AI Visibility Rankings · Marketing

Top 20 online community platforms by AI search visibility (2026)

Platforms used to build branded communities, host discussions, manage memberships, and deepen customer or creator engagement online. Ranked by a composite score: 70% visibility (% of AI answers naming the brand) + 30% citation rate (% citing the brand's domain). Full methodology →

Refreshed Jun 07, 2026

11%

Avg visibility across category

10%

Avg citation rate

20/20

Brands successfully audited

At a glance

Category leader Circle 62% visibility · named in 5 of 8 AI answers

Most cited brand Circle 50% citation rate · the AI's most-trusted source brand in online community platforms

Top cited domain uscreen.tv Referenced by AI across the online community platforms query set — the highest-leverage PR target in this category

Visibility spread 62pp Gap between top and bottom of the ranking · 12 brands at 0% (invisible to the AI)

What we observed in this categoryauto-generated

Circle dominates the online community platforms category with a visibility score of 62.5% and a citation rate of 50.0%, producing a composite score of 58.8 — nearly double the second-ranked brand. Mighty Networks and Discord both sit at 37.5% visibility but trail Circle by 25 percentage points. The category average visibility is just 10.6%, meaning Circle's score is roughly six times the norm, indicating a strongly concentrated AI visibility landscape where one brand captures the majority of AI-generated mentions.

A notable divergence between visibility and citation exists across several brands. Discord holds 37.5% visibility yet has a 0.0% citation rate, meaning Google AI Mode mentions it but never links to it as a source. By contrast, BuddyBoss achieves 0.0% visibility but a 37.5% citation rate — it is trusted as a reference source without being named as a recommended platform. Bettermode and Higher Logic show the inverse pattern of Discord, with citation rates of 25.0% each despite visibility of only 12.5%, suggesting credibility without prominence in AI responses.

Google AI Mode is the dominant engine across all top 10 brands, with no other engine listed as a top performer for any brand. The external sources cited most frequently by the AI in this category include uscreen.tv, youtube.com, group.app, reddit.com, and circle.so itself, indicating the AI anchors on third-party review and aggregator content rather than brand-owned pages. The presence of learnworlds.com and innoloft.com among top cited sources suggests the AI draws heavily on comparison and directory-style content when forming answers about community platforms.

Movers & shakers since last refresh

Biggest visibility risers

Circle 0% → 62% · rank #0 → #1
+62pp
Mighty Networks 0% → 38% · rank #0 → #2
+38pp
Discord 0% → 38% · rank #0 → #3
+38pp

The ranking

#	Brand	Visibility	Citation	Top engine
1	Circle circle.so	62%	50%	Google AI Mode
Circle leads all 20 brands with 62.5% visibility and 50.0% citation rate, both figures roughly five to six times the category averages of 10.6% and 10.0% respectively.
2	Mighty Networks mightynetworks.com	38%	12%	Google AI Mode
Mighty Networks matches Discord on visibility at 37.5% but holds a 12.5% citation rate versus Discord's 0.0%, giving it a meaningfully higher composite score of 30.0 versus 26.2.
3	Discord discord.com	38%	0%	Google AI Mode
Discord's 37.5% visibility is the joint second-highest in the category, yet its 0.0% citation rate suggests AI responses reference it by name without treating its domain as a trustworthy source.
4	Ning ning.com	25%	0%	Google AI Mode
Ning sits at 25.0% visibility with a 0.0% citation rate, placing it fourth overall but yielding a composite score of just 17.5, less than a third of Circle's 58.8.
5	Bettermode bettermode.com	12%	25%	Google AI Mode
Bettermode's citation rate of 25.0% outpaces its 12.5% visibility, placing it equal fifth with Higher Logic at a composite of 16.2, suggesting stronger source credibility than raw mention frequency.
6	Higher Logic higherlogic.com	12%	25%	Google AI Mode
7	BuddyBoss buddyboss.com	0%	38%	Google AI Mode
8	Slack slack.com	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
9	Discourse discourse.org	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
10	Kajabi Communities kajabi.com	0%	25%	Google AI Mode
11	Podia podia.com	0%	25%	Google AI Mode
12	Hivebrite hivebrite.io	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
13	Vanilla Forums vanillaforums.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
14	Skool skool.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
15	Geneva geneva.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
16	Invision Community invisioncommunity.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
17	Mobilize mobilize.io	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
18	NAS.io nas.io	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
19	PeerBoard peerboard.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
20	Disciple disciplemedia.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode

Sources AI engines trust in this category

Across the 8 buyer-intent queries we ran on online community platforms, 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.

uscreen.tvyoutube.comgroup.appreddit.comzanfia.cominnoloft.comlearnworlds.comcircle.so

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 online community platforms 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 online community platforms brand → Browse all rankings Methodology →

Frequently asked about online community platforms AI visibility

Who leads AI visibility in online community platforms?

Circle leads with 62.5% visibility and a 50.0% citation rate, producing a composite score of 58.8 — far ahead of second-ranked Mighty Networks at 30.0.

What is the average AI visibility score for brands in this category?

The category average visibility is 10.6% and average citation rate is 10.0%, indicating most of the 20 tracked brands have very limited presence in Google AI Mode responses.

Which brands are cited by AI but not prominently named in responses?

BuddyBoss has a 37.5% citation rate with 0.0% visibility, and Kajabi Communities has a 25.0% citation rate with 0.0% visibility, meaning both are used as reference sources without being recommended platforms.

What sources does Google AI Mode cite most when answering queries about community platforms?

The top cited sources include uscreen.tv, youtube.com, group.app, reddit.com, and innoloft.com, pointing to third-party comparison and aggregator sites as the AI's primary reference material.

Which brands have high visibility but zero citation in this category?

Discord at 37.5% visibility and Ning at 25.0% visibility both carry a 0.0% citation rate, meaning the AI mentions them without linking to their domains as supporting sources.

Which engine dominates AI visibility across this category?

Google AI Mode is listed as the top engine for every brand in the top 10, with no other engine appearing in the data, indicating the entire landscape is currently shaped by a single AI surface.