AI is recommending retail and ecommerce brands every day. Here is where AI tells buyers to look for a product or store. When a shopper asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews or Perplexity what to buy and where, the engine names brands and products. K&C measures whether yours appear, scores it 0 to 100, and helps you change the answer.
Shopping now often begins with a sentence, not a search box full of keywords. A parent asks ChatGPT for the best cot mattress for a newborn. A runner asks Perplexity which trail shoes suit wide feet. A gift buyer asks Google AI Overviews for a present under a set budget.
The engine answers with a curated shortlist. It pulls from review sites, retailer pages, editorial round-ups, marketplace listings and your own product content, then names specific brands and often specific products. Conductor found that 37% of consumers now start their searches with AI rather than Google, so that shortlist is increasingly the first thing a shopper sees.
Being stocked everywhere does not guarantee a mention. The engine cites the products it can describe accurately and match to the exact need, from price band to material to use case. A focused independent brand can be named ahead of a household name when its product information is clearer and its reviews are stronger.
Google retired FAQ rich results from its search results in May 2026, another sign that the old levers are shifting. The brands that win are the ones whose evidence reads cleanly to a machine making a recommendation.
Three things decide whether an engine names your brand. The AI Visibility Strategy scores all three. In retail, product clarity and review evidence do the heavy lifting.
When all three line up, the engines recommend your products with the detail a shopper needs to click and buy. When they do not, the model recommends a rival or describes your range inaccurately.
We test your brand across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, the three engines shaping most product recommendations today. We run the questions your shoppers genuinely ask and record exactly what each engine says back.
For retail and ecommerce we build sector-specific prompt sets around your categories, products and shopper personas, from value seekers to gift buyers to specialist needs. We ask the engines to recommend, compare and shortlist, and we capture every brand and product named and every source the engine trusts.
Every run returns a score from 0 to 100 and a band: Ghost (0 to 10), Whisper (11 to 30), Emerging (31 to 50), Cited (51 to 75), or Known and Cited (76 to 100). The score comes from our 12-pillar framework across the three dimensions, so you can see which categories you win, which you lose and where to act first. The full methodology explains how the pillars combine into the score.
You begin with a free Exec Brief. It shows where your brand stands today across the three engines, your score and band, and the quickest moves to shift the answer. You keep it regardless of what you do next.
Go further and the full AVS run gives you the complete picture: the product queries you appear in, the ones you miss, the review sources and publications the engines trust, the competitors named ahead of you, and a ranked plan to close the gaps. We highlight where engines describe your products inaccurately, which costs you sales directly.
You then pick a cadence to match your range and season: Annual, Bi-Annual or Quarterly, each bespoke priced. Retail moves fast, ranges change and engines re-read constantly, so many brands track on a quarterly rhythm tied to their seasons. Start with the free Exec Brief and see how the engines recommend your products today.
Book an AVS Exec Brief: a real, one-off measurement of how ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity talk about your business right now. Same methodology as the full AI Visibility Strategy, delivered manually, free of charge. Annual, Bi-Annual and Quarterly cadences are bespoke priced.
Book your AVS Exec Brief →