Profound launched the Profound Index at Zero Click New York, its second annual conference, to establish a benchmark for brand visibility within AI-generated answers. The index addresses the shift in consumer discovery from traditional search engines to AI platforms, where buying decisions are increasingly shaped. By analyzing more than 1.5 billion prompts across 50+ industries and major AI platforms, the tool provides marketers with a daily-updated view of their standing in this evolving landscape.

The Profound Index is powered by the largest dataset of real-user prompts in the market. It allows marketing teams to benchmark brand performance against competitors, track visibility across major AI platforms, and identify category leaders. Unlike conventional SEO tools, the index focuses on the signals driving visibility inside AI-generated answers, which differ from traditional search rankings.

"Marketing teams spent years asking where they ranked on Google. Increasingly, that is becoming the wrong question," said James Cadwallader, Co-founder and CEO of Profound. "People are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI systems for recommendations, advice, and answers. The brands that matter are the brands AI recommends. The Profound Index gives marketers a way to understand where they stand and what they need to do to improve."

Early findings from the index reveal that visibility in AI search does not always mirror traditional search rankings or brand awareness. Model updates can significantly reshape which brands appear in AI-generated answers. For instance, ChatGPT 5.5 is recommending competitors such as Anthropic, Mistral, OpenRouter, and Groq more frequently.

Early Findings from the Profound Index

The Profound Index is available beginning today. Existing Profound customers can access full data directly through the platform, while non-customers can register for a preview experience to unlock competitive and trend analysis.