97%
of the businesses AI assistants picked were named from their own site
Picked by Agents probe, 96 picks across 16 local categories in Dallas and Phoenix, September 2026
93%
of domains AI cites for local searches are business websites
BrightLocal local AI visibility study, September 2026, 200,085 searches across 1,300 locations
4%
of local queries where four AI engines fully agree on the answer
Yext research, 491,972 local queries, February to August 2026
What each of us actually does
Profound calls itself an AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews. Its free trial runs 50 prompts a day for 7 days across three engines. Its Enterprise plan is custom priced and adds a tailored prompt tracking plan, up to 9 answer engines, an AI Marketer, agents that create and optimize content, data exports, an API and SSO. It says it is trusted by a third of the Fortune 100.
Picked by Agents is a done for you service for one local business, or a group of locations. We run the handful of questions that decide your customers' choice, like "who does dental implants near me with financing", and we read what the assistant said and why. Then we fix what you own and re-run it monthly. Named is $2,997 a month and Picked is $4,997, month to month.
Where the two approaches part
- 01
A platform your team runs vs a team that does the work
Profound gives a marketing team data and agents to act on. We assume you do not have an AEO team and do not want one. We make the fixes ourselves.
- 02
Share across many prompts vs the pick on a few
Enterprise tracking reports how often a brand appears across a large prompt set. A local owner needs to know one thing, whether the assistant names them when a nearby customer asks, and what it said about the business it named instead.
- 03
Content vs the deciding fact
For a local question the assistant wants a price, an opening, a service area and a way to book. Those facts live on your own pages and Google profile, which is where 97% of the picks in our probe came from.
- 04
Insight vs a guarantee
Software is sold on insight. We are sold on a result we can measure. Named by the assistants in 90 days or we work free.
Why local needs a different instrument
Yext's own research across nearly half a million local queries found the major engines fully agree on the answer only 4% of the time. That makes a single visibility score hard to act on for a business with one or three locations. We run each question repeatedly, per location, on the assistants your customers use, and report every pick and pass with its reason.
When Profound is the better choice
If you are a national brand with an in house team, hundreds of topics to cover and a need for API access, exports and SSO, Profound is built for you and we are not. If you are a local business that wants to be named when a customer asks who to call or where to go, and wants someone else to do the fixing, we are.
Profound vs Picked by Agents
| Profound | Picked by Agents | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Software platform with an AI Marketer and agents | A done for you service with a named account lead on Picked |
| Price | Free 7 day trial, then custom enterprise pricing | $2,997 or $4,997 a month, month to month |
| Engines | Up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise | The assistants your customers use to choose a local business |
| Output | Visibility data, content and recommendations for your team | Fixes shipped on your site, profile and booking path |
| Guarantee | None stated on their pricing page | Named by the assistants in 90 days or we work free |
| Built for | Enterprise brands, AEO and content teams, agencies | Local businesses with a big ticket and an owner who decides |
Questions we get asked
- Is Picked by Agents a Profound alternative?
- For a local business, yes. For an enterprise brand team, no. We do a different job, getting one business named for the questions its customers ask, and we do the work rather than handing you a platform.
- Do you give us a dashboard?
- You get a monthly pick report with every question we ran, who each assistant named, and why. It is written for an owner, not an analyst.
- Can we use both?
- Yes. Some groups track brand visibility in a platform and hire us to fix the locations that are losing. We have no exclusivity.
- Where do your numbers about Profound come from?
- Their public pricing page and home page, read in September 2026. The BrightLocal and Yext figures are from their published research, and the 97% is our own probe from the same month. If Profound changes its plans, tell us and we will correct this page.
See who the assistants name for your customers' questions.
The report is free, and it is the same run we use to measure the guarantee. If a platform like Profound fits you better, we will tell you.
Or write to Greg at greg@gregmiller.ai.