AI visibility benchmark · first-party data
How often AI recommends retailers
We asked AI engines the questions buyers ask, like "where to buy locally", and counted how often each of 20 retailers was named.
What we found
AI named the average retail business in 22.9% of the answers we checked, above the 20.8% average across all 1,584 businesses we measured.
6 of the 20 were never named in any answer. 4 were named in half or more.
On their own websites, the weakest signal in this category is quotable content and the strongest is machine-readable information. Across all our research, off-site brand recognition is the signal that most separates the businesses AI names from the ones it ignores.
Method: the latest report for each business in the Are you found by AI? corpus, 27 June to 29 September 2026. A business's percentage is the share of saved AI answers that named it, counting every repeat of each question. Failed or missing answers don't count against it, and businesses without countable answers are left out. Only categories with 12 or more businesses are published. Aggregates only, never an individual business.
Where do you sit?
The category average is not your number. The free scan asks ChatGPT and Gemini two of your buyers' questions and shows who they name.
Scan your retail business free →
Already scanned? The SEO and AI Visibility Sprint (A$2,500 + GST) implements the fix plan, start to finish. Or book a free pre-discovery call.
Building for this industry? See AI for retail & e-commerce.