How do Suede, Profound and AthenaHQ differ in sampling AI answers and measuring share of voice?
13 checked-name appearances in three Perplexity returns show why an answer total and a mention total need different labels. That is the scaling-small-sales-team CRM row in our 22 September 2026 Index. Suede reports persona-based capture; Profound defines several denominators; AthenaHQ-supported research publishes eligible-cohort and source-counting rules.
What we measured
Measured. The Index method and data retain three Perplexity returns for the same CRM question. HubSpot CRM, Pipedrive, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Zoho CRM each have three name-presence observations; Freshsales has one. Adding them gives 13 checked-name appearances from three answers. Our fixed software-buyer panel does not establish any provider's sampling weights, collection coverage or account-specific totals.
Reported. Suede's Platform page, read on 30 October 2026, describes daily persona-specific questions and capture of responses, stance, sentiment and cited sources. Profound's AEI guide, read on 29 October, defines Visibility with responses containing at least one brand as its denominator, and Share of Voice with total brand mentions across responses. AthenaHQ's FAQ lists mention, citation and share-of-voice fields. The separately Athena-supported Answer Signal method, version 1.0 of August 2026, specifies eligible research cohorts and normalized root domains.
Reasoned. The 13/3 row makes a denominator choice visible: counted vendor-name presences can exceed the number of returned answers. A provider's field called share of voice therefore needs its own definition before being compared with that row.
What this means for you
Count each unit. The published CRM row records whether each checked supplier name appears in a return; it does not count every repetition of a word. Four suppliers are present in each of the three returns, while Freshsales is present in one. That distinction matters when you compare a response-based numerator with a total of brand appearances.
Profound supplies two explicit denominator descriptions. Its Visibility base is responses containing a brand; its Share of Voice description uses total brand mentions across responses. Suede's saved Platform description names share of voice and daily persona-based prompting, but does not give that field's denominator or its sampling weights. Those are different levels of method disclosure in the inspected pages.
AthenaHQ's product FAQ and the Athena-supported research method also have different scopes. The FAQ lists platform metrics and content-gap functions. The Answer Signal method identifies the observation window and eligible cohort for each result, excludes flagged responses and deleted records unless stated otherwise, and specifies like-for-like cohorts for longitudinal comparisons.
Also asked as
I'm a competitive intelligence analyst. methodologically, how do suede, profound, and athenahq differ in sampling ai answers and measuring share of voice?
Related
- Suede Platform fields
- Profound AEI metric definitions
- AthenaHQ product FAQ
- The Answer Signal research method
- The original Index receipt
- The Manual on valid measurement
Next step
Use the Free 10-question check (one engine) for a separate dated company-answer sample. No email is needed; runs are limited per network and per day, and by the site's daily allowance.
For one documented company-fact error, Fix one answer, $490. Keep the retained answer and its supporting public source with the correction.
Every figure comes from the published method, v1.1.
Prepared by the Broadcastwell team.
Page owner: Vikram Patel, AI Architect. Corrections: hello@broadcastwell.com