AI Visibility Rankings · AI

AI search engines: AI search visibility ranking (2026)

How AI search engines rank ai search engines by visibility and citations. 20 brands measured monthly across Google AI Mode: which brands the AI names in answers, which domains it cites as sources, and how the leaders compare. AI search engines and answer-first search products used to find, synthesize, and cite information across the web, documents, and knowledge sources. Composite score: 70% visibility (% of AI answers naming the brand) + 30% citation rate (% citing the brand's domain). Full methodology →

Refreshed Jun 18, 2026

Avg visibility across category

Avg citation rate

20/20

Brands successfully audited

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At a glance

Category leader Perplexity 38% visibility · named in 3 of 8 AI answers

Most cited brand Perplexity 12% citation rate · the AI's most-trusted source brand in ai search engines

Top cited domain pcmag.com Referenced by AI across the ai search engines query set — the highest-leverage PR target in this category

Visibility spread 38pp Gap between top and bottom of the ranking · 15 brands at 0% (invisible to the AI)

What we observed in this categoryauto-generated

Perplexity leads the AI search engines category with a visibility score of 37.5%, more than double the second-ranked You.com at 25.0%. The category average sits at just 5.0%, meaning Perplexity is performing at 7.5 times the average. This gap is material because the majority of brands in the 20-brand set, including Google and OpenAI, register 0.0% visibility, so the top of the ranking is being defined by a very small cluster of active brands.

Perplexity is the only brand in this category earning any citation at all, with a citation rate of 12.5% against a category average of 0.6%. You.com sits at rank 2 with 25.0% visibility but 0.0% citations, meaning it is named in AI responses but not trusted enough to be sourced. This named-versus-cited divergence is the defining pattern of the category, where being mentioned and being cited are almost entirely decoupled for every brand except Perplexity.

All top engine attributions across the entire top 10 point to Google AI Mode as the sole engine driving visibility in this category. The top cited sources are third-party review and comparison sites, specifically pcmag.com, zapier.com, reddit.com, and youtube.com, alongside smaller SEO and tool-review domains. This signals that Google AI Mode is anchoring its responses on external editorial content rather than brand-owned domains when forming answers about AI search engines.

Movers & shakers since last refresh

Biggest visibility risers

Perplexity 0% → 38% · rank #0 → #1
+38pp
You.com 0% → 25% · rank #0 → #2
+25pp
Microsoft Copilot 0% → 12% · rank #0 → #3
+12pp

The ranking

#	Brand	Visibility	Citation	Top engine
1	Perplexity perplexity.ai	38%	12%	Google AI Mode
Perplexity holds 37.5% visibility and is the only brand in the category with a non-zero citation rate of 12.5%, making it the sole trusted reference in Google AI Mode responses.
2	You.com you.com	25%	0%	Google AI Mode
You.com achieves 25.0% visibility, five times the category average, but its 0.0% citation rate means AI responses name it without sourcing it as an authority.
3	Microsoft Copilot microsoft.com	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
Microsoft Copilot sits at 12.5% visibility, equal to Andi and Exa, with a composite score of 8.8 and zero citations despite the brand's broader market presence.
4	Andi andisearch.com	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
Andi matches Microsoft Copilot and Exa with 12.5% visibility and a composite score of 8.8, but earns zero citations, indicating surface-level mention without editorial backing.
5	Exa exa.ai	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
Exa shares the 12.5% visibility and 8.8 composite score tier with Andi and Microsoft Copilot, with no citations, placing it in a three-way tie for the bottom of the visible group.
6	Google google.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
7	OpenAI openai.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
8	Brave Search brave.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
9	Phind phind.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
10	Kagi kagi.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
11	xAI x.ai	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
12	Glean glean.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
13	Consensus consensus.app	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
14	iAsk iask.ai	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
15	Komo komo.ai	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
16	Bagoodex bagoodex.io	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
17	Writesonic writesonic.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
18	NeevaAI neeva.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
19	Elicit elicit.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
20	AOL Search aol.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode

Sources AI engines trust in this category

Across the 8 buyer-intent queries we ran on ai search engines, these are the domains Google AI Mode cited most often. If you're not on this list — or if your competitors are — that's a concrete PR / linkbuilding target.

pcmag.comvirtualpbx.comreddit.comyoutube.comradarkit.aizapier.comcommercepundit.comseoprofy.com

How to read this ranking

Four things worth knowing before you act on the numbers above. These are the same definitions across every industry page — for category-specific observations, see the What we observed section above (where available) and the per-brand insights inline in the ranking.

Visibility = being named

A brand's visibility % is the share of AI answers that mention it by name in the response prose. This is who AI engines actively recommend to the buyer.

Citation rate = being trusted

Citation rate is the share of AI answers that include the brand's domain as a clickable source link. This is what the AI treats as authoritative evidence — different from being named.

Top engine differs by brand

The "top engine" column shows which AI surface each brand performs best on. Big gaps between a brand's score across engines usually points to specific content or schema gaps.

Rankings move month to month

AI engines re-crawl and re-rank on shorter cycles than classical search. We re-audit every brand on this list at least every 30 days and refresh this page automatically.

Get your own ai search engines brand audited

The brands above were curated from public market-leader lists. Want the same measurement against your own brand — including the queries you appear on, which competitors get named instead, and a prioritised fix list? Run a free preview.

Audit your ai search engines brand → Browse all rankings Methodology →

Frequently asked about ai search engines AI visibility

Who leads AI visibility in the AI search engines category?

Perplexity leads with 37.5% visibility and a composite score of 30.0, more than double the second-ranked You.com at 25.0%. The category average is just 5.0%, making Perplexity the clear outlier.

Which AI search engine brands are actually cited, not just mentioned?

Only Perplexity earns any citations, with a 12.5% citation rate. Every other brand in the top 10, including You.com and Microsoft Copilot, has a 0.0% citation rate despite some having measurable visibility.

What sources does Google AI Mode cite most for AI search engine research?

The top cited sources are pcmag.com, zapier.com, reddit.com, and youtube.com, alongside smaller review sites like radarkit.ai and seoprofy.com. Brand-owned domains do not appear in the cited sources list.

How do major brands like Google and OpenAI perform in this category?

Both Google and OpenAI register 0.0% visibility and 0.0% citations in this audit, placing them outside the visible set entirely despite their scale and relevance to the category.

How concentrated is AI visibility across the 20 brands in this category?

Visibility is heavily concentrated, with only 5 of 20 brands registering any score above zero. The remaining 15 brands, including Brave Search, Phind, and Kagi, all sit at 0.0% visibility.

Which engine is driving all visibility in the AI search engines category?

Google AI Mode is listed as the top engine for every brand in the top 10, indicating it is the sole engine generating measurable AI visibility in this category during the audit period.