When you set up a project in Gumshoe, the product category tells Gumshoe which part of your business to analyze. It's usually a product line, service, or sub-brand.
You might also see this called Focus, Analysis Focus, or product and/or service focus in some parts of Gumshoe or in older articles. They all mean the same thing.
Your product category is one of the most important inputs in your project. It shapes everything that comes next: the personas Gumshoe generates, the topics it explores, and the prompts it sends to the AI models. A focused project produces focused, actionable insights. A broad project with no product category set produces broad, hard-to-act-on insights.
How does a product category work?
Your product category isn't a filter applied after the fact. It's an input that guides Gumshoe in building your project from the start.
When you set a product category, Gumshoe uses it to:
- Generate personas that match the customers most likely to consider that product or service
- Identify topics and buying criteria relevant to that offering
- Write prompts that reflect how real customers would ask AI about it
Because the product category guides generation upstream, changing it changes the entire shape of your project. In fact, changing your product category, brand, location, or language means starting a new project.
Why run separate projects for each product category?
We recommend running one project per product category and one per geography. Combining multiple product lines or regions into a single project muddies the results and makes it harder to see what is actually working.
Separate projects give you:
- Cleaner data, with each project tied to one offering and one audience
- Clearer levers, so you know which content, pages, and citations are moving the needle for that product
- Better outcomes, because you can take specific action based on specific insights
What should I choose as a product category?
A good product category is a product line or service that's meaningful to your business. Some examples:
- A multinational brand with retail, cloud, and logistics arms might set cloud services as its product category, to isolate AI visibility for that business unit
- A bakery that also offers catering could set catering services as its product category, to see how that offering shows up in AI, separate from the retail storefront
- A software company launching a new product can set the new product as its product category, to track how AI models learn it over time
Can I use a product category for something I'm not known for yet?
Yes, and this is one of the most valuable ways to use the feature. If your brand is pivoting into a new category, or if there's an offering you want to grow visibility for, set that as your product category. You'll likely see low scores to start. That's the point. You now have a baseline to improve against, and Gumshoe will show you where the opportunity lies.
Is the geographic focus the same thing?
No. The geographic focus is a separate setting that tells Gumshoe where your customers are located (not where your business is headquartered). If you want to cover multiple regions, run a separate project for each.