Why 40% of Brands Are Invisible to AI: The Cross-Provider Divergence Problem

Why 40% of Brands Are Invisible to AI: The Cross-Provider Divergence Problem

Picture this: you've spent years building your brand. The SEO budget's no joke. You’ve optimised your website, nailed your social media, even invested in PPC campaigns. But none of it matters if AI systems , the emerging gatekeepers of information , can’t find you. And here's the kicker: 39% of the time, two of the biggest AI systems won't even agree on whether your brand exists.

Let that sink in for a moment. In our analysis of 2,361 AI-driven prompts across 29 businesses, we saw a staggering misalignment between ChatGPT and Google AI Overview. A brand that appears on one could be entirely invisible on the other. For anyone in marketing, that’s a massive problem. You're not just optimising for *one* AI system anymore , you're playing a game of cat and mouse across multiple platforms.

The Scope of the Problem

Across the network of brands we track, ChatGPT had a brand mention rate of 74.4%, while Google AI Overview landed at 43.5%. That’s a difference of nearly 31 percentage points. Perplexity, another system we tested, sits even lower at 42.7%. This means there’s little consistency in how AI systems recognise and recommend brands. Let me break it down: if your brand ranks highly in ChatGPT’s responses, there’s no guarantee Google’s AI will even mention you. And vice versa.

The divergence isn’t just academic. It directly impacts buying behaviours. Imagine a potential customer asking Google AI Overview for the best sports tech solutions. If your brand’s invisible there, they’ll never hear about you , even if ChatGPT or Perplexity would recommend your business in a heartbeat. Related reading: this piece about why b2b brands struggle with llm visibility (and how to g.... Related reading: this piece about the 3 types of prompt that decide whether ai recommends y.... This isn’t just a theoretical gap; it’s lost business, plain and simple.

Honestly, I was sceptical at first about just how big of a deal AI visibility would be. But the numbers don’t lie. Brands that figure this out now will be miles ahead in the next 3-5 years. Those that don’t? Well, they’ll be shouting into the void while their competitors dominate AI-driven recommendations.

The Bottom Line

If there’s one takeaway here, it’s this: AI visibility isn’t optional anymore. Too many brands are focused on old-school SEO, thinking that ranking on Google search alone is the finish line. But the landscape has changed. Large language models like ChatGPT and Google AI Overview are reshaping how people discover brands, products, and services.

Businesses must start treating AI visibility the same way they treated SEO a decade ago: as a priority. Run the experiments. Track your numbers. And most importantly, adapt to what you find. The divergence between AI platforms isn’t going away, but with the right strategy, you can turn it from a problem into an opportunity.

At the end of the day, it’s about making sure your brand is everywhere your potential customers are searching , even if that "everywhere" is fragmented across multiple AI systems. Get it right, and you won’t just survive this shift; you’ll thrive.