This experiment looked at three sets of suggestions (100 each) – brand, “soft-brand” and non-brand – all based on the topic “SEO tools” and a handful of pre-selected brands. We intentionally kept the scope narrow and within a scope we understood well. Of course, results may vary across different subject areas.
Brand suggestions
This is the simplest group. Brand prompts contained a brand name or branded product directly in the prompt. Some examples include:
- “Can I see historical Domain Authority data in the Moz dashboard?”
- “How many domains does Moz Link Index currently track?”
- “Is Moz or Semrush better for a beginner in SEO?”
Please note that brand requests may include brands or branded products and metrics.
Soft brand tips
The “non-brand” suggestions were divided into two groups. The soft-brand group used our fan-out query search to generate suggestions in an open-ended way. Examples include:
- “Are premium search suites worth the investment for a small blog?”
- “Can I use a tool to find the most popular questions in my niche?”
- “How do I reconcile keyword scores from multiple search platforms?”
There is an inherent bias in our topic: questions about SEO tools will naturally include specific tools and brands in the answers. So, even without including a brand or gearing the system towards brands, we have already created a weak brand bias.
Non-brand suggestions
Given the topic bias, we pushed the system to generate suggestions more adjacent to the tool, resulting in broader informative questions. For example:
- “How do you measure the organic search visibility of a new website?”
- “Is it better to target one high-volume term or ten low-volume terms?”
- “What is the best way to handle a sudden drop in ranking?”
We’ll call these our true non-brand suggestions. Even from these few examples it is probably clear that the border between non-brand and “soft-brand” is gray and depends a lot on the topic. The trademark mentions are an on/off switch, but the trademark bias is a volume knob.
