AI Search Is Breaking SEO—Here’s the Platform Built to Replace It

AI answer engines are transforming how your customers discover and interact with brands online. Profound’s data shows that ChatGPT’s AI search results only overlap 12% with Google’s traditional search. This creates new optimization challenges that conventional SEO tactics can’t address.

Profound and AthenaHQ have both developed answer engine optimization (AEO) platforms to help enterprise brands navigate this shift. But their approaches and capabilities reveal major differences:

• Profound provides enterprise-scale AI visibility and works with some of the largest brands in the world.  Unlimited unique prompts analyzed daily, exclusive capabilities like real-time AI crawler tracking and AI conversation analysis, a dedicated AI search strategist, and up to a 5-minute SLA.
• AthenaHQ offers enterprise subscriptions with credit-based scaling but lacks many large or well known customers, AI content creation and outreach capabilities, access to AI experts, and a 2-hour SLA.

For enterprise organizations that require scalable, reliable, and agile AI search optimization, Profound offers superior value, strategic partnership, and significantly more experience in helping larger brands win.

Profound vs. AthenaHQ Overview Profound

Built from the ground up for enterprise brands:

• Exclusive capabilities like real-time AI bot tracking, AI search volume insights, product visibility optimization for AI commerce, and automated content creation
• Enterprise volume that supports up to 200,000 unique prompts analyzed daily
• Strategic partnerships via weekly syncs with a dedicated AI Search Strategist team
• Global coverage across 50+ countries and 15+ languages, with more added weekly
• Enterprise-grade security with SOC 2 Type II compliance and SSO functionality
• White glove support with dedicated Slack channels and up to 5-minute SLAs
• Proven enterprise results helping brands like Ramp, 1840 and Company, MongoDB, Docusign, and many others control their AI presence
• Measurable performance difference with Profound achieving 34.4% visibility in AI-generated answers about AEO compared to AthenaHQ’s 0.2% score

AthenaHQ

Designed for self-service needs with a pay-as-you-scale model:

• Flexible scaling with a credit-based model for additional usage
• Automated workflows for insights, content creation, and outreach
• Industry standard support with 2-hour enterprise response times

Capability Comparison: Profound vs. AthenaHQ

| Capability | Profound | AthenaHQ | |----|----|----| | Pricing Model | Custom enterprise pricing | Subscription + extra credits | | Team Access | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Response Analysis | Unlimited | Unlimited | | AI Engines | ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Google AIO, Perplexity, and Copilot (Claude, MetaAI, DeepSeek, Grok, and more in development) | ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Google AIO, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude | | Global Coverage | 50+ countries and 15+ languages, with more added weekly | Unlimited languages and regions | | Key Features | Agent Analytics, Conversation Explorer, Shopping Analytics, Content Briefs, Actions | Automated outreach, content creation | | Analytics Depth | Advanced sentiment themes, citation categorization, competitive analysis | Automated optimization focus | | Security | SOC 2 Type II, SSO, role-based access control, unlimited data retention | SSO, unlimited data retention | | Support | Up to 5-minute SLA, dedicated AI Search Strategist team | 2-hour SLA, expert network access | | API Access | Real-time data exchange with no rate limits | Custom enterprise access |

—

Why Enterprise Brands Prefer Profound Get the insights you need to outperform competitors in AI search

Profound’s Agent Analytics provides real-time AI bot tracking on your domain with GA4 integration for complete customer journey analysis. Answer Engine Insights tracks brand mentions and reveals what AI is saying about your brand. Conversation Explorer analyzes AI keyword and topic volume, and Shopping optimizes product visibility in AI commerce. AthenaHQ focuses on automated workflows rather than deep analytical insights.

Scale without slowdowns and maintain your competitive advantage

Profound analyzes up to 200,000 unique prompts daily per customer with unlimited data retention. Our plans are tailored to enterprise needs, analyzing AI visibility and providing actionable insights without the unpredictable pricing that credit-based upgrades create. AthenaHQ’s credit-based model leads to inconsistent spending as you scale, potentially forcing expensive plan changes.

