Before Cognizo can start measuring your brand's visibility across AI search engines, it needs to know what areas you're trying to win. That's where topics come in.
What is a topic?
A topic represents an area of your business you want to compete in. It’s a cluster of questions your customers are asking, organized under a shared theme or objective.
Topics don't generate visibility data directly. They're organizing units. The data comes from the prompts inside them, which Cognizo runs daily across supported AI search engines.
Think of it this way: topics set the strategy, prompts generate the data.
How topics and prompts work together
Every prompt in Cognizo belongs to a topic. The relationship is straightforward: topics define the competitive territory, prompts are the individual questions that sit inside each topic, and metrics (visibility, share of voice, sentiment, citations) are tracked at the prompt level and roll up to the topic level.
A well-designed topic structure makes downstream work easier including: reporting to stakeholders, spotting coverage gaps, and knowing where to invest in content next.
Common ways to organize topics
There's no single right structure. The best approach depends on your business model, your customers, and how your team reports. These are the most common patterns Cognizo customers use:
By ICP or audience segment — Group prompts by the type of buyer asking the question. This is useful when different segments use different language or have different decision criteria.
Example: Security Compliance - Growth Stage Saas, Security Compliance - Enterprise, Security Compliance - Startup Saas
By funnel stage — Separate research-intent queries from evaluation and decision-intent queries.
Example: Salon Software - TOFU, Salon Software - MOFU, Salon Software - BOFU.
By product or service offering — Useful when your business covers distinct offerings that buyers search for separately.
Example: Executive Relationship Intelligence, Master Data Management, Board Intelligence.
By geography or region — Common in industries where service area is a meaningful filter for buyers.
Example: Warehouse Fire Protection — Midwest, Warehouse Fire Protection — Southeast.
Many teams combine more than one of these as their tracking matures.
What's next
Read Topic Strategy & Best Practices to learn how to plan your topic architecture before you build it. When you're ready to act, the Step-by-Step Guide: Creating & Managing Topics walks through every platform action.