me” terms
  • Writing a guest blog post for another local organization who serves your geography and/or requesting a backlink from their website to your website

Why You Need To Diversify Your Marketing Efforts

Check out our blog post on why it’s particularly important right now to diversify your marketing efforts and reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion of your organization’s particular marketing challenges and opportunities in the time of AI!

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Why Posting To Your Google My Business Profile Just Got Easier

We’ll keep this blog post short & sweet, since we just wanted to share the great news that a key wish of every digital marketer and social media expert came true in November 2025 when Google implemented the capability of being able to schedule updates/posts to your Google My Business vs. solely post them in real time.

Google also now lets you post to more than one Google My Business Profile that you own or manage. So, if your organization has several Profiles, based on various locations out of which you operate, and you want to share the same post/update to more than one profile you can do this all at once while being logged into one Profile and using the multi-location scheduling functionality.

To see what the new Google My Business posting functionality looks like, check out Attorney Marketing Network’s blog post that details 2025 updates to Google My Business posting capabilities.

This image is a print screen of the posting/updates section of our digital marketing agency's Google My Business Profile. It shows our logo at the top and then example of two text posts that link to recent blog posts we put up on our website.

But, Do I Need To Post To My Google My Business Profile?

Yes, you very much do. As we called out in our blog post about whether or not social media is worth the time & energy, organizations need to think of their Google My Business Profile as another form of social media and keep content shared on their fresh/current — this not only helps from an SEO perspective, since search tools reward for fresh content, but also helps from a marketing standpoint, as prospective clients and clients will see you are attending well to your shop.

In Addition To Sharing Updates, What Are Some Other Google My Business Profile Best Practices?

Check out these blog posts we’ve written about optimizing your Google My Business Profile that provide information on other tactics you can implement to make sure your Google My Business Profile has the best possible chance of being served up in relevant Google “near me” searches!

Need Help Related To Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile, So You’re Found Online For Local Searches?

Reach out today to schedule a free, no-obligation discussion about your Google My Business Profile and how you can optimize it!