Marketers who report on AI search to a client or your boss: which assistant do you trust enough to put in the report? I ran the same 100 software buying questions through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity every week for 13 weeks (July 26 to October 18, 2026). Same questions each week, so not 1,300 separate tests. For one brand, answers that named it: Claude 310, Perplexity 174, ChatGPT 14, Gemini 13, out of 1,300 each (1,298 for Perplexity). I don’t know why they differ that much. Do you pick one assistant, or show all of them side by side? (I work on AI visibility measurement, so I look at this a lot.)
Thanks Rick, really useful to hear. The point about a blended number being noise is what stands out to me: for this one brand, the number of the 100 questions that named it each week was 1 for Gemini, 2 for ChatGPT, 23 to 25 for Claude and 9 to 18 for Perplexity. Averaging those would hide everything. When you check by hand each week, do you ask the same questions every time?
Agree with Ric on per-assistant trends. One column I'd add next to each: what share of the client's buyers actually use that assistant. A short question on the signup form or in first calls gets you that. Then 310 mentions in an assistant few buyers open weighs less than 14 in the one they all use, and the report tells the client where to focus.
That’s a great addition, thank you. Asking buyers directly beats guessing from usage stats. When you’ve asked, have the answers ever surprised the client, like buyers using an assistant they didn’t expect?
