Your ChatGPT conversations are worth money. Every question you type into ChatGPT or other AI assistants contains valuable information that businesses want. There’s now a multimillion-dollar industry built around collecting and analyzing what people ask these AI tools.
This article explains why your prompts matter, who wants them, and what this means for how you search online.
Why Your Prompts Are Valuable
When you ask ChatGPT “What’s the best laptop for video editing under $1,500?”, you’re revealing exactly how customers think when making purchase decisions.
Traditional keyword data from Google shows short queries like “best laptop” or “video editing laptop.” Your ChatGPT prompts are longer, more conversational, and packed with specific details about your needs and budget.
This specificity matters. Studies show ChatGPT-referred e-commerce visits convert at 15.9% compared to just 1.8% for Google Search. When an AI recommends a product after a detailed conversation, people are far more likely to buy.
How Businesses Use Prompt Data
Marketing agencies like TJ Digital use prompt data to help clients get recommended by AI tools. The process works like this:
We identify what questions people might ask about our client’s industry. We run those questions through ChatGPT and other AI tools. We examine which websites the AI uses as sources. Then we either get our client mentioned on those websites or create better sources ourselves.
This practice is called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Instead of ranking in Google search results, businesses now optimize to be cited by AI answers.
The shift is significant. Semrush research indicates that favorable AI mentions directly influence buying behavior. If ChatGPT recommends your product, you capture highly qualified leads at the exact moment they’re ready to buy.
Who Benefits Most From Prompt Data
E-commerce Retailers
Online retailers gain the most. ChatGPT Shopping now surfaces product recommendations with direct “buy” links. Early data shows these AI-referred shoppers convert 2-4 times better than typical website visitors.
Knowing exactly what product comparison questions people ask lets retailers optimize their listings, reviews, and structured data for those specific prompts.
B2B and Service Companies
For B2B companies, AI inquiries often translate directly into sales leads. Omniscient Digital targets B2B SaaS firms with GEO services, noting that being mentioned by AI “can nudge users down the customer journey towards their solution.”
One Web3 startup discovered ChatGPT skipped their site because their page title lacked “open applications” in the wording. Fixing this small detail based on the prompt data helped them capture those leads.
Affiliate and Comparison Sites
Affiliate marketers who recommend products depend on AI visibility for survival. Industry experts note that affiliates with genuine brand signals—listings, community mentions, quality content—can thrive in AI search. Those with low-quality content get ignored by AI, just as Google’s Helpful Content update weeded out poor websites.
The Problem: Prompt Data Is Hidden
Unlike Google, which shares search data through Search Console and Keyword Planner, ChatGPT and other AI tools keep user prompts completely private. OpenAI doesn’t publish what people ask ChatGPT.
This creates a challenge. Marketers can’t see the actual questions people are asking, so they have to guess.
Google compounds the problem by omitting low-volume conversational queries from Search Console. Each unique question might only get a few searches, so Google doesn’t report it. Yet these detailed, conversational queries are exactly what users feed into AI tools.
Even with Google’s AI Mode, which functions more like ChatGPT, the company treats it as part of regular search with minimal query transparency. Your AI-mode impressions count toward Search Console totals, but you can’t isolate or analyze them separately.
How Marketers Collect Prompt Data Today
Without direct access to prompt data, marketers use several methods to reverse-engineer what people are asking:
Mining Public Sources
SEO professionals browse forums like Reddit and Quora, scrape Google’s autocomplete suggestions and People Also Ask boxes, and review publicly visible feeds like Perplexity.ai. These sources reveal the types of questions people have about specific topics.
Inspecting AI Responses
Using browser DevTools, marketers can capture the underlying search queries an AI issues. When ChatGPT has web browsing enabled, it often runs Bing searches to answer prompts. Filtering network calls reveals these exact search phrases.
For example, asking ChatGPT about startup accelerators might trigger a Bing search for “Web3 Startup Accelerator open Application Intake 2025.”
Asking the AI Directly
You can prompt the AI to explain its reasoning. Ask “Why didn’t you recommend [specific website] in your answer?” ChatGPT often responds with concrete reasons—missing keywords, content gaps, or specific phrases it expected to see.
Analyzing Source Citations
Note which URLs the AI cites in footnotes or inline. These sources effectively serve as “keywords” for AI. Optimize your content to align with those sources by including similar terminology and structured data.
The Ethical Concerns
Some Chrome extensions now capture ChatGPT conversations and sell the data. The practice raises serious privacy concerns.
Security researchers warn that many AI chat extensions harvest users’ entire chat history—including private queries about health, finances, and personal crises—and send them to external servers. Under GDPR and CCPA, collecting someone’s chatbot prompts without explicit consent likely violates data protection laws.
While some services claim to operate ethically with user consent, hidden data collection through browser plugins breaks trust and potentially violates AI platform terms of service.
What This Means for You
As AI assistants become gatekeepers for information, more purchase decisions happen through AI recommendations. By the end of 2025, SEMrush predicts LLM traffic will surpass traditional search engine traffic.
For consumers, this means:
- Your detailed AI conversations reveal your needs and budget
- Companies are working to influence AI recommendations
- Some tools may collect your prompts without clear disclosure
For businesses, this means:
- Traditional SEO alone isn’t enough anymore
- You need to optimize for AI citations, not just search rankings
- Understanding prompt patterns helps you create better content
The Future of Prompt Data
More startups will find ways to capture or simulate prompt data. Tools with access to real prompt data will outperform those without it.
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai stated he sees Google’s AI Mode replacing traditional search within 2-3 years. As AI search becomes the default, knowing what people ask becomes as crucial as knowing what they search for today.
The ethical companies will find ways to gather this data with clear user consent. The unethical ones will hide data collection in the fine print. Either way, prompt data represents the new frontier of search marketing.
Optimize Your Business for AI Search
At TJ Digital, we help businesses get recommended by AI tools. We research the prompts people likely use in your industry, identify which sources AI tools cite, and develop content strategies to make your business the obvious choice.
Without data, we’re all guessing. But with the right approach to prompt research and AI optimization, you can position your business where your customers are actually searching.
Contact us for a free audit of how your business appears in AI search results.