What You’ll See
AI Search Trends shows how often people ask AI about topics related to your business and how frequently your brand appears in those answers.
You’ll see:
A watchlist of the topics you’re tracking
Estimated prompt volume for each topic
Trendlines that show how interest in each topic changes over time
Your brand presence across each topic in your watchlist
The underlying prompts that make up the trend
Each topic card gives you a directional sense of demand and visibility in AI search, drawn from Scrunch’s dataset of more than 100 million consumer AI interactions.
What is a “Topic”?
A topic is a cluster of semantically related AI prompts.
Scrunch maps millions of prompts to more than 1,500 curated topics using NAICS classifications and semantic grouping.
Topics represent what AI users are asking about, such as:
Mortgage lending
Airport lounge access
Online banking
Streaming recommendations
Theme park trip planning
You can add any topic to your watchlist and begin tracking its volume and your brand’s presence.
How to Use AI Search Trends
1. Add Topics to Your Watchlist
At the top of the page, use the search bar to explore available topics.
You can:
Search by keyword
Browse topics classified by NAICS codes
Click into any topic to preview its trendline and sample prompts
Add it directly to your watchlist
When you click Add to watchlist, Scrunch begins calculating both topic volume and brand presence for your brand.
2. Explore Topic Details
Click any topic card to open its detail view.
You’ll see:
A weekly trendline
The full estimated prompt volume
Whether the topic is rising or declining
A sample of the prompts included in that topic
Use this to confirm that the topic matches the real questions your audience asks AI.
3. Add Topic Prompts to Your Prompt Tracking
Within each topic, Scrunch shows example prompts that feed into the trend.
You can convert any of these into fully tracked prompts by:
Clicking the plus (+) next to the prompt
Selecting the AI platforms you want to track
Clicking Create
The prompt moves to your Prompts tab, where Scrunch begins collecting responses.
This connects topic-level trend data to prompt-level visibility, letting you take action on what matters.
4. Navigate to the Prompts Tab
Once a prompt is added, go to Prompts and search for it.
From the prompt detail page, you can see:
Your brand’s visibility on that prompt
Platform-by-platform performance
Whether you need to improve your presence on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Meta, or Google
Links to deeper analysis in the Citations view
This is how you apply AI Search Trends insights to your AI search strategy.
Understanding the Metrics in AI Search Trends
Below is a breakdown of every metric and button you’ll see in the tool.
Topic Volume
What it is:
Estimated weekly AI prompt volume for the topic, based on anonymized, privacy-compliant consumer panel data.
How to use it:
Topic volume helps you understand how popular a subject is inside AI platforms.
Use it to find:
What your audience cares about
Rising interest areas
Seasonal spikes or declines
High-demand topics where your brand is currently absent
Important: Topic volume is directional, not exact.
AI platforms do not provide native volume data, so Scrunch uses a large-scale panel dataset and proprietary modeling to estimate population-level trends.
Volume Trend (Rising / Falling %)
Shows whether the topic is gaining or losing traction over your selected timeframe.
Use it to:
Prioritize rising topics for content investment
Spot declining topics that may not need immediate focus
Compare relative momentum across your watchlist
Weekly Trendline
A time series chart showing how interest changes week by week.
Use it to:
See seasonality
Understand if last week’s changes were noise or a broader pattern
Anchor your roadmap in real user behavior rather than guesses
Brand Presence
The percentage of AI responses (across all monitored platforms) that mention your brand for the selected topic.
What it tells you:
How often your brand actually shows up when users ask AI questions related to that topic.
Use cases:
Low presence on a high-volume topic = content or technical gap
High presence on core topics = maintain and reinforce
Platform-specific dips indicate where to start optimizing (ChatGPT vs Perplexity, etc.)
Prompts Included
Every topic contains a list of sample prompts that represent the types of questions feeding into the volume estimate.
Why it matters:
This preview helps you validate that the topic aligns with real consumer questions in your category.
Actions you can take:
Add relevant prompts to your tracking
Remove topics where the underlying prompts don’t fit your business
Ensure prompt coverage maps to your personas and key topics
Add to Watchlist
This button subscribes you to the topic.
Scrunch then calculates:
Topic volume
Trendline
Brand presence
Your watchlist is the control center for where you want to focus.
Add Prompt (+ Button)
Converts an example prompt into a fully tracked prompt.
When clicked, it:
Lets you choose the AI models you want to track
Adds the prompt to your Prompts tab
Begins collecting model responses
This closes the loop between trend-level demand and brand-level performance.
Filters You Can Use
Timeframe filter
Adjusts the weekly trend ranges to show short-term or long-term changes in interest.
Use it to:
Spot seasonal patterns, major shifts, or stable trends.
Topic Watchlist
Your personalized list of topics you're actively monitoring.
You can remove or reorder topics at any time.
Common Use Cases
Use AI Search Trends to:
Identify rising AI-search topics in your category
Build a roadmap of which topics deserve content or AXP investment
Find topics where your brand should appear but currently doesn’t
Connect topic trends to specific prompts, then monitor visibility
Give product, SEO, and content teams data to prioritize what to write or optimize
Track how AI user behavior shifts over time
The Takeaway
AI Search Trends shows you what users are asking AI, how that demand is changing, and how often your brand appears in those conversations. When paired with prompt tracking and citations, it becomes a clear roadmap for where to focus your AI search optimization efforts.