The 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report: AI Search Visibility Across 10 LLM Platforms
We analyzed 383,634 AI-generated responses across 10 LLM platforms and 14 brands spanning 8 industries. Here are the first cross-platform AEO benchmarks for brand visibility, citation rates, and sentiment — powered by Superlines data.
Table of Contents
As AI search becomes a critical new brand visibility channel, this report establishes cross-platform AEO benchmarks based on real data from Superlines — the AI Search Intelligence Platform.
We analyzed 383,634 AI-generated responses, 72,041 brand mentions, and 44,833 website citations across 10 LLM platforms and 14 brand domains spanning 8 industries to measure how brands perform in the new AI search landscape.
The main takeaway: AI search is not a single channel — it’s a fragmented ecosystem where each LLM platform behaves differently. Brands that treat “AI search optimization” as a monolithic strategy are leaving visibility on the table. The data shows dramatic differences in citation rates, mention rates, and sentiment across platforms — and the winners are the brands that understand these differences.
Executive Summary
The rise of AI answer engines has created what we call a parallel surface of visibility — an invisible layer that determines which brands are seen before anyone clicks. Visibility no longer begins on your website; it starts within the AI experiences that answer questions, guide intent, and shape perception in real time.
Our analysis of data from October 2025 through April 2026 reveals several critical findings:
- Brand visibility is rising: Across all tracked brands, average brand visibility increased from 7.01% in December 2025 to 40.52% in April 2026 — a 5.8x increase in four months.
- Citation rates vary wildly by platform: Grok leads with a 31.68% citation rate, while Claude trails at just 0.5%. The gap between the highest and lowest citation platforms is 63x.
- Sentiment is overwhelmingly positive: 42.65% of brand mentions carry positive sentiment, while only 0.18% are negative. AI models are generally kind to the brands they mention.
- Consumer brands dominate visibility: Brands with strong consumer recognition (Oura at 82.06%, Nike at 77.97%, Posti at 80.75%) vastly outperform B2B and niche brands in brand visibility scores.
Top Takeaways
AI Search Visibility Insights
- 383,634 AI responses were analyzed across 10 LLM platforms over a 6-month period.
- The average brand mention rate across all platforms is 18.78% — meaning roughly 1 in 5 AI responses mentions a tracked brand.
- The average citation rate is 11.69% — roughly 1 in 9 AI responses includes a link to a tracked brand’s website.
- Grok has the highest brand mention rate at 26.89% and the highest citation rate at 31.68%.
- Claude has the lowest citation rate at 0.5%, despite a 13.28% brand mention rate — it mentions brands but rarely links to them.
- Perplexity has the highest citation rate among dedicated AI search engines at 20.38%, making it the most link-generous platform.
Brand Performance Insights
- Oura leads in brand visibility at 82.06% with a share of voice of 98.99% in the health tracking ring category.
- Nike achieves 77.97% brand visibility and 85.97% share of voice in athletic footwear and apparel.
- Posti (Finnish postal service) reaches 80.75% brand visibility and an extraordinary 50.60% citation rate — the highest of any tracked brand.
- Elo (Finnish pension insurance) maintains 53.26% brand visibility with a 35.14% citation rate in a highly regulated industry.
- Superlines grew brand visibility from 0.92% in October 2025 to 6.92% in April 2026 — a 7.5x increase — in the competitive AI search optimization category.
Sentiment Analysis
- Overall sentiment is 42.65% positive, 36.04% neutral, and 0.18% negative.
- Gemini produces the most positive brand mentions with an average sentiment score of 0.56.
- Grok follows at 0.53, while Google AI Overview has the lowest measurable sentiment at 0.33.
Methodology
Using Superlines, we analyzed 14 brand domains across 8 industries. Each brand was tracked across 10 LLM platforms with continuous monitoring of AI-generated responses.
This research identifies emerging AI search visibility patterns, separating performance by LLM platform, industry, and brand to provide granular benchmarks.
