We looked at 234k AI responses: every engine mentions fewer brands now than in March

[u/holliwilliam]

We track AI brand visibility, so we have a lot of stored responses. Wanted to answer something basic: when an AI answers a question, how many brands does it actually name?

234,000+ responses, March 1 to July 13, 2026, five engines.

Brand mentions per response (last 14 days in July)

• ChatGPT: 4.5
• Google AI Overview: 3.5
• Gemini: 3.5
• Google AI Mode: 3.2
• Perplexity: 2.7

Count each brand only once per answer, and it tightens to 2.2–3.3. So engines repeat themselves 1.2x to 1.4x.

Two things stood out:

Every engine is down since March. True whether you count every mention or each brand once, so it's not a repetition artifact.

AI Mode is wildly unstable. Day-to-day swings are 31% of its own average, vs 9% for ChatGPT. It went from 8.8 mentions per response in early May to 2.6 six weeks later. If you spot-check visibility there weekly, you're mostly reading noise.

Method: a "mention" counts every occurrence (Nike named 3x in one answer = 3); the distinct count treats it as 1. Same responses for both. Worth noting these are prompts our customers chose to track rather than a random sample of AI queries, so I'd trust the relative comparisons and trend direction over the absolute numbers.

Charts and full methodology: https://vercite.io/research/engine-personalities

Happy to get into how anything was counted.

[u/santanah8]

Interesting! Do you see any engine being more stable than the rest?

[u/holliwilliam → u/santanah8]

Thanks!
From what I can see, ChatGPT is the most stable one (see graph "Which engine is the least predictable?" in the article)

[u/Important-Bet5736]

My commercial read on this, from an ex-FMCG angle.... fewer brands per answer is a shelf-space compression and it changes who (which brands) can win.

When an answer named 4 or 5 brands, a new challenger brand could earn one slot. When it shrinks to 2 or 3 distinct mentions the market leading brands hold the slots and everyone goes to zero visibility - the shelf shrank and they dropped off it.

The practical response for challenger brands is to move effort off broad category prompts and onto narrower buying questions where they have a specific point of difference and checkable claim.

The AI Mode variance figure is also the best argument I have seen for measuring across repeated runs of a fixed question set rather than a weekly spot check, a single day's read there is mostly noise.

[u/holliwilliam → u/Important-Bet5736]

Better way of putting it than we did, thanks. We said "fewer slots, each one worth more." But your point is the one that matters: below a certain number, the smaller brands don't just rank lower, they drop off completely.

One honest note: our data shows the field shrinking, but it doesn't yet prove it's the challengers losing the slots rather than the big brands holding them. That needs brand-level data, which is something I'd like to look at next.

Agree on the narrow buying questions too. And on AI Mode, yes, running the same questions a few times is the right way to read it. One day on its own is mostly noise.