Quick answer

Track topic volume and trends in AI search from Scrunch's Trends tab.

Topic volume and trends measure how frequently people ask AI about topics related to your brand over time. Here's how to track them:

Start in the Trends tab for high-level topic intelligence:

• Industry Topic Watchlist: All the topics you're currently tracking, each made up of a cluster of semantically related prompts
• AI search activity: Estimated conversation volume for each topic
• Line chart: Trend visualization that shows how interest in each topic changes over time
• Brand Presence: Percentage of AI responses that mention your brand for the topic

Add new topics directly from the Trends tab:

• Search by keyword or browse by NAICS code to find topics to track.
• Click "+" to add a topic to your watchlist—Scrunch will begin calculating volume and brand presence immediately.
• Submit topic requests via the "Request a New Topic" button.

Drill down in the Topic Details page for more insights and actions:

• Click into any topic to see sentiment, competitive presence, and top brands
• Review sample prompts and AI responses to confirm the topic matches what your audience actually asks
• Convert any sample prompt into a tracked prompt with one click and move it into the Prompts Monitoring tab

Track changes over time: Use the date selector (default: last 12 weeks) to view topic volume trends and brand presence across any time period.

Sort and prioritize: Arrange topics by highest volume or highest trend using the dropdown menu at the top of the page.

Bottom line: The more you understand which AI search topics are growing in your category and how your brand shows up, the better positioned you are to dominate AI answers before competitors do.

Start here

Why you should track topic volume and trends in AI search

Topic volume and trends—aka how frequently people are asking AI about certain topics and how that activity changes over time—tell you which prompts should be top of mind and where demand is shifting. To optimize AI search performance, you need to understand where showing up will move the needle and where your brand currently stands.

Here’s how to do it using Scrunch.

Before you begin:

• Log in to Scrunch or sign up for a free 7-day trial to follow along.
• Add your brand and website to the AI Context tab in Scrunch, including any alternate domains or subdomains you want to track.
• Customize your brand context in Scrunch (alternative brand names, key competitors, customer personas, key topics, etc.).

Step 1: Track topic volume, trends, and brand presence in the Trends tab

Log in to Scrunch and navigate to the Trends tab.

Select Trends from left-hand sidebar

This page provides a high-level view of how often people ask AI about topics related to your brand and how frequently your brand appears in answers.

At the top of the page is the Industry Topics Watchlist—a listing of all the topics you’re currently tracking. Each topic is made up of a cluster of semantically related prompts.

You’ll see:

• AI search activity: Estimated conversation volume for each topic
• Line chart: Trend visualization that shows how interest in each topic changes over time
• Brand Presence: Percentage of AI responses that mention your brand for the topic

View Industry Topics Watchlist

All of this information can be filtered based on your selected time period using the date selector at the top of the page (it’s set to the last 12 weeks by default).

Click the “Last 12 weeks” button to view your options or set a custom date range.

View date options

You can also arrange topics in your watchlist based on the highest volume or the highest trend using the dropdown menu at the top of the page.

Each topic provides a directional sense of demand and visibility in AI search drawn from Scrunch’s dataset of millions of consumer AI interactions.

You can add any topic to your watchlist and begin tracking its volume and your brand’s presence using the search bar at the top of the page.

View search options

Search by keyword or browse topics classified by North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) codes, then click into any topic to preview AI search volume, trend lines, and sample prompts and responses.

You can then add the topic to your watchlist by clicking the “+” button in the top right corner (conversely, you can also remove a topic from your watchlist at any time by clicking the “-” button.)

Once a topic is added, Scrunch will begin calculating both topic volume and presence for your brand.

If you can’t find the topic you’re looking for, click the “Request a New Topic” button at the top of the page to submit a request. Scrunch regularly reviews submissions and adds new topics to the platform monthly.

Farther down the page you’ll see Recommended Industry Topics. These are topic suggestions based on what you input into your AI Context tab.

View Recommended Industry Topics

Once you’ve got a general overview of the topics you’re tracking and how your brand shows up for them, you can dig deeper into individual topics to get more details.

Step 2: Explore sentiment, competitive presence, and related prompts in Topic Details pages

Click into a topic to open its Topic Details page.

In addition to AI search volume and trends, you’ll see:

• Sentiment: Percentage of positive, mixed, and negative sentiment expressed toward your brand in AI responses
• Competitive Presence: Brand presence versus competitors across AI platforms
• Top brands: Brands with the highest average presence in AI responses

View Sentiment, Competitive Presence, and Top brands

Down below you’ll see Sample prompts & responses. This is a sampling of the prompts included in the topic and full responses from AI platforms.

View Sample prompts & responses

Use these prompts to confirm whether the topic matches the real questions your audience asks AI.

Sample prompts can be converted into tracked prompts at any time by clicking the “+” button next to the prompt, at which point you can assign it a persona and tag, as well as select which AI platforms you want to track it on.

From here the prompt will move to your Prompts Monitoring tab, where Scrunch will begin collecting responses.

This makes it easy to connect topic-level trend data to prompt-level visibility and allows you to rapidly take action on the topics and prompts that matter to your brand.

What’s next

Start optimizing your prompt tracking strategy:

1. Update prompt list: Prioritize prompt monitoring based on rising or falling AI search topics in your category.
2. Compare to competitors: Identify top competitors that consistently appear in AI responses to target prompts and try to gain share of voice.
3. Run a site audit: Fix access, delivery, or content issues hurting your visibility.
4. Update or create content: Review competitive sources and update or create content to exceed content quality.

Topic volume and trends help you understand what your ideal customers are asking AI about, how often, whether your brand shows up in the answers, and how it all shifts over time.

Scrunch recommends also tracking brand presence, citations, AI agent traffic, and AI referral traffic to get a comprehensive view of how your brand shows up in AI answers, what’s driving it, and the results.

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