Data Sources
| Metric | Volume |
|---|---|
| Total AI responses analyzed | 383,634 |
| Brand mentions detected | 72,041 |
| Website citations tracked | 44,833 |
| LLM platforms monitored | 10 |
| Brand domains tracked | 14 |
| Industries covered | 8 |
| Analysis period | October 2025 – April 2026 |
LLM Platforms Analyzed
- ChatGPT
- Google AI Mode
- Google AI Overview
- Perplexity
- Gemini
- Grok
- Copilot
- Claude
- Mistral
- DeepSeek
Industries Covered
- Marketing Technology — Superlines, Grew
- Health & Wearables — Oura
- Athletic Apparel — Nike
- Financial Services / Pension — Elo
- Logistics & Postal — Posti
- Renewable Materials — Stora Enso
- Retail — Tokmanni
- Software & SaaS — Trustmary, Agileday, Zero, Affix Labs
AEO / GEO Analysis: AI Search Visibility by LLM Platform
The most striking finding in our data is how dramatically AI search performance varies by platform. Treating “AI search” as a single channel is like treating “social media” as one platform — the differences matter enormously.
Brand Mention Rate and Citation Rate by LLM Platform
| LLM Platform | Total Responses | Brand Mentions | Brand Mention Rate | Citation Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grok | 32,684 | 8,789 | 26.89% | 31.68% |
| Mistral | 27,176 | 6,439 | 23.69% | 21.18% |
| DeepSeek | 23,708 | 5,582 | 23.54% | 19.60% |
| Google AI Mode | 58,588 | 11,654 | 19.89% | 15.76% |
| ChatGPT | 61,438 | 11,237 | 18.29% | 2.36% |
| Google AI Overview | 53,715 | 9,455 | 17.60% | 4.32% |
| Gemini | 32,934 | 5,300 | 16.09% | 5.37% |
| Copilot | 32,315 | 5,172 | 16.00% | 7.45% |
| Perplexity | 33,168 | 4,708 | 14.19% | 20.38% |
| Claude | 27,908 | 3,705 | 13.28% | 0.50% |
The Mention-Citation Gap
ChatGPT mentions brands at an 18.29% rate but only cites their websites 2.36% of the time — a 7.8x gap. By contrast, Grok’s gap is less than 1x (26.89% mentions vs 31.68% citations). This means Grok actually cites websites more often than it mentions brand names, while ChatGPT almost never links out.
This has profound implications for strategy:
- If your goal is brand awareness, optimize for ChatGPT and Grok — they mention brands most frequently.
- If your goal is referral traffic, focus on Grok, Mistral, Perplexity, and DeepSeek — they actually link to your website.
- Claude is a brand mention machine that rarely links out — 13.28% mention rate but only 0.5% citation rate. Useful for brand perception, not for traffic.
ChatGPT vs. the Field
ChatGPT generated the most total responses in our dataset (61,438), but its citation rate of 2.36% is among the lowest. This aligns with industry observations that ChatGPT’s business model doesn’t incentivize sending users to external websites.
By contrast, Perplexity — which positions itself as an “answer engine” — has a 20.38% citation rate despite a lower 14.19% mention rate. Perplexity’s entire value proposition is built on citing sources, and the data confirms it.
Google AI Mode is the most balanced platform: 19.89% brand mention rate and 15.76% citation rate. As Google’s newest AI search surface, it appears to be designed to maintain the web’s link economy while providing AI-generated answers.
Monthly Trend: Brand Visibility Is Accelerating
| Month | Total Responses | Brand Visibility | Citation Rate | Share of Voice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2025 | 22,693 | 29.58% | 6.49% | 21.96% |
| Nov 2025 | 37,383 | 26.96% | 9.85% | 37.34% |
| Dec 2025 | 130,476 | 7.01% | 7.07% | 8.68% |
| Jan 2026 | 95,486 | 8.72% | 8.24% | 9.80% |
| Feb 2026 | 20,648 | 34.34% | 15.97% | 41.27% |
| Mar 2026 | 62,925 | 39.73% | 25.50% | 51.93% |
| Apr 2026* | 14,023 | 40.52% | 23.12% | 48.89% |
*April 2026 data is partial (first 6 days).
The December 2025 and January 2026 dip in brand visibility (despite higher response volumes) reflects a period when tracking expanded to many new prompts and brands — diluting the average as new, unoptimized queries entered the dataset. The recovery from February onward shows the impact of active optimization.
