Which AI search engines matter for your brand?

A marketing manager asks this question before the first tracker budget. The manager wants to know which platforms matter for the brand. This guide reads each platform on our own project in the 28 days to 30 October 2026. The project tracks the category we sell in, AI visibility tools, with 47 questions in English. 44 of them ran for the whole window, and three started during it. The guide then gives an order to track them in, by the way your buyers search. For the tools that cover ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity together, read our guide on the three platforms. For one scorecard across countries and languages, read our guide on markets.

Which are the best GenAI search engines to track for a brand?

The best GenAI search engines to track are the ones your buyers ask before they choose a product. A GenAI search engine is an AI platform that answers a question in prose and names products, brands and sources in that answer. FullReach AI asks 7 of them: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews and Grok.

In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, on 7 AI platforms, our project stored 8,953 answers to its 47 questions. The share of answers that named at least one of the six monitored brands ran from 39% on Perplexity to 67% on Copilot. The platforms differ in level, in tone, in failures and in the pages they cite.

How differently do the platforms answer the same questions?

The same 47 questions got a different level, a different tone and a different set of sources on each platform. The table reads the 7 platforms apart, in the 28 days to 30 October 2026. A monitored brand is one of the five rivals the project tracks, or our own. A rival mention counts once per answer.

• The level differs by platform, not by brand. The five rivals kept almost the same order on every platform. Their shares moved together, from the low on Perplexity to the high on Copilot.
• The tone differs. ChatGPT and Gemini marked more than half of the rival mentions as recommended. Copilot, Grok and Google's two features marked about four in ten. Perplexity marked fewer than one in five.
• The negative mentions sit on one platform. The 7 platforms marked 85 rival mentions as negative in the window. Copilot marked most of them. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity marked none.
• The failures differ. Copilot returned no answer on 786 of its 1,905 attempts, 41%. Gemini failed 47 times in 1,354. Our guide on what an AI visibility tool is explains why a tool must count the failed attempts apart.

Our guide on Gemini reads Gemini apart from AI Overviews and AI Mode. Our guide on Perplexity shows how Perplexity picks its sources.

What do ChatGPT and Grok show that the other platforms do not?

ChatGPT and Grok report the web searches they ran before they answered, and no other platform does. FullReach AI stores the searches of ChatGPT and Grok with each answer. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, 696 of the 1,307 ChatGPT answers came with a search list, 2.1 searches each. Grok reported searches with every one of its 1,306 answers, 4.2 each. In the same window, 314 of the 1,477 ChatGPT searches named the most searched rival.

The two platforms also cite the vendors' own sites the most. On Grok, one rival's site was the most cited domain of all, with 126 citations in the window. On ChatGPT, three rival sites stood among the six most cited domains, with 676, 599 and 546 citations. On Gemini, the most cited rival site ranked 10th, with 56. Of the 7 platforms, only ChatGPT shows product cards that the tool records. For the manual check on ChatGPT and its three traps, read our guide on brand mentions in ChatGPT.

How do Google AI Overviews and AI Mode differ from the chat platforms?

Google's two features cite more pages per answer than Gemini, and they return no answer more often. In the 28 days to 30 October 2026, AI Overviews cited 8.5 pages per answer and AI Mode 7.1. Gemini, Google's chat product, cited 3.1. The two features returned no answer on 2,603 of their 5,214 attempts in the window, half of them. With half the attempts empty, a tool must record the attempt as well as the answer.

Our guide on AI Mode versus AI Overviews reads the domains each feature cites. Our guide on the manual check in AI Overviews shows the check with a clean profile and a set location. Report the two as two rows, never as one Google number.

Which platforms should you track first?

Track first the platform your buyers ask, then the platforms that recommend a rival and not you. Our 28 days give one order for a brand that sells to businesses. Each reason below comes from the table above.

In the window, 13 of the answers that named our own brand came from ChatGPT and one from Grok. The other five platforms named us in none of their 6,340 answers. Our guide on what an AI visibility tool is gives the pooled rate, which hides this split.

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Example

Visibility by platform

ChatGPT

50.7%

Gemini

47.5%

Perplexity

44.3%

Copilot

41.1%

Google AI Mode

37.9%

Google AI Overviews

34.7%

Grok

31.5%

What does it cost to track all of them?

The cost of all 7 platforms depends on how a tool sells them, one by one or in one plan. Our pricing guide prices the plans of the tools we compare. FullReach AI costs 65€, 165€ and 360€ a month, billed yearly, for 50, 150 and 350 prompts, with every platform included. Our guide on the three platforms shows which entry plans include ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

What to do next

1. Ask three buyer questions on ChatGPT and in a Google search, in a private window. Note which platform names a rival and not you.
2. Pick the platforms from the table above, by the way your buyers search. Start with two, and add the rest after the first report.
3. Start a tool on 25 to 50 questions, with every platform your buyers use. Our guide on how many prompts to track explains the count.

For how FullReach AI collects the answers, read the methodology.