Profound Platform – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Profound Platform – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What dashboards does Profound provide, and what do they show?

Profound offers several dashboards tailored to different use cases:

• Answer Engine Insights Dashboard

  • Tracks your brand's presence in AI-generated answers.

  • Analyzes AI responses and shows which websites are cited.

  • Offers suggestions to improve ranking and exposure.

• Conversation Explorer Dashboard

  • Surfaces trending audience questions and themes in AI conversations.

  • Measures how your brand is being discussed.

  • Highlights opportunities to enhance brand visibility in AI responses.

• Agent Analytics Dashboard

  • Monitors how AI crawlers interact with your website.

  • Provides insights into AI-driven traffic and attribution.

  • Identifies which content is used in AI-generated answers.

• Shopping Dashboard

  • Optimizes product visibility in ChatGPT Shopping and similar environments.

  • Tracks performance across retailers, response positions, and product reviews.

2. How does Profound know which AI answers to track?

Profound uses a combination of inferred queries and data analysis to monitor and surface relevant AI responses:

• Answer Engine Insights identifies how frequently your brand appears in AI answers and which sources influence those answers.

• Conversation Explorer tracks AI-generated questions and audience behavior, even without explicit citations.

• Agent Analytics monitors how AI systems interact with your web pages and content.

3. Does Profound only focus on AI answers with citations?

Primarily, yes—but not exclusively

• AI answers with citations are central because:

  • They generate referral traffic to cited sites.

  • Provide a competitive benchmark via citation share.

  • Help identify high-performing content and exposure opportunities.

• However, Profound also captures answers without citations, allowing for a fuller picture of brand presence in AI outputs.

4. Why are citations so important?

Citations in AI answers are valuable because they:

• Drive visibility and potential traffic to your site.

• Reveal how often your content is referenced relative to competitors.

• Allow you to measure and improve your content strategy and discoverability.

• Help you identify new content opportunities based on what AI is using to formulate answers.

5. What happens when AI doesn't provide citations?

Profound still tracks these answers. While the insights may differ (e.g., without attribution to your site), they still offer value:

• Reveal brand mentions without links.

• Inform sentiment analysis and share of voice.

• Uncover AI search trends and audience interests.

• Power sentiment analysis in the Sentiment tab, which surfaces recurring positive and negative themes about your brand and competitors across AI platforms.

6. What happens when AI doesn't provide citations?

The Actions tab (accessible in the dashboard) offers:

• Concrete steps to improve your content’s visibility and ranking in AI answers.

• Analysis of what’s working and what needs optimization.

• Tactical guidance based on citation share, content gaps, and site-level insights.

7. Can I suggest custom queries for tracking?

Currently, Profound uses two types of prompts:

• Visibility prompts are queries you create to track if and how your brand appears in AI responses, including mentions, rankings, and share of voice. These are inferred based on a proprietary dataset, though you can manually add custom queries using the prompt editor in the prompts tab.

• Sentiment prompts are automatically generated by the platform to measure how your brand is described when it appears. These follow a structured format (e.g., "Evaluate [your brand] on [topic]") and are always branded, meaning they specifically name your company and competitors. Results appear under the Sentiment tab in Answer Engine Insights, not in the Prompts tab.

Both types count toward your total prompt limit. Sentiment prompts can be edited, customized, or deleted if you prefer to use that prompt budget elsewhere.

Note: Enterprise plan users should consult with their Engagement Manager for guidance on managing or refining sentiment prompts.

8. What does “24,000 responses per month” refer to?

This refers to the number of AI responses analyzed per month across platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity—not internal chatbot queries. It measures how much AI content is being reviewed to assess your brand presence and insights.

For example: You might have 200 queries that are tracked and will result in 800 answers analyzed per day (across 4 models).

9. How do I export prompts and responses?

Users can go to the export button in the Answer Engine Insights tab (button is on the top right) and export as a CSV or JSON file.

10. How long does it take for data to populate in my dashboard?

New prompts typically take 24–48 hours to generate their initial set of data, as the system collects information on a daily cycle.

This applies when:

• Setting up your dashboard for the first time

• Adding or updating custom prompts

If no data appears after 48 hours, contact support for assistance.