30-day period comparison: Brand visibility increased by +0.75 percentage points (from 38.38% to 39.13%) and citation rate increased by +3.47 percentage points (from 21.03% to 24.50%) compared to the previous 30-day period. Total responses grew by 133.5%.
Weekly Performance Trend (Last 12 Weeks)
The weekly data reveals a clear upward trajectory in brand visibility:
| Week Starting | Brand Visibility | Citation Rate | Share of Voice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 11, 2026 | 7.18% | 8.32% | 7.85% |
| Jan 18, 2026 | 12.85% | 6.86% | 14.67% |
| Jan 25, 2026 | 18.63% | 9.02% | 20.54% |
| Feb 1, 2026 | 30.73% | 11.63% | 35.48% |
| Feb 8, 2026 | 30.37% | 10.94% | 36.66% |
| Feb 15, 2026 | 32.40% | 12.23% | 51.53% |
| Feb 22, 2026 | 40.16% | 23.93% | 44.63% |
| Mar 1, 2026 | 44.63% | 28.62% | 54.66% |
| Mar 8, 2026 | 41.60% | 26.44% | 54.32% |
| Mar 15, 2026 | 38.30% | 24.73% | 56.14% |
| Mar 22, 2026 | 36.77% | 24.11% | 48.13% |
| Mar 29, 2026 | 39.38% | 23.18% | 46.53% |
Brand visibility grew from 7.18% to 39.38% over 12 weeks — a 5.5x increase. Citation rate grew from 8.32% to 23.18% — a 2.8x increase. These trends demonstrate that active AEO optimization produces measurable, compounding results.
Sentiment Analysis: How AI Platforms Talk About Brands
One of the most underexplored dimensions of AI search is sentiment — not just whether a brand is mentioned, but how it’s discussed. Our analysis of 72,041 brand mentions reveals that AI platforms are generally positive, but with meaningful variation.
Sentiment by LLM Platform
| LLM Platform | Mentions | Positive | Neutral | Negative | Avg Sentiment Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini | 5,300 | 2,987 | 2,309 | 4 | 0.563 |
| Perplexity | 4,708 | 2,574 | 2,130 | 4 | 0.546 |
| Grok | 8,789 | 4,669 | 4,081 | 39 | 0.527 |
| Copilot | 5,172 | 2,634 | 2,527 | 11 | 0.507 |
| Claude | 3,705 | 1,803 | 1,896 | 4 | 0.486 |
| Mistral | 6,439 | 2,971 | 3,437 | 27 | 0.457 |
| Google AI Mode | 11,654 | 2,570 | 3,313 | 2 | 0.436 |
| DeepSeek | 5,582 | 2,338 | 3,238 | 6 | 0.418 |
| ChatGPT | 11,237 | 8,176 | 3,031 | 30 | 0.394 |
| Google AI Overview | 9,455 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0.333 |
Negative sentiment is almost nonexistent across all platforms — only 0.18% of all mentions carry negative sentiment (127 out of 72,041). This suggests that LLMs are trained or tuned to avoid negative brand characterizations, which has implications for reputation management in AI search.
Gemini produces the most positive brand mentions (sentiment score 0.563), while Google AI Overview is the most neutral (0.333) — likely because AI Overviews are designed to be factual summaries rather than evaluative responses.
