One brand AI knew and seldom recommended. One supplier AI barely knew.
We audited two product businesses. One is a premium specialty food and gift brand, found for gifts, online orders and corporate gifting.
The other is a small maker of sustainable hotel amenities, found by hotel buyers choosing a supplier.
They had opposite problems, and each got its own steps. Names and cities are left out.
Audits now test seven AI tools, three tries each. Each example shows the tools tested at the time.
Two businesses, two kinds of buyer
Each audit wrote its questions the way that business's buyers ask.
Five buyer types
- Gift buyers and corporate gifting buyers
- Hotel amenity buyers
- Visitors to its cafe
- Retail buyers
One kind of buyer
The people who choose amenities for hotels, resorts and spas.
Earlier versions of the method. Both audits ran in August 2026 on earlier versions of the method.
The counts on this page were recomputed from the saved answers in September 2026, under the current rule.
Beyond the answers
Each audit also read:
- The website and the Google listing
- The reviews, and the reseller and marketplace listings
- The path a buyer takes to order
Three results for every question
Each answer is read for three results, counted separately. Every recommendation is also a mention. A citation can appear without the name.
Mentioned
The answer names you among the places or firms it lists. AI cannot suggest a business it never brings up.
Cited
The answer links your own website as a source. The tool read your site, so your pages shaped what it said.
Recommended
The answer puts you forward as a choice, with a reason. This is the result that sends a buyer to you.
The consumer brand
Known, and seldom chosen. Asked by name, every tool knew the brand and cited its website in 97 of 130 pairs.
With the name left out, it was mentioned in about a third of pairs and recommended in fewer than one in ten.
The B2B supplier
Barely known, and chosen when the question is narrow. No tool mentioned the company on any broad "leading suppliers" question.
On narrow product questions, a tool put it first in all three tries. ChatGPT and Claude never mentioned it.
A pair is one question on one AI tool, asked three times. It counts when the result appears in at least two of the three tries.
Cited means the answer linked the business's own website. Recommended is a judgment, and a second reader did not always agree. Lead with mentioned and cited.
Two opposite problems
The brand needed AI to choose what it already knew. For the supplier, AI first had to learn it existed.
Known by name. Seldom chosen.
Evidence on the brand's own pages answers this problem.
Barely known at all.
Telling machines the company's name is where this one starts.
One question each, six tools, three tries
Each business's own sales question, and what every tool did with it.
The brand: "Which [city] chocolatier offers custom logo corporate chocolates with reliable production lead times?"
| AI tool | Try 1, try 2, try 3 | How the pair counted |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Nothing Mentioned Mentioned | Mentioned. Not cited. |
| Claude | Nothing Nothing Nothing | Nothing. It listed three small custom makers and quoted their published lead times. |
| Perplexity | Recommended + cited Cited only Mentioned + cited | Mentioned and cited. Recommended in one try only, which does not count. |
| Gemini | Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited Recommended + cited | Mentioned and cited. Recommended in one try only. |
| Google AI Overviews | Mentioned + cited Recommended + cited Recommended + cited | Mentioned, cited and recommended |
| Google AI Mode | Mentioned Mentioned Mentioned | Mentioned. Not cited. |
Result: mentioned by 5 of 6 tools, cited by 3, recommended by 1.
The tool that left the brand out answered with makers that publish their lead times, a figure this brand keeps private.
The supplier: "Buy [plant-based] dental kits for hotel guest rooms."
| AI tool | Try 1, try 2, try 3 | How the pair counted |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Nothing Nothing Nothing | Nothing |
| Claude | Nothing Nothing Nothing | Nothing. It suggested a large amenity supplier each time. |
| Perplexity | Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited | Mentioned and cited, listed second behind a large supplier |
| Gemini | Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited | Mentioned and cited |
| Google AI Mode | Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited Mentioned + cited | Mentioned and cited, with the company's own store as the place to buy |
| Google AI Overviews | Nothing Nothing Nothing | Nothing. It suggested a large amenity supplier each time. |
Result: mentioned by 3 of 6 tools, cited by 3, recommended by 0. One reader judged Google AI Mode's answer a recommendation; the first reader did not.
Where each business won, and who AI suggested instead
Real questions from the two audits, with names replaced. Each count is tools out of the tools that answered, in at least two of three tries.
