Measuring
How it is asked
Two ways people put a buying question to an assistant. Conversational is a sentence or two of situation and then the ask; direct is four to fourteen words, typed the way they would into a search box.
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What to do
A low score on direct questions is the sharper signal. Short prompts name more brands, so if the engine still left you out it had every chance and chose not to. That usually points at how your category is named on your own site, not at a need for more long-form content.
How it works
- The planner sets the split per organisation, with more direct questions for consumer categories and more conversational ones for high-context B2B services.
- Chat engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude) receive the question as written, in either register. Google AI Overview always receives the short search form of the same intent, because it runs the text as a literal Google search.
- For a direct question the two forms are the same string. For a conversational one the Google form is shown on the question and on its answer card as "Asked as".
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