A money query is a specific, buyer-phrased question you want an AI to answer with your name, like 'who is the best fractional CFO for early-stage SaaS.' Pick five to ten, baseline them across every engine, and use them as the scoreboard that everything else in PEO aims at.
The whole PEO method begins with one decision most people skip: naming the exact questions you want to win. Get this right and everything downstream has a target. Get it wrong and you optimize toward a fog.
What a money query is
A money query is a specific, commercial question phrased the way a buyer would actually ask an AI, one where being the named answer would lead to real business. Compare two targets. "Be more visible" is a wish with no yes-or-no test. "Be named when someone asks ChatGPT who is the best fractional CFO for early-stage SaaS" is a testable event you can check on any engine, any day. PEO lives or dies on that difference.
Why the query comes first
You cannot optimize toward a target you have not named. Picking queries first also forces honesty about who your buyer really is and what they value. If you cannot phrase the question a buyer would type, you do not yet know your buyer well enough to be their answer.
Does the engine name you on the query that pays? That is not a one-time check, it is a recurring measurement. Everything you publish, earn and structure is in service of turning that answer from no to yes.
How to write good money queries
- Be specific. Add the niche, the segment, the use case. "Best marketing consultant" is too broad to win and too broad to convert. "Best B2B SaaS pricing consultant for seed-stage startups" is winnable and valuable.
- Phrase it as a buyer, not a marketer. Write the words a real client would type into a chat, superlatives and all: "who should I hire for," "who is the best at," "who are the top."
- Make it commercial. Favor questions that sit close to a buying decision over idle curiosity.
- Keep it to five to ten. A focused set you can actually move beats a sprawling list you cannot.
Baseline before you build
Before you publish anything, type each money query into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode, and record what comes back: who gets named, whether you appear at all, and the reasons the engines give. Screenshot everything. This is your before picture, and without it you can never prove the work moved anything.
Turn queries into a scoreboard
Your money queries are not a one-time exercise, they are the recurring measurement at the heart of the method. Re-run them monthly, mark movement from unmentioned to mentioned to named, and aim your knowledge, network and authority work at the specific gaps the scoreboard reveals. Effort you cannot measure is effort you cannot improve.
FAQ
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