The consumer brand
| The question | Mentioned | Cited | Recommended | Mentioned instead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What is the best chocolate shop in [the store's neighborhood]? | 6 of 6 | 4 of 6 | 4 of 6 | A French luxury chain and a nearby craft chocolatier, alongside it |
| Which [city] chocolatier offers custom logo corporate chocolates with reliable production lead times? | 5 of 6 | 3 of 6 | 1 of 6 | A century-old local chocolate house; small makers that publish lead times |
| Order hot chocolate online from a [city] chocolate shop. | 4 of 6 | 3 of 6 | 1 of 6 | A local chocolatier known for hot chocolate (5 of 6) |
| What are the best luxury chocolate shops in [city] right now? | 4 of 5 | 1 of 5 | 0 of 5 | A Swiss chain (4 of 5), the French luxury chain (4 of 5) |
| Which luxury chocolate brands are sold at [a luxury department store]? | 4 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | A Belgian praline house (5 of 6) |
| Buy a luxury chocolate gift box under 100 dollars shipped to Canada. | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | The French chain and the Belgian house (1 of 6 each). The brand ships to Canada. |
| Which chocolate brands supply luxury hotels with turndown amenity chocolates? | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | A national gift-box brand (3 of 6) |
The B2B supplier
| The question | Mentioned | Cited | Recommended | Mentioned instead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who are the leading suppliers of sustainable hotel amenities for luxury properties in the United States? | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | A large US amenity supplier and a larger established maker (4 of 6 each) |
| Which suppliers offer plastic-free and eco-friendly hotel toiletries? | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | The larger established maker (5 of 6) |
| Compare sustainable amenity suppliers on lead time and minimum order for a boutique property. | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 0 of 6 | A bulk hotel-supply distributor, the large US supplier (2 of 6 each) |
| Buy [plant-based] dental kits for hotel guest rooms. | 3 of 6 | 3 of 6 | 0 of 6 | The large US supplier (3 of 6) |
| Sustainable amenity supplier accepting custom packaging design orders. | 1 of 6 | 1 of 6 | 1 of 6 | Google AI Mode listed the company first in all three tries |
| Order a [refillable bottle] amenity collection for a luxury resort. | 1 of 6 | 1 of 6 | 1 of 6 | Perplexity listed the company as the first option in all three tries |
| Which sustainable amenity supplier offers the widest range of custom collections for a luxury independent hotel? | 0 of 6 | 1 of 6 | 0 of 6 | Perplexity linked the company's site without its name and recommended an international maker |
Rivals are described by type. The supplier lost every broad question and won narrow ones about materials and custom packaging.
What AI said that was wrong or incomplete
Each example was found in the saved answers and traced to its source. In several, the source was the business's own site.
The consumer brand
Five of six tools said it, quoting the brand's own FAQ. The fix is one sentence on the brand's site.
Claude told a corporate buyer this in all three tries. The brand publishes no minimum, unit price or lead time, so the tool filled the gap.
Google AI Overviews gave it in all three tries on one question. No page carries a machine-readable business record that could outweigh a wrong listing.
The B2B supplier
Linked, and never mentioned
On three questions, Perplexity cited the company's website in all three tries. On two of them the name never appeared in any answer.
On one, Perplexity recommended a rival while citing this company's site.
The reseller got the credit
Asked for sustainable dental and personal care amenities, Google AI Mode recommended a distributor in all three tries.
It mentioned the company's line only as something that distributor stocks.
Google AI Mode read the price from the product page's hidden business details. A person who clicks through cannot see it.
What the audits found on the websites and listings
The answers show what AI said. These findings explain why, and each one points to a fix the business controls.
The consumer brand
Pages that claim and never show evidence
Of 20 pages scored, 19 cite no outside source, 18 quote nobody, and none compares the brand with an alternative. Press names appear as logos.
A signup pop-up as the page headline
Read the way a machine reads headings, the only top heading on the cafe and store pages is the newsletter pop-up's "Sign Up Today!".
A corporate path built for people, not assistants
The corporate page has a basic name, email and message form. It has no fields for quantity, date or budget, and no lead time or minimum.
One tool linked that page, on one question.
One category on the Google listing
The brand leads the local results for its neighborhood's chocolate shops with a single category.
A nearby rival lists five more, including cafe and tea house, so it qualifies for searches the brand cannot enter.
The B2B supplier
A site that never tells machines the company's name
The homepage's organization record gives a logo and a web address and no name.
The site links none of the company's profiles, and there is no Wikidata record.
A claimed Google listing with nothing on it
Zero reviews, zero photos, no secondary categories and no attributes, although a women-owned attribute is available to set.
The listing and the company's LinkedIn page give different ZIP codes.
Reviews and resellers that point nowhere
The products carry more than 530 ratings on Amazon under a brand field that reads "Generic".
Two distributors sell the line without linking to the company.
Four pages AI ever linked
Across 1,368 answers, AI linked the homepage and three product pages.
The custom-packaging page, the about page and every other scored page were never linked.
What each business was asked to do first
Each plan comes in priority order, with who controls each change. Almost all of it sits with the business.
The consumer brand
Fix the page headings and the FAQ sentence
Make each page's real title its top heading, so the signup pop-up stops naming the cafe and store pages. Correct the order-change window in the FAQ.
Who controls it: The brand, with its web developer
Publish the evidence AI already believes
A dated press and awards block in visible text, quoted and linked, on the pages that answer those questions.
Who controls it: The brand
Give the cafe a machine-readable record and move menu prices into page text
Address, hours, reservations and a menu link, with prices out of PDFs. Add one page that answers the cafe's main visitor question.
Who controls it: The brand
Turn the corporate form into a structured inquiry
Occasion, quantity, date, budget band and artwork upload, plus a short section on how corporate orders work. Prices can stay private.
Who controls it: The brand
Add secondary categories and a description to the Google listing
So the listing can appear for the cafe and gift searches a single category shuts out.
Who controls it: The brand; Google decides which categories exist
The B2B supplier
Correct the claims that cannot be backed up
Remove or qualify material and certification claims that contradict other pages, before amplifying anything.
Who controls it: The company, with its packaging supplier for one item
Tell machines the company's name
Organization markup with the name, address, phone and every profile the company owns. The plan calls this its single most important technical item.
Who controls it: The company
Publish one address and one phone number everywhere, and link the LinkedIn page
So the Google listing, LinkedIn and the site stop disagreeing.
Who controls it: The company
Fill the Google listing
Product photography, the women-owned attribute, secondary categories, and a steady request for reviews from hotel customers.
Who controls it: The company; reviews come from its customers
Ask both distributors to link back
The plan calls this one email the highest-yield action in the audit. Then register the brand on Amazon so the ratings stop reading "Generic".
Who controls it: The distributors, and Amazon's brand registry
What each business received
Both audits delivered the full document set, a listing kit and a test plan for the first changes.
Five documents
An executive summary, a full assessment, an implementation plan, a content and channel playbook, and a retest script the team can rerun.
A check of what AI says
The facts AI stated about the business, checked against its own records. Each wrong answer is traced to where it most likely came from.
A Google listing kit
Categories, a prepared description and copy-ready text for the listing, so the first fixes take minutes.
Test sprints
Five sprints, each with a baseline, a control and a success test written before the work starts.
A readout
Walkthrough notes and a talk track for the meeting where the team reviews the findings and picks the first sprint.
A baseline on the platform
Every question and answer loaded into Vivander Visibility, so later measurement compares against this one.
Questions about these results
We sell to other businesses. Does an AI audit apply?
Yes. B2B buyers can ask AI to shortlist suppliers, compare them and explain the differences.
The supplier on this page lost every broad shortlist question and won narrow ones. That tells it where to build.
Why is recommended so much lower than mentioned?
A tool can list a business without putting it forward. Recommended requires a reason, and the reasons tools gave came from pages with evidence, comparisons and specifics.
Read recommended as a direction; a second reader did not always agree with the first.
Were these audits run on the current method?
Both ran in August 2026 on earlier versions. The counts here were recomputed in September under the current rule, from the saved answers.
Today's audit also asks branded questions for every client, which the supplier's audit did not.
Will my results look like these?
Your questions come from your buyers, your products and your competitors, so your numbers will be your own.
The format is the same: the three results, the tools, the questions you win and lose, what AI gets wrong, and the fixes in order.
See whether AI knows your business, and whether it chooses it.
An audit tests your buyers' questions on the AI tools they use and shows who gets suggested in your place.