How Riposte shows who AI recommends for your buyers' questions
Saniya Gazala··2 min read
Quick answer
Riposte tracks AI visibility in two steps. Prompt Studio turns your keywords into commercial-intent questions buyers ask AI assistants, with no brand names. AI visibility then asks those questions in Gemini and records which products each answer names, in what order, and which sites it relied on. Gaps, where competitors are named and you aren't, show the competitors' recent moves and can become a content brief.
More buyers now ask an AI assistant "what's the best tool for…" before they ever visit a website. If the answer names your competitors and not you, you've lost that buyer before you knew they existed. Riposte checks this for you in two steps.
Step 1: Prompt Studio writes the questions buyers ask
You give Prompt Studio your keywords and, if you like, the niches you want to win. It writes about 60 buying questions, grouped into two kinds of topics:
- Shield topics: broad category questions, like "best competitive intelligence tool".
- Spear topics: niches you want to win, each a product plus a situation, like "competitor alerts for content teams".
Every prompt asks for a recommendation, never names a brand, and covers a different angle: who is asking, for what, and with which limits. Riposte checks each prompt against these rules and removes any that break them. You can export them as a CSV for Profound.
Step 2: AI visibility asks them and records the answers
Pick the prompts that matter most and click Ask. Riposte asks each one in Gemini, the way a buyer would, and records:
- Which products the answer names, and in what order.
- Which sites it relied on, when web search is on.
- The searches the AI ran to answer.
You see your share of answers next to each competitor's, and the most-cited sites. Those are the places to get listed on. Prompts are asked again every week, so you can watch the trend.
Step 3: close the gap
The most useful view is Competitors named, not you. For each gap, Why are they winning? shows what those competitors changed in the last 30 days, such as a rewritten comparison page or new answer pages, and the sites the answer leaned on. One click writes a content brief to win that answer.
A note on accuracy
AI answers change from run to run, so treat visibility as a trend, not an exact score. That's why Riposte asks the same questions every week. Read more about every Riposte feature.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI visibility?
How often AI assistants name your product when buyers ask for a recommendation in your category, and in what position compared with competitors.
Why are the prompts free of brand names?
Real buyers ask 'what's the best tool for…', not 'is Brand X good'. A brand name in the question skews the answer, so the prompts stay neutral.
Which AI engine does Riposte check?
Gemini, through Google's official API. With web search enabled, answers include the sites they relied on. Without it, answers come from the model's own knowledge and are labelled as such.
Can I use the prompts in Profound?
Yes. Prompt Studio exports a topic,prompt CSV in the format Profound imports.