Advanced Custom Setups
Key Concepts
Settings as a translation layer - Profound's settings don't change your preferences; they define how raw AI answer text gets mapped to the clean objects in your dashboards. Your brand, competitors, citations, and entities are only as accurate as these mappings.
Ghost mentions - Brand references in AI answers that go uncounted because a name variant wasn't mapped to the parent term. Common with hyphenation differences, spacing, or informal product names.
Entity parser - The component that decides what kinds of things Profound extracts from answer text: companies, products, people, product features, or publication sources.
Quick Reference
Competitors - Settings > Configured Competitors
- Exclude a competitor when their presence distorts your competitive analysis, not just because you dislike the comparison
- Include to whitelist a rival and track your visibility against them specifically
- Your competitor list should reflect who's actually winning in AI answers for your prompts, not just your traditional sales-cycle rivals
Citation categories - Settings > Citation Categories
- Recategorize any domain from its auto-assigned label to one that reflects your strategy (
Earned, PR Partner, PR Placement, etc.) - Tag at the domain level (enable Include subpaths) to catch all pages under that domain
- Tag at the page level (disable Include subpaths) when only one specific URL is relevant
- Avoid domain-level tagging for large general-purpose domains - you can over-count
Name matching - Settings > Name Matching
- Click Unmapped to surface variants the system hasn't resolved
- Search for a known partial variant (e.g., a common misspelling or spacing difference)
- Click Map Mentions and assign it to the correct parent term
- Only map variants that are unambiguously yours - vague or generic terms will merge unrelated mentions
Entity parser - Settings > Entity Parser
- Companies - default; tracks brand and competitor mentions
- Products - useful for product marketing teams tracking specific SKUs or features
- Product features - surfaces what attributes AI engines associate with category winners
- People - tracks named experts, founders, or spokespeople cited in answers
- Publication sources - tracks "according to" attribution; useful for PR teams measuring authority voice
Changes to the entity parser affect your entire config retroactively. Treat this as a deliberate strategic decision, not a casual toggle.
