What is a brand question?
A brand question is a question that names your brand, such as "What is Tesla?" or "Is Tesla worth it?", used to check how AI describes you rather than whether it names you. "Is Tesla worth it?" is a brand question. It will name the brand almost every time, so it says nothing about visibility, and a great deal about whether AI describes you correctly when a buyer asks about you by name.
Why are branded and unbranded questions tracked separately?
Because mixing them inflates every visibility figure. A question with your name in it names you by construction.
Our own benchmark shows the size of it. Pooling five questions that name Proofsource with 25 buyer questions gave us a 5.7% share of brand mentions; leaving them out gave 1 mention in 500 (the post). Neither pooled figure tells you whether new buyers find you.
What do brand questions tell you?
They tell you how engines describe you to someone who already has your name:
- Identity: whether the answer is about you or a different thing with your name.
- Facts: price, plans, features, founding and where you operate.
- Framing: whether the answer recommends you, hedges, or steers the buyer to a competitor.
- Sources: which pages the engine trusts to describe you, and whether any are yours.
What do brand questions look like in a real example?
In the public Tesla example (Oct 4, 2026), 19 of 20 answers to the five brand questions named Tesla, as expected. What they said was the finding.
Google AI Overviews answered "What is Tesla?" by opening with the magnetic unit: "the standard international unit used to measure the strength of a magnetic field". Perplexity answered "Is Tesla worth it?" by splitting it between the stock and the cars. Claude answered "What is Tesla?" and "Is Tesla legit?" from what the model already knew, with no sources cited.
Which brand questions should you track?
A handful covers what buyers ask by name:
- "What is [brand]?" for identity.
- "Is [brand] legit?" or "Is [brand] worth it?" for trust and framing.
- "[brand] pricing" for the facts most often out of date.
- "[brand] vs [competitor]" for how you are compared.
- "[brand] alternatives" for who an engine sends your buyers to.
Where do brand questions sit in Proofsource?
Proofsource asks questions that name you in their own set, leaves them out of the headline share of buyer answers, and checks each answer claim by claim against a fact sheet you confirm, with the framing marked positive, neutral or negative. See Accuracy and sentiment.
Common questions about Brand question
Do brand questions count toward AI visibility?
No. They name you almost every time, so they would inflate it. They are read for accuracy and framing instead.
Is "[competitor] alternatives" a brand question?
It names a brand, but not yours, so for you it behaves like a buyer question. Report it apart from open buyer questions, because the best-known brand tends to dominate alternatives answers.
What if AI gets my brand wrong on a brand question?
Find the page the answer drew on, fix it if it is yours, or ask its publisher for a correction if it is not. Then re-ask the same question on the same engine to confirm.
How many brand questions should I track?
Five is enough for most brands: identity, trust, pricing, a comparison and alternatives.
Related terms
- Buyer question
A buyer question is a question about your category that does not name your brand, written the way someone choosing a product would ask it.
- Brand accuracy
Brand accuracy is whether AI answers describe your brand correctly: what you sell, who it is for, what it costs and how you compare.
- Entity confusion
Entity confusion is when an AI answer about your brand describes, or opens with, a different company or thing that shares or resembles your name.
- AI sentiment
AI sentiment is the tone an AI answer takes when it names your brand: positive, neutral or negative.
Worked example: Tesla, public AI answers, Oct 4, 2026: Proofsource's first scan of Tesla, 25 buyer questions and 5 brand questions, one answer per question on each of four engines. A small sample from one brand, shown as an example, not a benchmark.
See where AI leaves you out, and what to fix.
See which buyer questions name your brand, who gets named instead, and what to fix. 200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card.
Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Mode
