We read 165 "best X" pages that rank in Google's US top 20 and list their own product, then asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode the same question. 88 of 123 companies went unnamed on at least one question. Method, data and limits.
Client result: Wearview went from $0 to $36K MRR in 8 months.
This post is part of our AI SEO guide. Related reading: How do I list my business on ChatGPT? Businesses in ChatGPT, How to Claim and Optimize Your Business in ChatGPT, Rank tracker API.
Walid founded AY Rank to help businesses dominate AI search. He leads the GEO methodology and oversees client strategy across 50+ cities in Europe, Middle East, and North Africa.
Full Bio →Our earlier piece, 1 in 10 AI citations come from self-promotional listicles, covered Peec AI's finding that vendor-written "best X" lists earn a real share of AI citations. This study looks at the other side of that number: companies whose own "best X" page ranks on Google, but who are missing from the AI answer to the same question.
We took 32 "best X" questions about B2B software and services and read every page in Google's US top 20 for each. We kept the 165 pages where the publisher puts its own product in its own numbered list. 123 companies publish them. Then we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode each question once.
88 of the 123 companies had at least one question where all three engines answered without naming them, even though their own page ranked on Google for that exact question.
The 88 split into two groups. 75 companies were not named on any page they had. 13 were missing on one question but named on another. Another 21 companies had no fully unnamed page but at least one page named by only one engine (for 2 of them, only the ChatGPT recheck named them). 14 were named by two or three engines on every page they had.
The engines differed. Across the 165 pages, ChatGPT named the publisher 32 times, Gemini 39 times and Google AI Mode 25 times.
On 7 of the 32 questions, no engine named any of the self-ranking publishers, even on the ChatGPT recheck.
Here is the full method, so you can repeat it or argue with it.
Position helps, but it is no guarantee. Pages at Google #1 had the lowest unnamed share. Pages on Google's second page had the highest.
The top 3 is not a pass. 11 of the 31 pages in positions 1 to 3 had a publisher that none of the three engines named. Of the 88 companies, 39 had an unnamed page on Google's first page.
In this sample, it lines up about as strongly as Google position does. Publishers under DR 70 went unnamed on almost 9 in 10 pages. At DR 80 and above, it was under half.
On pages whose publisher was named by two or three engines, the median DR was 81. On pages whose publisher no engine named, it was 72.
We don't read DR as the cause. Our reading is that DR roughly tracks how much of the web already writes about a company, and that is closer to what the engines draw on. Our piece on domain authority and AI citations covers larger studies where DR did not predict which URLs get cited. Those studies measured cited pages. This one measures whether a brand gets named in the answer, on 165 pages, so treat it as a pattern in one sample.
Barely. The unnamed share sits between 63% and 68% in every category we grouped the 32 questions into.
Sales and outbound software had the most self-ranking pages by far: 62 pages from 9 questions. "Best LinkedIn automation tools" alone had 15, and 11 of those publishers went unnamed.
| Category | Questions | Self-ranking pages | Publisher not named | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales and outbound | 9 | 62 | 39 | 63% |
| SEO and AI search | 6 | 35 | 23 | 66% |
| AI and developer tools | 6 | 28 | 18 | 64% |
| Marketing and content | 6 | 21 | 14 | 67% |
| Operations and other | 5 | 19 | 13 | 68% |
The same few brands came up again and again. Apollo.io was among the most-named brands on 7 of the 32 questions. Semrush was on 5. Ahrefs, ZoomInfo and Lusha were on 3 each.
The table lists, for each question, the five brands named most often across the three answers.
| Question | Self-ranking pages | Publisher not named | Most-named brands in the answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best cold email software | 9 | 3 | Instantly, Smartlead, Apollo.io, lemlist, Saleshandy |
| Best email warmup tools | 4 | 0 | MailReach, Instantly, Warmbox, Lemwarm, Warmforge |
| Best LinkedIn automation tools | 15 | 11 | Expandi, Waalaxy, Dripify, Taplio, La Growth Machine |
| Best AI visibility tools | 11 | 8 | Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, Semrush, Scrunch |
| Best generative engine optimization tools | 9 | 5 | Peec AI, Scrunch, Otterly.AI, Semrush, Profound |
| Best LLM tracking tools | 4 | 4 | Langfuse, LangSmith, Braintrust, Arize, Datadog |
| Best link building tools | 3 | 1 | Ahrefs, Semrush, BuzzStream, Pitchbox, Respona |
| Best rank tracking tools | 3 |
| 3 |
| AccuRanker, SE Ranking, Semrush, Ahrefs, Nightwatch |
| Best AI SEO tools | 5 | 2 | Ahrefs, Surfer, Semrush, Frase, Clearscope |
| Best AI agent platforms | 5 | 3 | CrewAI, n8n, LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Zapier Agents |
| Best AI note takers | 3 | 3 | Granola, Fathom, Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai, Notion AI |
| Best sales prospecting tools | 8 | 5 | Apollo.io, ZoomInfo, Clay, Cognism, Lusha |
| Best workflow automation tools | 5 | 2 | n8n, Make, Zapier, Workato, Pipedream |
| Best AI chatbots for business | 5 | 5 | Claude, ChatGPT, Intercom, Tidio, Zendesk AI |
| Best AI recruiting software | 6 | 3 | Ashby, Gem, Paradox, Manatal, hireEZ |
| Best B2B marketing automation software | 7 | 6 | ActiveCampaign, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Adobe Marketo Engage, Oracle Eloqua, Customer.io |
| Best influencer marketing platforms | 4 | 3 | GRIN, Upfluence, Aspire, CreatorIQ, Modash |
| Best project management software | 1 | 0 | Asana, Trello, Wrike, Zoho Projects, ClickUp |
| Best AI design tools | 1 | 0 | Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Recraft, Ideogram, Framer |
| Best AI video generators | 1 | 0 | Google Veo, Runway, Kling AI, HeyGen, Pika |
| Best ecommerce fulfillment services | 4 | 4 | ShipBob, ShipMonk, Flexport, Fulfillment by Amazon, Red Stag Fulfillment |
| Best email finder tools | 1 | 1 | Hunter.io, Apollo.io, Lusha, Findymail, Snov.io |
| Best lead generation tools | 8 | 7 | Apollo.io, HubSpot, Clay, ZoomInfo, Hunter.io |
| Best web scraping tools | 4 | 2 | Bright Data, Playwright, Octoparse, Browse AI, Apify |
| Best LLM observability tools | 8 | 6 | LangSmith, Arize Phoenix, Braintrust, Langfuse, Datadog |
| Best AI code review tools | 1 | 0 | CodeRabbit, Greptile, Qodo, Cursor Bugbot, GitHub Copilot |
| Best AI SDR tools | 7 | 6 | 11x, AiSDR, Apollo.io, Artisan, Regie.ai |
| Best sales engagement platforms | 4 | 3 | Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo.io, HubSpot Sales Hub, Salesforce |
| Best AI writing tools | 3 | 3 | Claude, Jasper, ChatGPT, Grammarly, Writesonic |
| Best B2B data providers | 6 | 3 | ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, Cognism, Lusha, UpLead |
| Best social media management tools | 5 | 2 | Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, Metricool, Later |
| Best knowledge base software | 5 | 3 | Notion, Guru, Document360, Confluence, Slite |
Some winners publish their own lists too. 17 of the 160 most-named slots went to a brand that also had a self-ranking page in that question's Google top 20. Every one of those 17 was named by at least two engines. So the winners have lists as well. In this data, the list is not what separates them from the companies that went unnamed.
The 96 answers (32 questions, 3 engines) contained 644 links. 7 answers had none. Each engine linked very different things.
| Engine | Links | What stood out |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 356 | 204 went to a site's homepage. No Reddit or YouTube links |
| Google AI Mode | 218 | 56 YouTube links and 18 Reddit links. 16 of 32 answers linked Reddit, and 16 linked YouTube |
| Gemini | 70 | Mostly list articles: 64 of 70 URLs contain "best", "top", "tools" or "alternatives" |
Across all three engines, zapier.com was the most-linked site after YouTube, with 20 links. 18 of them went to Zapier's blog, mostly its "best X" roundups.
Only 23 links, 3.6% of the total, pointed at one of the 165 self-ranking pages. They came from 21 of the 96 answers.
The ChatGPT result fits what we wrote about Reddit's drop in ChatGPT citations in August. Google AI Mode still links Reddit and YouTube heavily for these questions.
One more detail stands out. On 9 pages, an engine linked the publisher's site (6 times the self-ranking page itself), but no engine named the publisher. Our reading is that the engine used the page as a source and named other products instead.
Here is our reading of the data. It is one run, so these are patterns, not laws.
Your page is one source among hundreds. For these 32 questions, the answers held 644 links, and only 23 pointed at the self-ranking pages. Ranking on Google gets your page into the pool. It does not make your page the answer.
The engines keep naming the same well-known brands. Apollo.io came up on 7 different questions. The links lean on third-party roundups (Zapier's blog), Reddit, YouTube and homepages. A company that only appears at the top of its own list has one vote in that pool.
Position and authority line up with being named, but they don't decide it. The unnamed share falls from 76% on Google's second page to 33% at #1, and from 86% to 45% as DR rises. A third of the publishers at Google #1 were still left out.
Being linked is not being named. On 9 pages an engine linked the publisher's site, and no engine named the publisher.
A "best X" page that ranks on Google puts your page in the pool AI engines read from. In this study that was rarely enough. 23 of 644 links pointed at these pages, and 88 of 123 publishers went unnamed on at least one question.
What you can do with this:
No. Of the 18 self-ranking pages at Google #1 in our study, 6 had a publisher that ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode all left out of their answer to the same question on November 10, 2026. Higher positions lined up with being named more often: the unnamed share was 76% at positions 11 to 20 and 33% at #1.
Sometimes, but rarely in this study. 23 of the 644 links in the answers pointed at one of the 165 self-ranking pages. Peec AI's much larger study, covered in our self-promotional listicles piece, found about 1 in 10 AI citations come from such lists. Being cited and being named are not the same thing.
In 9 cases in our data, an engine linked the publisher's site (6 times the self-ranking page itself), but none of the three engines named the publisher. Our reading is that the engine used the page as a source and kept the entries that other sources also name. We can't see inside the engines, so treat that as an inference.
It depends on the engine. In our run, 204 of ChatGPT's 356 links went to a site's homepage, and none went to Reddit or YouTube. Google AI Mode linked YouTube 56 times and Reddit 18 times. Across all three, zapier.com got 20 links, mostly to its "best X" roundups.
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, in their words, on more than one day. Record who gets named and which pages get linked. Our AI visibility monitoring guide walks through it. To run those checks on a schedule, our comparisons of AI citation monitoring tools and AI Mode SEO analysis tools list what each tool covers and costs.
On November 10, 2026, one of our routes to Perplexity was disabled by the provider and the other refused the call because our account had no balance. We used Google AI Mode as the third engine instead, and every "3 engines" in this post means ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode.
Data: AY Rank study, run November 10, 2026. Google US top 20 via Serper. Answers via Bright Data (ChatGPT), SearchAPI (Gemini and the second ChatGPT run) and DataForSEO (Google AI Mode). Domain Rating from Ahrefs. Quote on claiming from OpenAI Help Center, Setting up your business on ChatGPT.
