Do AI engines favour big brands in 2026?
A smaller company needs a useful place in the answer, not a content budget that matches the market leader.
Steen Stones · Reviewed
Established brands have an advantage in the research, especially in Google's AI Mode. The pattern differs between services, though, and does not prove size decides the answer. For a smaller company, the useful response is focused work, not simply more content.
| What to examine | What the source supports |
|---|---|
| The buyer’s specific question | Google recommends distinctive, useful content and describes longer, more specific questions. |
| A category worth competing in | Kevin Indig suggests commercially useful categories with no clear leader or a small gap. |
| What the page explains | Indig proposes testing clearer positioning, comparison pages, documentation and proof. |
| Whether it helped the business | Google recommends measuring conversions such as sales alongside engagement. |
What advantage do big brands have?
Ahrefs studied mentions of 75,000 brands in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews. Largely the same brands appeared across the services. Measures of established-brand strength were most closely linked to AI Mode mentions, and least closely linked to ChatGPT mentions.
Take searches for a brand by name. These were more closely linked to mentions in AI Mode than in AI Overviews or ChatGPT. That does not show that spending more on awareness will cause more recommendations.
The study only included sites above set levels of website strength and search demand. It tells us less about a company starting from scratch. Use it to inform your checks, rather than decide you cannot compete.
Where should a smaller company focus?
Look for valuable questions where the leading brands are close. Kevin Indig recommends this after studying 1,094 US categories in ChatGPT, from January through June 2026.
His study measured mentions, not purchases or recommendation quality. It could not explain why leaders changed. Treat it as a guide to testing, not a forecast.
Indig cautions against expecting more pages to earn more mentions.
Use topical ownership to decide where to focus, not to declare that more content will make ChatGPT mention you:
What should you improve first?
Help buyers find the answer they need. Google says people ask longer, more specific questions in its AI search, then follow up. Its advice is to offer something useful and distinctive.
Check your product information, comparisons and evidence. Indig suggests testing clearer pages and credible coverage elsewhere, without claiming that any single change creates a leader.
Make those pages easy to use. Google recommends clear main content and pages that work across devices. Its crawler, the software that reads pages, must be able to reach working content that can enter the search index.
Should you focus only on ChatGPT?
No. The weaker relationship with brand strength does not make ChatGPT an easy win. Ahrefs found different patterns in AI Mode and AI Overviews, so check each service separately.
Record which service answered which question. The study's broad patterns cannot tell you whether a particular change will make your company appear.
How do you know whether the work is useful?
Read what the answer says about you. Our review of 6,517 answers on 4 August 2026 judged what each cited source contributed. Another model challenged every verdict that said a source decided the recommendation.
Then check what happened for your business. Google recommends measuring sales and other useful actions alongside engagement. Mentions alone do not show that someone bought.
Ask an agency selling mentions how you will judge the work. These studies do not establish that adding mentions produces recommendations or sales.