What is a topic in AIQ?
A topic in AIQ is the unit of analysis: a tracked subject, a brand, person, product, or theme, defined by a set of prompts, a peer set, and optional tags. The same prompts and peers run against the eight AI engines AIQ currently tracks daily, so the results are directly comparable across models.
A topic is the unit of analysis inside AIQ. It packages a subject together with everything needed to track how AI engines describe it, and every AIQ view is organized around it.
What a topic is made of
When you set up a topic, you define four things:
- Subject, the entity being tracked: a brand, executive, product, or theme.
- Prompts, the specific questions the AI engines are asked about that subject.
- Peer set, the named comparators the same prompts run against, so the subject can be benchmarked directly.
- Tags, optional labels for filtering and organizing topics across a portfolio.
How this produces comparable data
The same prompts and the same peer set run daily against the eight AI engines AIQ currently tracks: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. Because the inputs stay constant across every engine and every day, the output is directly comparable. Differences in what the engines say reflect differences between the engines, not differences in how each was asked.
How many topics a brand runs
Most clients run three to ten topics per brand, with separate topics for the corporate brand, key executives, key products, and any active issue.
Last reviewed: 19/05/2026
