Search Prompts Versus Keywords
The shift from short keyword strings to full natural-language instructions carrying constraints, personal context, and follow-up history.
Analogy Mental model
Paying by the word to send a telegram, against speaking freely to a secretary: three days in a city, travelling with parents and a small child, quiet, near the park, breakfast included, under a set budget.
In practice What you actually do
The best source of real prompts is not a keyword tool. It is the language customers use in sales calls and support threads, which is the same language they type into an assistant. Long queries in your search console, filtered by word count, are a second source.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Judging these by individual search volume misreads them. Each phrasing may be unique, but they cluster tightly around a small number of situations, and the situation is the unit you optimise for.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →