"What are the best [your category] tools in 2026?"
This is the broadest discovery question a buyer asks, and it's the one that decides whether your brand shows up in the consideration set at all. Replace the bracket with your category in plain language — "customer feedback tools", "marketing analytics platforms", "AI writing assistants" — and read the AI's answer the way a buyer would.
What to look for: is your brand named? Where in the list does it appear? How is it described — accurately, generically, or wrong? If you're absent, which two or three brands come up instead? Those are the brands the AI considers default answers for your category, and they're the ones you're being measured against in the AI-assisted half of the funnel.
"[Your brand] vs [closest competitor] — which would you recommend?"
This question tests whether the AI knows your positioning well enough to compare you to a peer. It's the question buyers paste in the late evaluation stage, when they've narrowed to two or three options and want a tiebreaker.
What to look for: does the AI describe your differentiator the way you'd describe it yourself? Does it pick a winner, and on what grounds? Does it hedge with "it depends on your needs" — which usually means the model doesn't have enough signal to commit? A vague comparison is itself a signal: it tells you the public information about your positioning isn't yet strong enough for an AI to repeat your sales pitch back to a buyer.
"Top 5 alternatives to [closest competitor]"
This is the question buyers ask when they already know one product and are looking for a comparison set. It surfaces the alternatives the AI groups your competitor with — and whether you're one of them.
What to look for: are you in the list of five? If not, who is? The brands that surface here are the ones the AI sees as substitutable for your competitor, which is often a more useful read than asking about your own category directly. If the buyer is comparison-shopping against a competitor and you're not on the AI's alternatives list, you're not in the consideration set for that buyer's evaluation.
"[Your brand] reviews — what do users say?"
This question tests reputation. The AI will summarise what it's seen across reviews, comparison sites, forum threads, and press. The answer reflects what the public sources have collectively said about your product, filtered through the model's view of which sources to trust.
What to look for: does the summary match how you describe yourself, or has the AI absorbed a different narrative — possibly an out-of-date one, possibly a competitor's framing? Are the complaints it surfaces things you've already fixed? Are the strengths it surfaces still your strengths? This is the question most likely to surface a gap between your internal story and your external one.
"Affordable alternatives to [your brand]"
This question is uncomfortable to ask, which is exactly why it's valuable. It surfaces who the AI offers when a buyer is price-shopping you specifically. The brands that come up are competing against you on cost — and if any of them are weaker products at a lower price, you may be losing deals you should be winning.
What to look for: who's on the list? Is it accurate? Are there genuinely cheaper alternatives the AI doesn't know about, or has it missed your own lower-tier pricing? The answer also tells you whether the AI sees you as premium-priced. If it routinely suggests "cheaper alternatives" to you that aren't actually cheaper, your perceived price point may be higher than your actual one.
What to do with the answers
Five questions is a useful one-week reading. It will give you a feel for whether AI assistants know your brand, describe it accurately, and put it in the right comparison sets. It is not a defensible measurement — the same questions asked next week can give slightly different answers, and five questions across your category isn't a wide enough sample to draw a quarterly conclusion from.
If the answers above raised real concerns, the next step is to make the reading repeatable. A fixed question set, run across two providers, three times each — that's the kind of number you can track quarter to quarter and bring to a leadership meeting. Lumialo runs that for you on the paid plan; a free analysis on ten questions is the cheapest way to see the format before committing.
Either way, the five-minute version of this post is: open ChatGPT, paste the questions, read the answers, and let what you see decide whether you need the longer one.