- Profound stores each answer once. The response text, citations, and date do not change.
- Topic, tags, and brand attribution are not stored with the answer. They are read from your current configuration each time a report loads or the API is called.
- Editing your configuration therefore changes past numbers. Moving a prompt to a new topic moves all of its past answers. Excluding a brand under Configure Competitors removes its past mentions from every report.
- Reports reflect the current configuration only. An older configuration cannot be viewed.
How it works
Your configuration defines which prompts run and how their answers are labeled. Collection runs each prompt and stores the answer. Reports and the Answers API join stored answers to the current configuration on every request.
Each stored run carries
run_id, date, prompt_id, model, region,
persona, response, citations, search_queries, and the brand names
extracted from the response. At request time, prompt_id resolves to the
current topic, tags, text, and status, and the extracted brand names resolve
to the current brand list. Deleted prompts are excluded. Paused prompts are
included.
A run is one prompt sent to one model from one region on one day. Each
run produces one answer and one row in the Answers API. A mention is a
brand named in an answer. A claim is a statement about a brand extracted
from an answer, scored positive or negative. See the
data model for how categories, topics, prompts,
tags, and assets relate.
Prompts run once a day per model and region. Days are counted in Eastern Time.
Effect of configuration changes on past data
Profound does not re-run or re-analyze old answers. Only the labels applied to
them change. Answers API rows reflect configuration changes immediately. Some
summary reports refresh on a schedule and can lag briefly.
Store your own configuration snapshots
The Answers API returns the current topic, tags, and brand list, so metrics you compute from it change whenever your configuration changes. To keep fixed historical numbers, save the following once a day and join to the saved copies instead:Recommendations
- Pause prompts instead of deleting them to keep their history.
- Move prompts between topics and tags deliberately. Each move changes past numbers for both the old and new group.
- Expect share of voice to change across all dates when you exclude a brand or switch to an include list.
- If a number must not change, for example in a quarterly report, export it at the time of reporting. The live report always reflects the current configuration.