What are personas in Gumshoe?
Personas are the audience segments most likely to ask questions about your brand in AI-generated search. These segments represent different types of customers or decision-makers searching for information related to your products or services.
Each persona reflects a pattern of interests, behaviors, and search intent. By understanding who is asking about your brand and why, you can better align your messaging, content strategy, and brand positioning to meet your audience's needs.
Personas matter because AI models are designed to satisfy the user's intent, which means they often tailor responses based on who they think is asking. If you or your team tried to run this research manually, it could take weeks, and the models would likely shape answers to match your perceived expectations. Gumshoe uses personas to simulate realistic audience identities, framing prompts as if they are coming from that specific user type. This ensures the insights you get reflect how AI would respond to actual customer queries, not your own.
Why do personas matter?
- Identify the audience segments AI models associate most with your brand.
- Understand the motivations and behaviors behind different customer types.
- Tailor your messaging, strategy, and positioning to match user intent.
- Align content more closely with the questions and needs of your target audience.
- Get more realistic and accurate responses from AI models.
How are personas generated?
Personas in a Visibility Audit (formerly known as a report) are created through a proprietary diagnostic process. We query multiple AI models and return a consensus on the types of users they associate with your brand. These personas aren't pulled from real-world customer data, because AI models don't make that information available, but instead reflect how the models themselves picture the audiences most likely to engage with you.
Think of them as a point-in-time read of the assumptions AI is already making. Gumshoe specifically asks models to draw on their own learned experience, so the results aren't random guesses, but informed signals based on the patterns and context they've been trained on.
You can, and should, edit personas to reflect your actual target audience. But the automatically surfaced personas are a rare window into how AI currently perceives your customers, and the only way to measure those associations in real time.
When your project runs, the models are queried again, fresh and individually, to show how they would respond to each persona in a real-world environment.
How do I review and edit personas during project setup?
Personas and prompts are reviewed together on the same step of setup, "Review your personas and prompts." Your personas are listed down the left, each showing how many prompts it has. Select one to see it in full.
For the selected persona you will see:
- Persona bio, a short description of who they are and what they care about.
- Defining characteristics, the specific behaviors and priorities that shape how this persona shops or buys.
- What they will ask, the prompts this persona will put to the AI models.
From there you can:
- Select Edit persona to change the name, the bio, or the defining characteristics.
- Use the arrow next to Edit persona to delete a persona you do not want.
- Select Add persona at the bottom of the list to create one of your own.
- Select Add prompt to write a question this persona might ask.
- Use the Actions menu in the top right to regenerate prompts.
When you edit a persona, you will be asked what to do with that persona's prompts, since the prompts were written to match the persona as it was. You can regenerate them while keeping any you wrote yourself.
Select Continue when you are happy with your personas and prompts. The next and final step is selecting your models and starting the project.
How do I edit personas in an existing project?
- Select Personas in the left menu.
- Use the pencil icon to edit a persona's details, or the trash icon to remove one.
- To add a new persona manually, enter a name and description, then select "Add Persona."
- To have Gumshoe generate a description, type a name in the Persona Name field and select "Suggest." If the description works for you, select "Add Persona."
Persona changes are applied the next time your Visibility Audit runs on its schedule, because personas are sent to the AI models and need a run to be used.
How can I reuse or import personas from other projects?
You can reuse personas from your workspace, including anything you or your team created there, along with any personas you personally created in other workspaces or company accounts.
- Select "Add Persona."
- Select "Import from existing."
- Choose "Mine" for personas you personally created, or "Workspace" for personas created by anyone in this workspace.
- Select "Import" next to the persona you would like to add.
Why do personas improve results?
Each persona helps clarify how AI models interpret your audience. Strong persona targeting improves the relevance of your summaries, questions, and cited content in your Visibility Audit.
What should I do next?
Read your personas against the buyers you actually sell to. The most useful edit is usually not deleting a persona but adding the one that is missing, because a buyer type Gumshoe did not predict is exactly the audience you have no visibility data for.
It is also worth noticing which personas the models invented. If AI pictures an audience you do not target, that gap tells you how your brand is currently being positioned, and it is often the most useful thing on the page.
Once your personas are right, check that each one is asking the questions your buyers really ask. See How can I view, edit, and use prompts to understand my AI search standings?