Industry Deep Dives: Brand Visibility Leaders
Health & Wearables: Oura
Oura demonstrates what dominant AI search visibility looks like for a consumer hardware brand.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Brand Visibility | 82.06% |
| Citation Rate | 24.78% |
| Share of Voice | 98.99% |
| Avg Sentiment (Oura brand) | 0.764 |
| Avg Sentiment (Oura Ring 4) | 0.816 |
Top Cited Domains in Oura’s Category
| Domain | Citations | Citation Rate |
|---|---|---|
| ouraring.com | 6,914 | 96.98% |
| nature.com | 4,111 | 99.76% |
| wareable.com | 4,081 | 100% |
| youtube.com | 4,048 | 100% |
| reddit.com | 3,910 | 100% |
| sleepfoundation.org | 3,593 | 100% |
| ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | 3,436 | 100% |
| pcmag.com | 3,361 | 100% |
Top Mentioned Brands Competing with Oura
| Brand | Mentions | Avg Sentiment |
|---|---|---|
| Oura Ring | 13,456 | 0.691 |
| Apple Watch | 10,114 | 0.625 |
| Fitbit | 9,084 | 0.595 |
| Garmin | 9,016 | 0.663 |
| Oura | 8,586 | 0.764 |
| Oura Ring 4 | 7,640 | 0.816 |
| Samsung Galaxy Ring | 6,528 | 0.808 |
| Ultrahuman Ring Air | 5,009 | 0.840 |
| Whoop | 4,956 | 0.739 |
| Samsung | 4,682 | 0.823 |
Oura’s Performance by LLM Platform
| LLM Platform | Responses | Brand Mention Rate | Citation Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral | 1,796 | 99.28% | 98.00% |
| DeepSeek | 1,680 | 92.98% | 88.99% |
| Grok | 2,319 | 93.57% | 19.88% |
| Claude | 1,909 | 86.22% | 1.99% |
| ChatGPT | 4,483 | 84.47% | 2.28% |
| Google AI Mode | 4,162 | 84.72% | 18.52% |
| Gemini | 2,307 | 83.18% | 4.46% |
| Copilot | 2,270 | 71.94% | 3.35% |
| Perplexity | 2,353 | 67.06% | 17.89% |
| Google AI Overview | 3,994 | 64.35% | 3.36% |
Mistral is Oura’s strongest platform with a 99.28% brand mention rate and 98% citation rate. ChatGPT mentions Oura frequently (84.47%) but rarely cites the website (2.28%).
Athletic Apparel: Nike
Nike shows how a global consumer brand performs across AI search platforms.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Brand Visibility | 77.97% |
| Citation Rate | 24.38% |
| Share of Voice | 85.97% |
Top Cited Domains in Nike’s Category
| Domain | Citations |
|---|---|
| reddit.com | 1,102 |
| nike.com | 840 |
| youtube.com | 801 |
| underarmour.com | 480 |
| dickssportinggoods.com | 463 |
| adidas.com | 438 |
| amazon.com | 383 |
| lululemon.com | 353 |
Top Mentioned Brands Competing with Nike
| Brand | Mentions | Avg Sentiment |
|---|---|---|
| Nike | 2,034 | 0.108 |
| Under Armour | 1,113 | 0.122 |
| Adidas | 1,067 | 0.087 |
| Lululemon | 928 | 0.123 |
| Vuori | 570 | 0.104 |
| Amazon | 553 | 0.135 |
| Gymshark | 459 | 0.137 |
| Puma | 439 | 0.077 |
| Jordan Brand | 427 | 0.090 |
| New Balance | 415 | 0.066 |
Reddit.com leads Nike’s own domain in citations — a pattern we see across multiple industries. AI models heavily cite Reddit as a source of authentic user opinions and product comparisons.
Financial Services: Elo (Pension Insurance)
Elo operates in a highly regulated Finnish pension insurance market, yet achieves strong AI search visibility.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Brand Visibility | 53.26% |
| Citation Rate | 35.14% |
| Share of Voice | 83.48% |
Top Cited Domains in Elo’s Category
| Domain | Citations |
|---|---|
| etk.fi (Finnish Centre for Pensions) | 23,503 |
| ilmarinen.fi | 14,311 |
| elo.fi | 12,241 |
| varma.fi | 9,694 |
| tyel-vakuutus.fi | 7,811 |
Top Mentioned Brands in the Pension Category
| Brand | Mentions | Avg Sentiment |
|---|---|---|
| Varma | 20,664 | 0.039 |
| Ilmarinen | 20,422 | 0.039 |
| Elo | 19,151 | 0.042 |
| TyEL | 13,385 | 0.021 |
| Veritas | 11,329 | 0.060 |
| YEL | 7,452 | 0.037 |
| Eläketurvakeskus | 6,805 | 0.017 |
Elo’s Performance by LLM Platform
| LLM Platform | Responses | Brand Mention Rate | Citation Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grok | 3,249 | 79.93% | 89.14% |
| Mistral | 2,974 | 84.57% | 67.92% |
| Perplexity | 3,236 | 34.33% | 71.48% |
| DeepSeek | 3,152 | 67.51% | 45.65% |
| Google AI Mode | 6,254 | 62.09% | 55.55% |
| Copilot | 3,235 | 47.45% | 37.31% |
| ChatGPT | 3,209 | 47.74% | 16.45% |
| Google AI Overview | 8,570 | 40.70% | 15.18% |
| Claude | 3,071 | 12.18% | 0.23% |
| Gemini | 3,239 | 37.73% | 0% |
Elo’s category is notable for its extremely high citation rates on Grok (89.14%) and Perplexity (71.48%), suggesting that regulated financial content is heavily cited by AI platforms that prioritize source attribution.
