What is the difference between AIQ and Profound or peec.ai?
Profound and Peec measure AI visibility, how often a brand is cited across a set of prompts. AIQ measures AI reputation, what the engines actually say, which sources drive the framing, what the sentiment is, and how the picture changes over time. Both metrics are legitimate, but they answer different questions and are bought by different teams.
Profound and Peec are capable products in the AI search analytics category. They poll AI engines with a defined set of prompts and report how often your brand is cited in the response, the visibility question. AIQ is built to answer a different question entirely: not whether your brand was mentioned, but what was said, by which sources, with what sentiment, and how that narrative is evolving across leading AI engines.
| Dimension | Profound / Peec | AIQ |
|---|---|---|
| Core metric | AI visibility, citation rate (how often the brand appears) | AI reputation, narrative content, sentiment, source attribution |
| Primary question | Is the brand being mentioned? | What is being said, by which sources, and why? |
| Data depth | Presence/absence signal across a prompt set | Full response text, source mapping, sentiment, peer comparisons, theme tracking over time |
| Typical buyer | Marketing teams tracking AI search presence | Comms and corporate affairs teams responsible for brand narrative and reputation risk |
| Engines covered | Varies by product | The eight engines AIQ currently tracks: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, AI Overview, Perplexity, Grok, Claude, and Google AI Mode |
| P&L alignment | Marketing / demand-generation budget | Communications / corporate affairs budget |
The key distinction
Profound takes attendance; AIQ tells you the grade. A brand can appear in every AI answer and still be described negatively, attributed to low-authority sources, or framed in ways that damage perception. Visibility tools capture the first half of the story; AIQ is designed to capture the whole thing.
Who buys which tool
The marketing team asking “are we showing up in AI search?” and the comms team asking “what are AI engines saying about us in a crisis or competitive context?” are different buyers with different reporting lines. Visibility metrics and reputation metrics are complementary, not interchangeable.
Last reviewed: 19/05/2026
