Strac Holds Top 10, Then Falls to 309th
Measured against the Machine Relations Index, Strac.io ranks top 10 in one AI Security & Privacy buyer shape and rank 309 of 356 in another.
Para Labs
AI Brand Visibility Lab
Para Labs counts how often AI answer engines name brands when buyers ask them to choose. The brand record is rebuilt every day from the Machine Relations Index answer ledger, one page per brand, by category, engine and question type. Lab studies report what we measured about named brands, product sets and the engines themselves. No sponsors, nothing for sale.
How AI answer engines name brands
481 brands, counted across 30,072 answers from 6 AI answer engines. Data through October 26, 2026.
Biggest moves up, last 28 days vs the 28 before:
- Claudeup 4.3 points, from 4.6% to 8.9%
- Scrunchup 3.0 points, from 4.2% to 7.2%
- Perplexityup 2.7 points, from 28.6% to 31.3%
Cybersecurity
- CrowdStrikenamed in 444 of 1,833 answers (24.2%)
- SentinelOnenamed in 282 of 1,833 answers (15.4%)
- Palo Alto Networksnamed in 210 of 1,833 answers (11.5%)
Martech & Advertising
- Salesforcenamed in 309 of 1,102 answers (28.0%)
- HubSpotnamed in 233 of 1,102 answers (21.1%)
- Adobenamed in 211 of 1,102 answers (19.1%)
Enterprise Software
Fintech
AI Visibility & GEO
- Perplexitynamed in 891 of 1,486 answers (60.0%)
- Claudenamed in 592 of 1,486 answers (39.8%)
- Semrushnamed in 266 of 1,486 answers (17.9%)
AI Security & Privacy
- Guardrails AInamed in 131 of 1,487 answers (8.8%)
- Lakeranamed in 131 of 1,487 answers (8.8%)
- OneTrustnamed in 113 of 1,487 answers (7.6%)
Latest Research
All →Acorns Ranks First in AI Comparison Answers and Disappears From Best-Investment Lists
In the September 29 Machine Relations Index, acorns.com ranks first among 187 sources in Consumer Finance comparison answers, with a 37.5% citation rate, but records no published citation rate in best-tools or ranked-list answers.
Any Two Buyer Questions Share 2 Sources Of 10
Across the 220 pairs of buyer questions the Machine Relations Index publishes inside a single category, the two top-ten source lists share a median of 2 domains. Grouping the questions into shopping and research families predicts nothing: two shopping questions overlap no more than one of each. The sources that do carry are platforms, not publications.
Reddit Wins 4 of 6 Prosumer AI Shopping Shapes
Reddit ranks first in four of six Machine Relations Index Emergent Prosumer shopping shapes and top three in all six.
1 of 3 Predicted AI Shopping Carriers Arrived
Seven releases ago we named hubspot.com, zapier.com and adyen.com as the next vendors likely to hold a top-10 AI citation slot in two shopping question shapes. On the 2026-09-26 Machine Relations Index release hubspot.com does. The other two are unchanged to the single observed run, because their segments were never observed again — which means our own falsifier was untestable as written.
AI Shopping Answers Draw on 233 Domains and Repeat 13: Source-Pool Depth Across 43 Segments
Measured against the Machine Relations Index, the 43 published shopping-shape segments of the 2026-09-25 release cite a median 233 distinct domains each — and in the median segment only 13 of them appear in at least one answer in ten, while 44.4 percent appear exactly once. The pool a brand joins and the pool a brand competes in are different sizes.
Nature Made Holds Rank 9 in AI Comparison Answers and Rank 273 in AI Roundups: A Consumer-Health Shape Gap
Measured against the Machine Relations Index, six named wellness and supplement brands — Nature Made, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Nordic Naturals, Liquid I.V. and NOW Foods — hold sharply different citation ranks in AI head-to-head comparisons than in AI best-tools and top-list answers, in the same Consumer Health category, over the same window.
The Best-Tools List and the Comparison Answer Are Different Contests: A Six-Broker Rank Gap
Across six named robo-advisor and brokerage brands, every one ranks far higher in AI comparison answers than in best-tools roundups for the same category — measured against the Machine Relations Index.
The First HR Software AI Leaderboard Has a Six-Citation Gap Between Rank 1 and Rank 10
HR & Talent's first published buyer-choice leaderboard is mature enough to cite and too young to treat as a category verdict. Pin.com leads the how-buyers-choose shape with 14 of 101 observed runs; Lever.co holds rank 10 with 8. Seven domains sit at 8 or 9 cited runs, and the first editorial publication is rank 11 with the same cited-run count as rank 10.
27 of 60: Nearly Half the Domains Leading AI Shopping Answers Haven't Cleared the Evidence Floor
Across the six published buyer-question shapes in the Machine Relations Index's Consumer Products category, 27 of the 60 top-ten citation slots belong to domains still graded 'collecting' overall — below the evidence floor that would make their rate stable. Most of the leaderboard is unclassified brand and retailer sites, not the household editorial or vendor names GEO advice assumes.
What this lab studies
Para Labs is an applied research lab from the team behind the Machine Relations Index, founded by Jaxon Parrott. We measure which brands AI answer engines name when buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI surfaces to help them choose.
The brand record
One page per brand: how often the engines named it in answers to buyer questions, by category, engine and question type, with the sources they cited. Code rebuilds it every day from the Index's answer ledger.
Lab studies
Studies report what we measured about named brands, product sets and the engines themselves, each with what was tested and its sources stated.
How we classify the evidence
Every count and every study names its source, so a reader or an agent can check the claim. This lab is not an agency, a vendor, or a placement desk. There are no sponsors on this domain, and we do not invent an office address.
Mentions, counted
A brand counts as named when its name appears in an answer. The count does not judge whether the answer endorsed the brand, and it does not measure sentiment.