Buyers now ask AI for the best tool instead of scrolling Google. We tested 84 real buyer questions across 14 SaaS categories on Perplexity and Google AI Overview to see who actually gets recommended — and who's invisible.
On average, the top 3 brands in a category take 68% of every recommendation. There is no page 2 in AI search — if you're not in the short list, you don't exist to that buyer.
Every AI recommendation is built from a small set of pages. Across all 14 categories, these domains were cited most — a mention, review, or listing here is the highest-leverage way to start getting named.
No single brand wins everywhere — but each category has a clear AI favorite. Click through for the full ranking and the sources behind each.
| Category | AI's top pick | Runners-up |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting | Xero | Wave, QuickBooks |
| Ai Image And Video | Runway | Canva |
| Ai Writing Assistant | Grammarly | Claude, ChatGPT |
| Crm | Zoho | HubSpot, Pipedrive |
| Email Marketing Software | MailerLite | Brevo, Sendinblue |
| Help Desk Software | Freshdesk | Zendesk, Zoho Desk |
| Hiring | Glints | |
| Newsletter | Mailchimp | Substack, Beehiiv |
| Note Taking App | OneNote | Google Keep, Notion |
| Password Manager | 1Password | NordPass, Bitwarden |
| Project Management Software | Asana | ClickUp, Trello |
| Spend Management | Ramp | Brex, Airwallex |
| Video Conferencing Software | Google Meet | Zoom, Microsoft Teams |
| Website Builder | Webflow | Wix, Squarespace |
This shifts week to week. Cited runs the real buyer questions in your category across Perplexity and Google AI Overview and shows exactly where you're named — or not. Free.
Get your free AI-visibility reportWhen buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overview for the best tool in a category, they get one short list of names. AI search visibility is whether a brand appears in that answer.
Across 14 SaaS categories, the most-cited sources were pcmag.com, youtube.com and zapier.com — review sites, YouTube and community threads. Getting covered on these is the highest-leverage way to start being recommended.
On average the top 3 brands in a category capture about 68% of all recommendations. Most brands are never named at all.
For each of 14 categories we generated the questions a real buyer asks before choosing (84 total), ran them against Perplexity and Google AI Overview, and counted every brand named plus the source domains each answer cited. Brand detection uses a curated per-category list. Data collected July 2026. AI answers are non-deterministic and change over time — this is a snapshot, which is exactly why it's worth tracking.