# CommerceV3: AI shopping answers repeat the same brands

Published: 2026-10-17T21:36:39.073Z · Source: CommerceV3 (https://www.prweb.com/releases/ai-is-recommending-products-to-900-million-people-a-week--78-of-brands-arent-in-the-answer-302859125.html)
Source date: 2026-10-16
Flags: CommerceV3 study — vendor-published
Entities: chatgpt, gemini, perplexity

Generative AI platforms concentrate shopping recommendations on a small set of brands per category, and most e-commerce brands never appear at all, according to a CommerceV3 study run from March through July 2026. The AI-visibility vendor ran more than 1 million prompts (12 million total prompt-runs, each query repeated five times per engine) across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, covering seven e-commerce categories and roughly 25,000 brands sourced from marketplace listings and retail directories. It found 75% of recommendation slots go to the same handful of brands within a category, and 78% of brands never appear in their own category at all — rising to 84% on problem-solving prompts; the absence rate ranged from 74% on Perplexity to 81% on Gemini. CommerceV3 also found AI platforms source their answers mostly from editorial sites (34%) and Reddit or forums (22%), with marketplaces at 18% and a brand's own site cited only 14% of the time.

Why it matters: The study comes from a vendor selling AI-visibility services, but its scale — 1 million-plus prompts across three platforms — is large enough that the core finding holds regardless of motive: most absent brands aren't ranked lower, they're simply never mentioned.

## What this answers

**How concentrated are AI shopping recommendations among brands?**

75% of AI recommendation slots go to the same handful of brands per category, and 78% of e-commerce brands never appear at all in their own category, per a CommerceV3 study of over 1 million prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity from March to July 2026.

**Where do AI platforms get the information behind their shopping recommendations?**

Mostly not from brands' own sites — per the CommerceV3 study, editorial sites accounted for 34% of sourcing, Reddit and forums 22%, marketplaces 18%, and a brand's own site only 14%.


Canonical: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-10-17-commercev3-ai-shopping-answers-repeat-the-same-brands/
From Anything Engine Optimization (AEO Wire) — https://anythingengineoptimization.com/ · Standards: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/standards/