State of AI Visibility 2026: Who AI Search Names and Who It Cites

AI search does not spread visibility evenly. We measured how often five AI engines name and cite 55 well-known US brands across five industries, and in four of the five industries, the top two brands hold about half or more of all AI visibility. The bigger surprise: being named in an AI answer and being cited as its source are two different races, and many brands win one while losing the other.

This is Sentic’s first State of AI Visibility report. It uses SE Ranking’s AI Search data for the United States, as of October 2026, across Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. The full brand-level data is in the table at the end.

Key findings

• Visibility is concentrated. The top two brands hold 49.9% of share of voice in hospitality, 49.8% in senior living, 76.6% in ecommerce, and 85.3% in healthcare. B2B SaaS is the most open market we measured, and its top two still hold 40.2%.
• Mentions and citations split. Slack has 13.2% of brand mentions in our B2B SaaS set but only 3.7% of citations. monday.com has the reverse: 0.4% of mentions and 5.5% of citations.
• In senior living, directories take the links. Nine senior living operators receive 75.5% of brand mentions but only 24.9% of citations. Two directories, A Place for Mom and Caring.com, receive 75.1% of citations. A Place for Mom alone earns 59.6%.
• The leader changes by engine. In hospitality, Marriott is mentioned most in Google AI Overviews, Hilton in Google AI Mode, and Best Western in Gemini. Best Western is also the most cited hotel brand in ChatGPT.

How we ran the study

We picked 11 recognizable US brands in each of five industries Sentic serves: hospitality, senior living, healthcare, B2B SaaS, and ecommerce. That is 55 brands in total. For each brand, we pulled two numbers from SE Ranking’s AI Search database for the US, using the October 2026 monthly snapshot (data pulled October 24, 2026):

• Brand mentions: the number of tracked prompts whose AI answer names the brand. SE Ranking identifies the brand as an entity in the answer rather than by matching text.
• Citations: how often AI answers link to the brand’s website. In Google AI Overviews this counts citations; on the other four engines it counts prompts whose answer cites the site.

Share of voice gives mentions and citations equal weight. For each brand, we averaged its share of the industry set’s mentions and its share of the set’s citations. Shares are always relative to the 11 brands in that industry, not to the whole market.

We repeated each pull until no engine returned an error. Where SE Ranking had no data for a brand on an engine, we counted it as zero. We then checked that each brand’s per-engine figures added up to its reported totals. They did for all 55 brands.

Limits worth knowing: each engine’s prompt database is a different size, so compare brands within an engine, not raw counts across engines. Brand names are matched as SE Ranking extracts them, so a parent brand such as IHG does not get credit when an answer names only Holiday Inn. Directories and marketplaces were included on purpose where they compete for the same answers. This is one monthly snapshot, not a trend line.

Finding 1: Two brands hold about half of AI visibility in most industries

AI answers name a short list of brands, and they keep naming the same ones. In four of five industries, the top two brands in our set hold about half or more of share of voice. The bottom five brands combined hold less than a fifth everywhere, and under 3% in healthcare and ecommerce.

Healthcare is the extreme case. Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic hold 85.3% of share of voice among the 11 health systems we tracked. Johns Hopkins Medicine is a distant third at 6.9%.

B2B SaaS is the most competitive set, partly because our sample spans several software categories. Salesforce leads with 26.6%, and five other brands hold more than 8% each.

What it means: if you are not one of the few brands an engine already trusts in your category, you are competing for a small slice. Most of the work is giving AI engines reasons to add you to that short list: clear entity information, content that answers the questions buyers ask, and third-party sources that confirm what you say about yourself.

Finding 2: Being named and being cited are different races

A brand mention means the AI answer talks about you. A citation means the answer links to your website as a source. Brands win these at very different rates.

Slack, Notion, Wayfair, Sephora, and Hilton all take a larger share of mentions than citations. AI engines know these brands well enough to recommend them, but they often source the answer from somewhere else: review sites, comparison articles, retailers, or forums.

monday.com, Chewy, Zendesk, and Accor show the opposite pattern. Their websites take a much larger share of citations than their names take of mentions. A common reason is a site that answers general questions well, through guides, product information, or help documentation, so engines use it as a source even when the answer does not recommend the brand.

