How OpenUp Found Its Edge in AI Search

OpenUp is a mental well-being platform built on a "high-tech, high touch" philosophy. For Phil Hendry, the company's SEO Specialist, that means balancing technology with human connection. When AI-powered search began reshaping how people find information, Phil could see it coming.

I could start to see the signs. This was going to come and have a big change. It was a bit like a gold rush, trying to find the information, figure out how to set things up the right way, and understand what we needed to put in place for later.

The problem was that Phil had no structured way to act on this shift. What prompts were AI models actually surfacing? Which competitors appeared in responses? Was his content gaining traction in generative search? These questions went unanswered. Content decisions stayed rooted in instinct and guesswork.

Phil started looking for a solution. He found Peec, a prompt-tracking tool, and gave it a serious try over several months. The experience revealed something important: having a tool was better than having nothing, but this tool left him wanting.

I still didn't feel like I was getting enough out of the tool.

The limitations became clear quickly. The interface was flat. The feature set was narrow. And the workflow was clunky: export data, download Excel files, copy values across spreadsheets. This friction meant insights moved slowly, and opportunities to act on them moved even slower.

Peec was expensive for what it delivered. It offered visibility into prompts, yes, but only a slice of what Phil needed to build a real GEO strategy. He needed something wider, deeper, and easier to work with.

When Phil discovered Promptwatch, the difference struck him immediately.

To discover Promptwatch was like seeing the light.

What made the difference was scope. Promptwatch offered brand visibility tracking, competitor benchmarking, prompt-level keyword data, and content gap analysis. It all lived in one place. Where Peec showed him a single angle, Promptwatch gave him the full view.

Comparing features to cost, Phil says it was a no-brainer. The platform could grow with OpenUp's ambitions. It could handle more pages, more competitors, and more complexity.

Six months in, Promptwatch shapes how Phil approaches content at OpenUp. He now splits his content strategy into two tracks: articles for traditional Google search, and articles written specifically for generative engine optimization.

Promptwatch helps him identify which prompts are worth targeting for GEO. When he sees search volume for a prompt, he knows the effort of writing an article is justified.

The time I spend writing an article is specific for GEO. Seeing the search volume, knowing it's relevant for us. That's the foundation.

One feature stands out: the API connection. Phil connects it to Claude to enrich his writing process. When drafting a GEO article, he queries the Promptwatch API to surface related prompts already generating responses. These become secondary keywords that shape his article structure.

I can connect the API key with Claude. While I'm writing, I check the API and it shows me the prompts coming up. Those are my secondary keywords.

The crawler logs and visit analytics have also eliminated tedious manual work. Previously, this meant downloading spreadsheets and reformatting them. Now the data is accessible directly in the platform.

Phil's goals at OpenUp are straightforward: generate leads from AI referrals and build brand visibility in generative search responses. Promptwatch serves both.

The clearest win came from an article about a psychologist without a waiting time. This prompt would never have crossed Phil's mind without the data.

A nice win was writing that article. It's a prompt that wouldn't have crossed my mind if I would have only been looking at keywords.

That article became one of the first true GEO pieces Phil wrote. Today, it ranks as the top cited result for its target prompt. It's proof that letting data surface the opportunity, then writing to meet it, works.

Beyond this win, Phil continues to find features he hasn't fully explored yet. Crawler logs and visit analytics hint at depths he's still digging into. The platform has room to grow with him.

For Phil and OpenUp, GEO isn't a trend to prepare for. It's how people find information now. It demands a different approach to content.

Promptwatch gave him the infrastructure to shift deliberately. What once relied on intuition now has data behind it. With leads from AI referrals as the target, that foundation makes all the difference.