Logistics: Posti
Posti (Finnish postal service) achieves the highest citation rate of any tracked brand.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Brand Visibility | 80.75% |
| Citation Rate | 50.60% |
| Share of Voice | 180.47% |
The extraordinary share of voice (>100%) indicates that Posti is mentioned more frequently than all competitors combined in its tracked prompts — a dominant position in Finnish postal and logistics queries.
Renewable Materials: Stora Enso
Stora Enso represents a B2B industrial brand in the renewable materials space.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Brand Visibility | 42.97% |
| Citation Rate | 15.48% |
| Share of Voice | 58.81% |
Even in a niche B2B category, Stora Enso maintains meaningful AI search visibility — demonstrating that AEO is not just a consumer brand play.
Marketing Technology: Superlines
Superlines operates in one of the most competitive AI search categories — AI search optimization tools — competing against established players like Semrush, Ahrefs, and newer entrants like Profound.
| Metric | Oct 2025 | Apr 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Visibility | 0.92% | 6.92% | +652% |
| Citation Rate | 3.80% | 12.99% | +242% |
| Share of Voice | 0.66% | 4.14% | +527% |
Top Cited Domains in the AI Search Optimization Category
| Domain | Citations |
|---|---|
| reddit.com | 88,599 |
| developers.google.com | 37,877 |
| ahrefs.com | 35,981 |
| searchengineland.com | 35,095 |
| semrush.com | 27,775 |
| linkedin.com | 22,463 |
| arxiv.org | 21,581 |
| searchenginejournal.com | 21,465 |
Top Mentioned Brands in the AI Search Category
| Brand | Mentions |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 140,113 |
| 100,158 | |
| Perplexity | 100,045 |
| Gemini | 79,181 |
| Claude | 58,826 |
| Ahrefs | 57,751 |
| Semrush | 50,800 |
| Profound | 41,163 |
| Google AI Overviews | 35,163 |
| SE Ranking | 32,875 |
The AI search optimization category is dominated by the AI platforms themselves being mentioned as subjects of discussion. Among tool vendors, Ahrefs and Semrush lead, with Superlines growing rapidly from a smaller base.
The Citation Landscape: Which Domains Win Across AI Platforms
Our analysis of the top 50 cited domains reveals clear patterns about what types of content AI models prefer to cite.
Top Cited Domain Categories
-
Reddit — The single most cited domain across platforms. reddit.com appears in the top 3 for Grok (48,422 citations), Perplexity (32,457), and Google AI Mode (9,299). AI models treat Reddit as a proxy for authentic human opinion.
-
Industry-specific authority sites — In each vertical, the most authoritative domain-specific sources dominate. For pension insurance: etk.fi. For health wearables: nature.com and sleepfoundation.org. For SEO/marketing: ahrefs.com, semrush.com, searchengineland.com.
-
YouTube — Consistently appears in the top 5 across industries, cited by Google AI Overview (11,366 citations) and Grok (10,982 citations).
-
LinkedIn — Heavily cited by Google AI Mode (13,014 citations) and Perplexity (10,659 citations), suggesting that personal expertise content on LinkedIn is increasingly valued by AI models.
-
Academic sources — arxiv.org (14,232 citations via Mistral) and ncbi.nlm.nih.gov appear prominently, especially in health and technology categories.
