Different tools for different visibility channels
Ahrefs and Profound serve fundamentally different purposes in your marketing stack:
- Ahrefs: Comprehensive SEO platform for traditional search optimization, keyword research, and backlink analysis
- Profound: Dedicated AI visibility platform for monitoring and analyzing AI citations across multiple platforms
Most organizations need SEO capabilities as a foundation. AI visibility monitoring is an addition that makes sense when AI recommendations start impacting your business.
When SEO is the priority
Choose Ahrefs if:
- Keyword research and ranking tracking drive your content decisions
- Backlink analysis and competitor research matter for your link building strategy
- Site audits and technical SEO diagnostics are ongoing needs
- Traditional search engines are your primary organic traffic channel
- You need a proven, comprehensive SEO toolkit
Ahrefs is a standard SEO toolkit that most digital marketers use daily. It's been refined over 10+ years and remains the industry benchmark for keyword and backlink research.
When AI visibility is the priority
Choose Profound if:
- AI platform citations significantly impact your customer acquisition
- Deep competitive intelligence in AI recommendations matters for strategy
- Executive reporting on AI visibility is required for stakeholder updates
- You need analysis depth beyond what Brand Radar provides
- Historical AI visibility trends inform your long-term planning
Profound offers unmatched depth in the AI visibility niche. For teams where AI recommendations drive meaningful business impact, that depth justifies the investment.
The Brand Radar middle ground
Ahrefs' Brand Radar feature provides basic AI monitoring at no additional cost:
| Capability | Ahrefs Brand Radar | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| Basic monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Deep analysis | Limited | Comprehensive |
| Competitive intel | Basic | Detailed |
| Historical data | Limited | 12+ months |
| AI platform coverage | 2 | 4+ |
| Executive reporting | No | Yes |
For many teams, Brand Radar is sufficient for early AI visibility awareness. Profound justifies its cost when deeper analysis, broader coverage, and executive reporting become necessary.
The practical recommendation
For most organizations, follow this progression:
- Start with Ahrefs for SEO capabilities (and basic AI via Brand Radar)
- Evaluate AI visibility importance over 3-6 months of monitoring
- Add Profound only if AI visibility becomes strategic enough to justify dedicated investment
This sequence avoids premature investment in AI-specific tooling before you understand your actual needs.
Execution matters more
Neither Ahrefs nor Profound creates content—they only measure and analyze. The complete visibility improvement workflow includes:
- Research opportunities with Ahrefs
- Monitor AI presence with Brand Radar or Profound
- Execute content improvements (requires additional tools like Rankwise)
- Track changes and iterate based on results
Tools like Rankwise help with step 3—actually publishing optimized content that can improve both search rankings and AI citations.
Key Takeaways
- Ahrefs is foundational—most organizations need SEO capabilities regardless of AI
- Profound is specialized—for when AI visibility is strategic enough to justify dedicated tooling
- Brand Radar bridges the gap for basic AI monitoring within Ahrefs at no extra cost
- Prioritize execution: Monitoring without publishing creates insights you can't act on