Smaller direct-to-consumer brands show the mention-heavy pattern most clearly. Everlane, Bombas, Glossier, and Allbirds together hold 2.3% of ecommerce mentions in our set and 0.4% of citations. Each is named between 3.5 and 4.8 times as often as its site is cited.

What it means: track both numbers. A brand with mentions but few citations has an awareness asset but no control over how it is described. A brand with citations but few mentions has useful content that is not yet building its name.

Finding 3: In senior living, directories get the link

Senior living shows the starkest split in the study. Families ask AI engines how to find assisted living or memory care, and the answers often name operators but link to directories.

The nine operators we tracked, including Sunrise Senior Living, Brookdale Senior Living, and Atria Senior Living, receive 75.5% of brand mentions in the set. Their websites receive 24.9% of citations. A Place for Mom is named in only 3.1% of mentions but earns 59.6% of citations, and it is the most cited site in our senior living set on all five engines.

Senior living is also a much smaller AI footprint than the other industries. Our 11 senior living brands total 7,741 brand mentions, compared with 542,377 for our 11 hotel brands.

What it means for operators: the directory profile is part of your AI presence, so keep listings accurate and complete. Then build the pages directories cannot: care levels, pricing approach, staffing, licensing, and community-specific details, written to answer the questions families ask. Those are the pages that earn citations back to your own site.

Finding 4: The leader changes depending on the engine

Treating “AI search” as one channel hides real differences. The brand that leads in one engine often trails in another.

In hospitality, Marriott leads Google AI Overviews and Perplexity on both mentions and citations. Hilton is mentioned most in Google AI Mode. Best Western leads Gemini on both measures and is the most cited hotel website in ChatGPT, ahead of Marriott.

In B2B SaaS, Salesforce is mentioned most in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT, while Slack is mentioned most in Perplexity and Gemini. Citations split across three brands: Salesforce in AI Overviews, Zendesk in AI Mode and Gemini, and HubSpot in ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Some categories do not change. Etsy leads ecommerce on both measures in all five engines, and Cleveland Clinic is the most cited health system in all five.

What it means: measure AI visibility per engine. A report that blends all engines can show a brand in first place while it trails in the assistant its buyers use most.

What to do with this

1. Measure mentions and citations separately, per engine. One blended score hides where you are winning and losing.
2. Find out who gets cited for your prompts. If directories, review sites, or competitors’ guides are the sources, those pages show what engines want to cite.
3. Publish answers, not just pages. Clear question-and-answer sections, specific numbers, and pages built around single topics give engines passages they can quote and link.
4. Make your entity easy to confirm. Consistent Organization and Person schema, sameAs links, and up-to-date third-party profiles help engines connect your name to your site.
5. Treat listings and reviews as part of AI search. Where directories dominate citations, your profile there is often the first version of your brand an AI engine sees.

For the full method behind these steps, see our complete guide to answer engine optimization, or the AI search glossary for definitions of terms like share of voice and citation.

Frequently asked questions

What is AI visibility?

AI visibility is how often AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode mention your brand or cite your website in their answers. In this report we measure it with two numbers: brand mentions and citations.

What is the difference between a brand mention and a citation?

A brand mention means an AI answer names your brand. A citation means the answer links to your website as a source. A brand can be mentioned without being cited, and a site can be cited in answers that never recommend the brand.

How is share of voice calculated in this report?

For each brand, we take its share of all brand mentions in its industry set and its share of all citations in that set, and average the two. Mentions and citations get equal weight. Shares are relative to the 11 brands tracked in each industry.

Where does the data come from?

All figures come from SE Ranking’s AI Search data for the United States, October 2026 snapshot, pulled on October 24, 2026.

Full data: 55 brands

Brand mentions and citations are totals across Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Share of voice is relative to the 11 brands in each industry.

See where your brand stands

We run this same analysis for individual brands: mentions and citations by engine, the competitors and directories taking your citations, and the pages most likely to change that. Request a free audit or see our AEO services.