Platform-Specific Citation Preferences
| Platform | Preferred Sources |
|---|---|
| Grok | Reddit, YouTube, brand websites, industry regulators |
| Mistral | Developer docs, SEO tools, academic papers, industry analysts |
| DeepSeek | Developer docs, SEO tools, academic papers |
| Perplexity | Reddit, LinkedIn, news sites, brand websites |
| Google AI Mode | LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, brand websites |
| Google AI Overview | YouTube, Reddit, brand websites |
| Copilot | SEO tools (Semrush), industry sites |
| ChatGPT | Minimal citations overall (2.36% rate) |
| Claude | Almost no citations (0.50% rate) |
What This Data Means for Your AEO Strategy
1. Platform-Specific Optimization Is Essential
The data makes clear that a one-size-fits-all AEO strategy will underperform. Each LLM platform has distinct behaviors:
- For citation-heavy platforms (Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek, Perplexity): Focus on creating authoritative, well-structured content that these models can easily cite. Ensure your domain has strong topical authority.
- For mention-heavy platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini): Focus on brand recognition and narrative. These platforms mention brands without linking, so your goal is to be the brand that comes to mind.
- For Google’s AI surfaces (AI Mode, AI Overview): Maintain strong traditional SEO fundamentals. Google’s AI products still heavily favor domains that rank well in traditional search.
2. Reddit Is the New Homepage
Reddit’s dominance in AI citations across every industry and platform is the most actionable finding in this report. AI models treat Reddit as ground truth for user sentiment, product comparisons, and authentic recommendations.
Brands should:
- Monitor Reddit discussions in their category
- Ensure their brand is accurately represented in Reddit threads
- Consider Reddit as a first-class channel for brand perception management
3. Consumer Brands Have a Natural Advantage
Brands with high consumer recognition (Oura, Nike, Posti) achieve brand visibility scores of 77–83%, while B2B and niche brands (Superlines, Agileday) sit in the 2–7% range. This isn’t surprising — AI models reflect the training data, which skews toward consumer-facing content.
B2B brands need to work harder to build AI search visibility, but the Superlines case study shows it’s possible: a 7.5x increase in brand visibility over 6 months through active optimization.
4. Citation Rate Is the New Click-Through Rate
Just as CTR became a key metric in traditional SEO, citation rate is emerging as the defining metric in AI search. A brand can be mentioned frequently (high brand visibility) but still fail to drive traffic if AI models don’t link to its website (low citation rate).
The brands with the highest citation rates in our dataset:
- Posti — 50.60%
- Elo — 35.14%
- Oura — 24.78%
- Nike — 24.38%
- Superlines — 12.99%
5. Sentiment Is a Leading Indicator
With only 0.18% of mentions being negative, AI search is currently a brand-safe environment. However, this may change as models become more opinionated and as users increasingly ask comparative or evaluative questions.
Brands should establish sentiment baselines now — before the landscape shifts.
Summary
The AI search landscape is not a single channel but a fragmented ecosystem of 10+ platforms, each with distinct behaviors around brand mentions, citations, and sentiment. The brands winning in this new landscape are those that:
- Measure visibility across all platforms — not just ChatGPT
- Understand the mention-citation gap — brand awareness and referral traffic require different strategies
- Invest in authoritative content — AI models cite sources they trust
- Monitor sentiment — the 0.18% negative rate won’t last forever
- Track progress over time — the weekly data shows that active optimization produces compounding results
The data in this report was generated using Superlines, the AI Search Intelligence Platform. All metrics are exact values from the Superlines analytics engine — no estimates, no interpolation, no fabrication.
Want to benchmark your own brand’s AI search visibility? Get started with Superlines →
Methodology note: This report analyzes data from 14 brand domains tracked by Superlines across 10 LLM platforms from October 2025 through April 2026. The dataset includes 383,634 AI-generated responses, 72,041 brand mentions, and 44,833 website citations. All figures are exact values from the Superlines platform. Industry categorizations follow the brands’ self-reported NAICS codes. Some brands have tracking periods shorter than the full 6-month window, which is noted where relevant.