Solve critical problems in minutes and get expert advice

With dedicated Slack channels and up to a 5-minute SLA, Profound offers the support that fast-moving enterprise teams require. Our dedicated AI Search Strategist teams share competitive intelligence and tailored recommendations, forming a strategic partnership. AthenaHQ offers a 2-hour SLA and access to an expert network.

Protect sensitive data and meet compliance requirements

Profound offers SOC 2 Type II compliance, SSO integration, role-based access control, and automated daily backups—supporting the security standards and audit capabilities that enterprise brands require. AthenaHQ provides basic SSO but lacks SOC 2 Type II compliance and comprehensive audit capabilities.

Achieve measurable ROI that justifies enterprise investment

With Profound, Ramp became the eighth most visible fintech brand, growing AI visibility by 7x and doubling citations. 1840 & Company went from invisible to one of the five most visible brands in remote staffing, achieving 11% AI visibility. Performance testing shows a clear divide, with Profound achieving 34.4% AI visibility versus AthenaHQ’s 0.2%.

Simplify operations across distributed teams and regions

With support for 50+ countries and 15+ languages (expanding weekly)—plus an agency-focused “God View” for multi-client management—Profound is built to scale along with complex enterprise operations. AthenaHQ claims unlimited regions but lacks the specialized enterprise infrastructure for complex global operations.

—

What Makes Profound Different Answer Engine Insights

Track AI visibility and see where and how AI mentions your brand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO, and other major platforms. Measure visibility and share of voice, analyze how AI describes your brand, and identify which websites influence AI-generated answers. Compare your performance to competitors and build a competitive advantage.

Agent Analytics

Understand exactly how AI crawlers and answer engines interact with your website. See when, how often, and which AI bots access your content. Identify which pages AI models prefer, optimize your site’s technical structure for AI indexing, and measure how AI search influences clicks to your site with our GA4 integration.

Conversation Explorer

Discover how often relevant topics are discussed across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot—insights no other platform provides. Profound has access to the largest dataset of real user conversations in the world, besides the LLMs themselves. Spot trending topics and guide your AI visibility strategy with real conversation data. 

Shopping Analysis

Optimize how your products appear in ChatGPT Shopping and other AI commerce features. Track product visibility, find high-impact keywords to increase product exposure, analyze competing products and retailers, and refine how your products are represented in AI-powered shopping recommendations.

Content Creation & Powerful Actions

Get strategic recommendations across earned, social, and owned channels based on influential content signals. Profound helps you create world-class content briefs based on its billions of AI signals. Go from brief to finished content in minutes. 

—

How Profound Helps Enterprise Brands Improve AI Visibility Ramp

Ramp achieved 7x AI visibility growth in accounts payable, increasing from 3.2% to 22.2% within one month and moving from 19th to 8th place among fintech brands in the accounts payable sector with help from Profound’s Answer Engine Insights.

1840 & Company

1840 & Company increased AI visibility from 0% to 11% in remote staffing within one month, becoming a top five player in AI-driven searches and successfully competing against established players Toptal and Upwork with help from Profound’s Citation Analysis.

—

The Clear Choice for Enterprise AI Search Optimization

While AthenaHQ offers solid automation capabilities for AI search optimization, Profound is the comprehensive enterprise solution that leading brands need to win AI visibility.

Profound delivers what no other platform can: the ability to see exactly how your brand and topics are searched in AI engines, track every AI bot that visits your website in real time, and analyze how your products appear in AI commerce results—with automated content creation and an AI-powered Copilot to simplify your workflows.

See for yourself why enterprise brands choose Profound, and join industry leaders who have already made the switch to enterprise-grade AEO.

Get a demo and discover how Profound can transform your AI search visibility.