Why 38% of AI Systems Disagree on Brand Recommendations (And What It Means for GEO)

Why 38% of AI Systems Disagree on Brand Recommendations (And What It Means for GEO) Let’s start with the stat that knocked my socks off: across our dataset of 2801 AI prompts, ChatGPT and Google AI Overview gave conflicting brand recommendations 38% of the time. That’s not a rounding error; that’s a full-on divergence. The same prompt, run on two leading AI systems, and almost 4 in 10 times the results vary wildly. My read on this data? This isn’t just theoretical. If you’re relying on AI to drive brand visibility, you’re playing a rigged game unless you fully understand which systems are pushing you forward, and which are leaving you invisible. And that’s exactly where GEO (Global Engine Optimisation) comes in. Why Do AI Systems Disagree? Okay, let’s get into the weeds here. When you ask an AI to recommend a brand, whether it’s for industrial automation or sports tech, it’s not just plucking responses out of thin air. The systems are tapping into a mix of signals: past training data, live internet queries, proprietary algorithms, and (depending on the model) citation networks with varying levels of accuracy. But here’s the kicker: the weight they give to these signals differs dramatically. ChatGPT, for instance, has a brand mention rate of 75.1% across the prompts we’ve tested. Claude edges it out slightly at 79.1%. But compare that to Google AI Overview, which delivered just a 45.6% mention rate. They’re working with the same data inputs (more or less), so why the gap? My gut says it comes down to priorities. Google still builds its models heavily around search intent, whereas ChatGPT places more emphasis on conversational fluency and broader recall. Related reading: this piece about the hidden challenges of llm visibility for international... . Related reading: our article on why 40% of brands are invisible to ai: the cross-provider... . It’s almost like ChatGPT is designed to throw out a name for every topic, while Google AI Overview is the picky kid who only an