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. A graph showing ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, and Perplex