What is a buyer query?
A buyer query is a question with purchase intent, as a potential customer asks it to a search engine or AI assistant, for example about the best provider, a recommendation or a comparison within a category. It is the test question that shows whether an AI recommends a brand.
Informational questions such as “what is a heat pump” rarely lead to a provider being named. Purchase-oriented questions such as “which heat pump installer in Leipzig is recommended” often do. For measuring AI visibility, the purchase-oriented questions are the telling ones.
Wording has a strong effect on the result. Category, location, audience and word choice change which providers get named. A buyer query should sound the way real customers ask, not the way a brand describes itself. Asking your own marketing slogan as a question mostly measures whether the AI recognizes the slogan.
Because answers vary between runs, a single buyer query with a single run is a snapshot. A statement about frequency needs the same question asked several times.
What it means for your website
A useful list of buyer queries comes from real customer conversations, search terms in Search Console and the categories you are compared in. deeploupe's free ChatGPT check derives one such question from a website and asks it once. The result shows who is named in that run, not how often.
Sources
This entry contains no figures and relies on generally documented terms.
Terms help you understand. Whether AI crawlers can reach your site is something you measure.
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