What the New 175-Brand Study Measured
Victorious examined 175 brands across legal services, healthcare, software, financial services and ecommerce and retail. The researchers first asked eight AI platforms to describe each company and compared the responses with information on the company’s own website. The platforms included ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Meta AI.
The study then tested how frequently those businesses appeared when the platforms were given category and buyer-focused prompts. Rather than asking directly about a named company, these prompts reflected the questions a potential customer might ask while researching a problem or comparing providers. The researchers then compared mention rates with traditional organic performance, third-party web mentions, referring domains and Knowledge Graph presence.
AI Recognition Was Almost Universal
When the platforms were asked directly to describe a company, they accurately recognised 96% of the brands tested. This suggests that most established businesses already leave enough information across their websites and the wider web for AI systems to form a broadly correct understanding of who they are and what they do.
This is an important distinction because many businesses assess their AI visibility using only branded questions. They ask ChatGPT to describe the company, receive a correct summary and conclude that their visibility is strong. The study shows why that test can produce false confidence. Recognition confirms that the system can identify a brand when prompted, but it does not show whether the brand will be introduced to someone who does not already know its name.
Only a Small Minority Entered Category Answers
Despite the high recognition rate, 89% of the brands never appeared in the category-level AI answers measured by the researchers. In other words, only around 11% broke into at least one of the answers customers could encounter while researching a type of product, service or provider.
This reveals a large gap between understanding and selection. An AI platform may hold an accurate description of a company but still exclude it when deciding which brands are relevant enough to mention. For businesses, the commercial value lies much closer to selection. Customers rarely discover a new supplier by asking an AI platform to describe a company they have never heard of.