AI Visibility Rankings · AI

Vector databases: AI search visibility ranking (2026)

How AI search engines rank vector databases 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. Vector databases used to store embeddings, run similarity search, and support retrieval-heavy AI applications and semantic discovery. 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 Pinecone 25% visibility · named in 2 of 8 AI answers

Most cited brand Pinecone 0% citation rate · the AI's most-trusted source brand in vector databases

Top cited domain youtube.com Referenced by AI across the vector databases query set — the highest-leverage PR target in this category

Visibility spread 25pp Gap between top and bottom of the ranking · 14 brands at 0% (invisible to the AI)

What we observed in this categoryauto-generated

Pinecone, pgvector, and Qdrant each hold 25.0% visibility, placing them well above the category average of 5.6% and creating a clear three-way tier at the top. The next group, Redis, Milvus, and Chroma, sits at 12.5% each, roughly half the leaders' share. Below rank 6, brands including Weaviate, MongoDB Atlas, and Elastic record zero visibility, meaning more than half the 20 tracked brands are entirely absent from Google AI Mode responses in this category.

Every brand in this audit records a citation rate of 0.0%, meaning no brand's own domain is being cited even when it is named in AI responses. The top cited sources are youtube.com, reddit.com, zenml.io, and community.openai.com, indicating Google AI Mode draws supporting evidence from community and tutorial content rather than vendor sites. This creates a direct split between which brands are named as options and which domains are actually trusted as sources.

All top engines listed in the data point exclusively to Google AI Mode, confirming this audit captures a single-engine landscape with no cross-engine variation to report. Milvus and Chroma are the biggest risers, each gaining 12.5 visibility points from a previous base of zero. Pinecone and pgvector are the biggest fallers, each dropping 12.5 points from 37.5%, though both retain the joint-top position, suggesting the category's upper tier is compressing rather than reshuffling.

Movers & shakers since last refresh

Biggest visibility risers

Milvus 0% → 12% · rank #5 → #5
+12pp
Chroma 0% → 12% · rank #11 → #6
+12pp

Biggest visibility fallers

Pinecone 38% → 25% · rank #1 → #1
-12pp
pgvector 38% → 25% · rank #2 → #2
-12pp

The ranking

#	Brand	Visibility	Citation	Top engine
1	Pinecone pinecone.io	25%	0%	Google AI Mode
Pinecone leads jointly at 25.0% visibility but has fallen from 37.5%, while its citation rate remains 0.0%, matching every other brand in the category.
2	pgvector pgvector.org	25%	0%	Google AI Mode
pgvector shares the top 25.0% visibility score with Pinecone and Qdrant but also fell from 37.5%, and its 0.0% citation rate offers no differentiation on trust signals.
3	Qdrant qdrant.tech	25%	0%	Google AI Mode
Qdrant holds 25.0% visibility at rank 3 without any recorded decline, making it the most stable of the three joint leaders against the 5.6% category average.
4	Redis redis.io	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
Redis sits at 12.5% visibility, exactly half the top-tier score, with a 0.0% citation rate that mirrors every other brand and no movement in the risers or fallers data.
5	Milvus milvus.io	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
Milvus rose from 0.0% to 12.5% visibility, making it the joint biggest riser, though its citation rate dropped 12.5 points, creating an unusual gain-in-mentions, loss-in-citations pattern.
6	Chroma trychroma.com	12%	0%	Google AI Mode
7	Elastic elastic.co	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
8	MongoDB Atlas mongodb.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
9	Weaviate weaviate.io	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
10	Vald vald.vdaas.org	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
11	Zilliz zilliz.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
12	DataStax Astra DB datastax.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
13	Vespa vespa.ai	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
14	Neo4j neo4j.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
15	SingleStore singlestore.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
16	LanceDB lancedb.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
17	Couchbase couchbase.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
18	Marqo marqo.ai	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
19	Typesense typesense.org	0%	0%	Google AI Mode
20	Oracle oracle.com	0%	0%	Google AI Mode

Sources AI engines trust in this category

Across the 8 buyer-intent queries we ran on vector databases, 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.

youtube.comreddit.comzenml.ioencore.devcommunity.openai.compingcap.comiternal.aifirecrawl.dev

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 vector databases 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 vector databases brand → Browse all rankings Methodology →

Frequently asked about vector databases AI visibility

Who leads AI visibility in the vector databases category?

Pinecone, pgvector, and Qdrant share the top position, each at 25.0% visibility, well above the category average of 5.6%. No single brand holds a clear solo lead.

What sources does Google AI Mode cite most when responding to vector database queries?

The top cited sources are youtube.com, reddit.com, zenml.io, and community.openai.com. No brand's own domain is cited, indicating AI responses rely on community and tutorial content rather than vendor sites.

Is there any brand in this category with meaningful citation rates?

No. Every brand in the audit records a citation rate of 0.0%, meaning being named in an AI response does not translate to the brand's domain being cited as a source.

Which brands have gained the most AI visibility recently in vector databases?

Milvus and Chroma are the biggest risers, both jumping from 0.0% to 12.5% visibility. Chroma also moved from rank 11 to rank 6 in the process.

Are established brands like Weaviate and MongoDB Atlas visible in Google AI Mode for this category?

No. Both Weaviate and MongoDB Atlas record 0.0% visibility and 0.0% citation rate, placing them among the majority of tracked brands with no current AI Mode presence.

How concentrated is AI visibility in the vector databases category?

The top three brands account for 75.0% of total visibility collectively, while more than half the 20 tracked brands record zero visibility, making this a heavily top-concentrated category.