Profound reviewed: measuring how AI answer engines represent your brand

Profound is an AI-visibility (GEO/AEO) platform tracking how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews represent a brand. It monitors mentions, citations and visibility across eight answer engines for marketing teams.

What does Profound do?

Profound measures brand presence inside AI answers: whether and how often answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews are named on its homepage — mention and cite a brand across a defined prompt set (Profound, 2026). Its modules are Answer Engine Insights, Prompt Volumes, Shopping, Agent Analytics, Agents and AI Marketer; Agent Analytics tracks “how your site is interpreted and crawled by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and more”, the crawler-side view a visibility number lacks.

Where does Profound fit in the agentic web?

Profound is a GEO / AI-visibility tool: it quantifies the outcome, whether and how often engines cite you. It measures exactly what GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) defines and the share-of-model a brand holds in AI answers; the Almanac's glossary records for AEO and Share of Model cite Profound's article “What is Answer Engine Optimization” (updated 29 January 2026) as their source, last verified 2026-06-15. It tells you your citation rate; the GEO guide engineers the citations these trackers measure and closes the other half of the loop.

Our take

A capable enterprise-grade tracker for teams that must report AI visibility to stakeholders, and, with Starter at $99 per month billed yearly for ChatGPT only, no longer enterprise-only. Measurement and change are different jobs: use Profound to see where you stand, and the readiness/GEO work to move it. The number it reports is the effect; the on-page signals in the GEO guide are the cause.

Why does AI visibility need continuous tracking?

Because 40–60 % of the domains cited for identical prompts change within one month: in Profound's study of about 80,000 prompts per platform, comparing 11–13 June with 11–13 July 2025, cited domains changed by 59.3 % on Google AI Overviews, 54.1 % on ChatGPT, 53.4 % on Microsoft Copilot and 40.5 % on Perplexity (Profound, July 2025); from January to July 2025 the drift reached 70–90 %. A single citation snapshot is stale within weeks — the case for a tracker, and for keeping the cited pages current.

Profound — frequently asked questions

Which answer engines does Profound track?

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews are named on its homepage; the Starter plan tracks ChatGPT only, Growth three engines and Enterprise up to nine (Profound, verified 7 September 2026).

How much does Profound cost, and what does each plan include?

Starter is $99 per month billed yearly (ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, 100 Agents credits, one seat), Growth $399 per month billed yearly (three answer engines, 100 prompts, 400 Agents credits, three seats) and Enterprise custom (up to nine answer engines, multiple companies, SSO/SAML plus SOC 2), as listed on 7 September 2026.

Does Profound track AI crawlers as well as AI answers?

Yes. Its Agent Analytics module tracks how a site is interpreted and crawled by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and more, alongside the answer-side visibility tracking (Profound, 2026).

What is citation drift?

The share of domains cited for the same prompts that changes over time. Profound measured 40.5 to 59.3 percent drift within one month across Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews in June and July 2025.

Does Profound make a site get cited more?

Not by itself. Its core is measurement; the Agents module runs optimization tasks metered in credits, but the on-page changes that earn citations still have to happen on your own site.

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