AI engines
The 8 AI engines that mediate buyer research in 2026.
Each AI engine retrieves and cites sources differently. Each has its own crawler, ranking signals, and quirks. Pick an engine for a deep-dive on how it works and the specific levers that win citation share.
All AI engines
- ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2022) — Leading consumer AI assistant by usage, with 700M+ weekly active users as of 2026.
- Claude (Anthropic, 2023) — Second-largest enterprise AI assistant by API usage. Strong adoption among developers, writers, and operators.
- Perplexity AI (Perplexity, 2022) — Fastest-growing AI search engine by volume. Strong B2B research adoption.
- Google AI Overviews (Google (DeepMind / