Skip to main content
The Pharos onboarding wizard takes you through 8 steps to configure your brand profile, competitors, prompts, and analysis schedule. This page explains what each step collects and why it matters, so you can make the best choices for your setup. If you want a faster path to your first results, see the Quickstart guide. Come back here for a deeper explanation of any step.
Pharos saves your progress automatically as you move through the wizard. If you close the browser mid-way, your draft is preserved and you can pick up where you left off.

​
The 8-step wizard

1

About you

Enter your first name (required) and last name (optional). Pharos uses this to personalize your experience and associate your account with your profile.
If you’re adding a second brand to an existing account, Pharos skips this step — your name is already on file.
2

Website URL

Enter your company’s root domain — for example, acme.com — without any https:// prefix or path.When you click Continue, Pharos:
  1. Validates that the domain is reachable
  2. Fetches your company name, description, logo, and industry from your website
  3. Pre-fills your brand profile in Step 4
The auto-fetch takes up to 10 seconds. If your site is temporarily unreachable or blocks Pharos’s request, you’ll see a Continue without verifying option so you can proceed and fill in your brand details manually.
Enter the root domain only — no www, no path, no trailing slash. For example, enter acme.com, not www.acme.com or acme.com/about.
In the background, Pharos also begins generating a brand kit (brand tones, style rules, and a content sample) from your website. This runs silently while you complete the remaining steps and is saved to your brand when you launch monitoring in Step 8.
3

Prompt region

Choose the geographic scope that best describes your target market. This setting affects the prompts Pharos generates and the competitors it surfaces.Geographic scope options:
ScopeWhen to use
GlobalYour market spans multiple continents or you don’t want location-specific targeting
RegionYou operate primarily in one major region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East & Africa)
CountryYou target a specific country; you can narrow further to a state or city
For Country scope, Pharos also lets you choose an optional state (for US-based brands) or city. Narrowing to a city gives you hyper-local prompt results and competitor suggestions — useful for service businesses or regional brands.Prompt language: Choose the language Pharos uses when submitting prompts to AI platforms. Pharos supports 14 languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Chinese. English is the default.
Choose the language your target customers use when asking questions, not necessarily the language your website is written in.
4

Brand profile

Review and edit the brand information Pharos fetched from your website. This data is used to identify and track your brand in AI responses.Fields:
  • Company name (required) — the exact name Pharos looks for in AI responses. Make sure this matches how your brand is commonly referred to.
  • Industry — select from a list of industry categories. This helps Pharos generate relevant, industry-appropriate prompts.
  • Description — a brief explanation of what your company does. Two to three sentences works best. This is used as context when generating prompts and is surfaced in your brand settings.
  • Brand identifiers — alternative names, abbreviations, or product names that AI models might use when referring to your brand. For example, if your company is “Acme Corporation,” you might add Acme, ACME, and the name of your flagship product as identifiers.
Pharos generates initial identifiers automatically based on your company name. You can edit, remove, or add more.
Think about how customers actually refer to your brand in conversation. If you’re often called by an acronym or a shortened name, add those as identifiers — they help Pharos catch mentions it would otherwise miss.
5

Competitors

Add the competitors you want to track alongside your brand. Pharos uses competitor data to generate side-by-side rankings, sentiment comparisons, and trait analysis in your dashboard.Adding competitors:
  • Single competitor — enter a domain and optional display name. Pharos fetches the competitor’s company info and assigns brand identifiers automatically.
  • Multiple competitors — paste a list of domains, one per line. Pharos processes each one in sequence.
You can add up to 10 competitors per brand. At least one competitor is required to proceed.Each competitor gets its own set of brand identifiers — alternative names that help Pharos detect mentions even when AI platforms use a variant of the company name.
Competitor tracking directly affects the quality of your dashboard’s ranking and sentiment delta data. Adding zero competitors means those features show no data. Add at least two or three competitors for meaningful comparisons.
You can edit competitor domains and identifiers after clicking Add. Hover over any competitor card to see the edit controls.
6

Topic selection

Choose the topics you want Pharos to monitor. Topics represent subject areas relevant to your brand — they become the basis for the AI prompts Pharos generates in Step 7.Pharos suggests topics based on your website content and the products or services it detected. You can also type in custom topics.Selection rules:
  • Choose a minimum of 3 topics and a maximum of 10
  • Each topic generates approximately 5 prompts
  • 3 topics → roughly 15 prompts; 10 topics → roughly 50 prompts
What makes a good topic:
  • Keep topics short and descriptive — these are category labels, not questions
  • Use keywords from your traditional SEO strategy; terms you already know people search for are likely to map to AI queries too
  • Mix product-level topics (specific features or use cases) with category-level topics (the broader market you compete in)
If you’re unsure which topics to choose, think about the questions your sales team hears most often from prospects. Those questions map directly to the kinds of prompts that matter most for your AI visibility.
7

Base prompts

Review and edit the prompts Pharos generated from your topics. These are the exact questions Pharos submits to AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.When a platform answers one of these prompts, Pharos checks whether your brand appears in the response — and scores the visibility, sentiment, and quality of the mention.Prompt types:Pharos generates a strategic mix of prompt types by default:
TypeShareExample
Branded~20%“Is [Your Brand] good for X?”
Commercial~60%“Best X for Y”, “X vs Y”
Informational~20%“How does X work?”
Branded prompts measure how AI responds when users ask about you directly. Commercial prompts are the high-intent queries where purchase decisions happen — this is where AI visibility matters most. Informational prompts capture discovery queries where your brand might be organically recommended.Managing prompts:
  • Select or deselect individual prompts to include or exclude them from analysis
  • Edit a prompt’s text by clicking the three-dot menu and selecting Edit
  • Delete prompts you don’t want tracked
  • Add prompts manually — single or in bulk (one per line), with optional topic and type classification
Prompts are grouped by topic and expandable. Use the search bar and type filter to find specific prompts quickly.You need at least 5 selected prompts to proceed to Step 8.
You can add, edit, or remove prompts at any time after setup from Settings → Prompts. Your initial prompt set doesn’t need to be perfect — you’ll refine it as you see which prompts produce useful data.
8

Schedule

Configure which AI platforms to query and how often to run analysis.AI platforms to track:Select one or more AI platforms from the available options (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and others). Pharos auto-selects the most popular platforms by default. Each additional platform you select increases your monthly prompt usage proportionally.Analysis schedule:Choose the days of the week when Pharos automatically runs your prompts. Common choices:
  • Daily — maximum visibility data and trend granularity
  • Three days/week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) — good balance of coverage and prompt consumption
  • Once a week — suitable for brands with a large prompt set on a limited plan
Prompt usage estimate:Pharos calculates your estimated monthly prompt usage in real time as you adjust platforms and schedule days. One prompt is consumed per prompt × per platform × per run. If your configuration exceeds your plan’s monthly quota, Pharos shows a warning and suggests an adjusted configuration that fits within budget.Multi-run sampling (optional):Enable this toggle to query each prompt multiple times per run. Multiple samples improve statistical confidence in your visibility scores, at the cost of higher prompt consumption. Each prompt is queried the number of times shown next to the toggle.When you’re satisfied with your configuration, click Launch Monitoring. Pharos creates your brand, saves your prompts and competitors, and starts the first analysis immediately. Setup takes about 30 seconds — keep the tab open until the completion screen appears.
If you’re on a trial plan, Pharos automatically adjusts your default configuration to fit within your monthly quota. You’ll see the adjusted settings reflected in the schedule and platform selection before you launch.

​
After you launch

When setup completes, Pharos shows a confirmation screen with a progress bar tracking your initial analysis. The first run typically finishes within 15–30 minutes. Once results are ready, your dashboard shows your visibility score, a sentiment breakdown, platform-by-platform data, and competitor comparisons. The Recommendations section lists specific content changes that are likely to improve your score. Your brand also runs automated analyses on the schedule you set in Step 8. You can adjust the schedule, add or remove platforms, and manage your prompts and competitors at any time from Settings.

Understanding your dashboard

How to read your visibility score, sentiment, and citation data.

Managing prompts

Add, edit, and organize the prompts that power your AI visibility tracking.

Competitor intelligence

Compare your AI presence against competitors and track ranking changes.

Content recommendations

Act on prioritized content suggestions to improve your visibility score.