# Claude recommends different brands by language, study finds

Published: 2026-10-13T12:05:20.655Z · Source: Search Engine Journal (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/lost-in-translation-how-language-changes-which-brand-ai-recommends/591585/)
Source date: 2026-10-13
Flags: single-source — confirmation pending
Entities: anthropic, chatgpt, gemini

Search Engine Journal contributor Reza Moaiandin tested Claude Sonnet 5 on six shopping and travel scenarios across five languages — English, Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Persian — collecting 1,650 responses via DataForSEO's LLM Responses API on September 7, 2026. For some categories the top brand swung sharply by language alone: asked about a London-to-Tenerife flight, Claude picked British Airways 52.5% of the time in Persian and not once in Russian, where it favored easyJet 72.5% of the time instead, while categories with fewer dominant global brands, like robot vacuums, stayed consistent across all five languages. A smaller comparison test found Gemini's top pick matched Claude's in five of ten language-category combinations and ChatGPT matched it in just one; the author cautions the dataset is small enough that some results may sit within the margin of error.

Why it matters: It's a concrete illustration that AI-visibility testing done only in English can miss how a brand is actually represented to non-English speakers, a gap the AEO practice has flagged but rarely measured directly.

## What this answers

**Does AI recommend different brands depending on the language you ask in?**

Yes — testing Claude across five languages found the top-recommended brand swung by as much as 60 percentage points between languages for the same question, per a Search Engine Journal analysis of 1,650 responses.

**Do ChatGPT and Gemini also vary brand recommendations by language?**

A smaller comparison test found Gemini's top pick matched Claude's in half of ten language-category combinations tested, while ChatGPT matched it only once — suggesting the effect isn't unique to one model, per the same analysis.


Canonical: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-10-13-claude-recommends-different-brands-by-language-study-finds/
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