Introducing the Profound Index
Every industry tracks what matters. Sports has standings. Business has market cap. The internet has traffic. Now AI marketing has the Profound Index.
We’re launching the Profound Index, the first ranking built from real AI conversations that measures how often and where brands appear inside answer engines like ChatGPT. As consumers shift from traditional search to answer engines like ChatGPT, brands face an existential question: do you show up when it matters, and what can you do about it? At Profound, we answer both.
The Index launches today with rankings across 12 industries, updated weekly with fresh data from our dataset of 400M+ real user conversations.
How It Works
The key challenge in building an AI visibility index is knowing which prompts to track. That's where Profound's dataset of real user prompts becomes critical.
The Index starts with real conversations from Prompt Volumes, collected from millions of users engaging with answer engines like ChatGPT every day, not hypothetical queries or search data. From there, we map the question landscape for each industry, track brand mentions, and calculate visibility scores that update continuously.
Profound licenses anonymized conversations from double opt-in consumer panels of real AI users. All data is scrubbed of personal information and fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA.
Identifying the Right Prompts
For each industry, we identify relevant user questions through a two-step process combining keyword and semantic filtering.
First, we perform keyword search over industry-specific term sets. But keywords alone aren't enough. Words have double meanings, and peripheral mentions don't signal commercial relevance. So we add a validation layer using answer engines themselves to filter down to prompts we're actually interested in. This captures everything from "streaming platform with the best shows" to "where to watch 90s movies."
Next, we cluster these prompts into themes representing core user intent. We create vector embeddings for all conversations, then apply ML clustering algorithms combined with LLM-based validation to identify the top conversation clusters for each industry.
For each cluster, we generate multiple prompt variations that represent how users actually ask about that topic. This solves a critical problem traditional keyword tools can't: understanding conversational intent. When someone asks "what should I watch tonight," that's fundamentally different from "Netflix vs Hulu."
From Prompts to Rankings
Once we've mapped the question landscape, we collect responses daily from ChatGPT and apply Profound's proprietary entity extraction models to identify which brands appear in each response.
Every week, we calculate a visibility score based on the percentage of responses where each brand was mentioned. The rankings update continuously as new data flows in.
The Index also includes estimated prompt volumes for each cluster, showing not just where you rank, but how much the conversation matters (learn more about Prompt Volumes).
Why This Matters
The Profound Index shows you where you stand relative to competitors and which topics drive the most volume.
The Index is live now for U.S. ChatGPT data across Aerospace, Auto Parts, Credit Cards, Fast Food, Furniture, Health Insurance, IT Consulting, Packaging, Pharmaceutical, Renewable Energy, Semiconductor, and Streaming, with more industries coming soon.
Want to see where your brand ranks? Explore the Index or reach out to our team to understand how to improve your position with Profound.
