Search prompt
The full question or instruction a person types into an AI engine, written in natural language, that the engine answers directly rather than returning a list of links to sort through.
You probably already type full questions into AI engines without thinking of them as searches. That habit is the quiet shift: the query is now a sentence, and the answer is the engine's, not a list of yours to pick from.
What a search prompt is
A search prompt is the whole question a person puts to an AI engine. Not "best dentist Austin" but "who is a good dentist in Austin that takes my insurance and sees kids." The engine reads that and answers in its own words.
The old search box wanted keywords and gave back links. A prompt wants a real question and gives back a decision, already made.
Why it changes how you get found
Prompts are longer and more specific than keywords, so they carry intent in plain language. A person is not assembling search terms. They are describing what they want and expecting an answer.
That means the questions in your category, the ones a buyer would actually type, are the surfaces that matter. If your pages clearly answer those questions in plain terms, a machine reading them has something to work with.
The old way and the new way
The old way optimized for keywords: find the phrases with volume, place them on the page, compete for the link. The reader was a human scanning ten blue links.
The new way starts from the question a person would ask out loud and asks whether your page answers it cleanly enough for a machine to read. The reader is the engine standing between you and the buyer.
The damaging admission
You do not control prompts, and you do not control the answers. A person can phrase the same need a hundred ways, and the engine decides what to say for each.
So no one can hand you a list of prompts you will own. What you can do is make sure the real questions in your category are answered plainly on your pages, and measure how engines respond. The wording stays theirs.
How to check yours
Take the three questions a real customer would type before buying from you. Open the page meant to answer each and ask whether the answer is stated plainly and early, or buried.
Run a free scan on any URL to see how an engine reads it, or read why your site might not be showing up in ChatGPT.