How to Use AnswerThePublic
This starter guide will help you understand what people are searching for and how to use AnswerThePublic to turn those insights into content you can actually publish.
AnswerThePublic pulls autocomplete data from multiple platforms — including search engines like Google and Bing, marketplaces like Amazon, social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini.
This means you’re not just seeing keywords, but real questions, comparisons, and topics people are actively exploring across different channels.
To get started, go to the search bar and either paste your website URL or type a keyword. If you use your URL, the platform will create a personalized page called Suggested For You, which shows content ideas tailored to your business.
If you search for a keyword, you’ll see a full breakdown of how people search around that topic. The most effective way to use the tool is to combine both.
Start with your URL to get direction, then use keywords to go deeper.
Suggested For You: where to start
The Suggested for You page works as your content roadmap.
It surfaces ideas based on your business, grouped into categories like high-impact topics for AI visibility, high-volume keywords, and lower-competition opportunities.
Each suggestion comes with a clear angle and estimated traffic, so you can quickly decide what’s worth creating. In practice, this is where you choose your next topic.
From there, you can either explore it further in the keyword data or go straight into content creation.
Understanding keyword data
When you run a keyword search, AnswerThePublic organizes the results into different sections that help you understand how people search and what they’re looking for.
Each keyword is supported by core SEO metrics shown in the Summary panel, including search volume and cost-per-click (CPC). These values come from Google data and are updated monthly, giving you a reliable baseline for demand and competition.
The keyword wheel is the most visual way to explore this. It brings together autosuggestions from different sources — including search engines, social media, shopping platforms, and AI tools — and maps how people search around your topic.
Hovering over a keyword reveals its search volume and CPC, and clicking into a category lets you explore more specific suggestions in detail.
Queries closer to the center tend to have higher search volume and more competition, while the ones on the outer edges are longer and more specific.
These long-tail queries are usually the best place to start if you want quicker results.
You can also export your data depending on how you want to work with it.
The keyword wheel can be downloaded as an image (PNG). If you need the full dataset, you can export results as a CSV file, including all related searches and their search volume and CPC. These values reflect data from the previous month.
Lower down the same report, you’ll find People Also Ask (PAA), which shows real questions pulled from Google. This is one of the most practical sections in the tool.
A common approach is to take one main topic and use a few of these questions as supporting articles.
This helps you build a cluster of content instead of isolated pieces.
You’ll also see keyword lists that group variations of your search, along with search volume and cost-per-click (CPC). This helps you understand which topics have demand and how competitive they might be, so you can prioritize what’s worth creating.
AI Models
AnswerThePublic also shows how people interact with AI tools, specifically ChatGPT and Gemini.
The AI Models section gives you a clearer view of how people phrase their questions in AI conversations and what kind of answers they’re expecting. Instead of just keywords, you’re seeing prompts pulled from these platforms, along with useful contexts like search intent, sentiment, and whether specific brands are being mentioned.
When you click Get AI Response, you can go deeper into each prompt.
You’ll be able to see the generated responses, understand the tone behind the query, and identify which brands appear in those answers.
This adds a different layer to your research. You’re not just understanding what people search on traditional platforms, but how they interact with AI tools, which is increasingly shaping how content is discovered.
In practice, this helps you identify where your content can appear in AI-generated answers, spot gaps where competitors are already being mentioned, and create content that aligns with how these tools surface information.
Exploring different platforms
Search behavior varies by platform, and AnswerThePublic reflects that by organizing data into different sources.
The Organic Searches report focuses on Google and Bing and gives you the most complete SEO view, including the keyword wheel, full keyword lists, and People Also Ask data.
The Search Modifiers report shows you all the keywords that derive from your searched term, divided into Questions (Are,Can, How, Can), Prepositions (Can, For, Is, To), Comparisons (And, Like, Or, Vs), Alphabeticals, and Numbers.
The Social Media section shows what people are searching for on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. This is useful when your content strategy goes beyond written articles and into video or social formats.
The Shopping section focuses on Amazon, helping you understand how people search when they’re closer to making a purchase. This is especially relevant for ecommerce or product-focused content.
If you want to see everything in one place, the All view brings together data from all supported platforms — including Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, TikTok, Instagram, and AI models — in a single report.
Keyword Lists: Save and organize ideas
As you explore keywords, you can save them in Keyword Lists to keep track of topics you want to work on.
This is useful when you’re researching multiple angles or building a content plan over time. Instead of losing ideas between searches, you can group and revisit them later.
In practice, Keyword Lists help you move from exploration to execution without starting from scratch each time.
Refining your results
As you explore, you can use filters to narrow things down. You might want to focus only on questions, or only on high-volume keywords, or even filter AI prompts by intent or sentiment.
For example, you might choose to look only at questions or filter down to keywords with higher search volume. You can also isolate comparisons, prepositions, or related terms depending on the kind of content you’re planning to create.
In the AI Models section, filters go a step further by helping you understand context. You can refine prompts based on sentiment. Whether the query shows positive interest, negative concerns, or neutral intent, as well as by search intent, such as learning, comparing options, or taking action.
This is where you move from exploration to decision-making. Instead of scanning everything, you can isolate the type of opportunities you’re looking for.
Content Studio: from idea to publish-ready content
Once you’ve found a topic, the next step is to create something from it.
You can do that by clicking Generate Content, which opens Content Studio. From there, the system analyzes top-ranking pages, builds a structured outline, and generates an article based on your topic and brand voice.
If you want a deeper explanation of how this works, you can refer to the dedicated Content Studio guide.
What to expect on the free plan
You can explore the platform and see how the data is structured without upgrading. However, some results and features are limited. Full access, including deeper data and content generation, is available on a trial or subscription basis.
A simple workflow that works
If you’re not sure where to start, this sequence tends to work well in practice.
Begin with your Suggested For You page, pick a topic that looks relevant, and then explore it using the keyword wheel and People Also Ask sections.
Once you have a clear angle, move into content creation in Content Studio.
A few practical tips
Short, simple keywords tend to work better than long phrases when starting a search.
Long-tail queries are usually easier to rank for and can bring faster results. Over time, the goal is to build connected pieces of content around a topic rather than isolated articles.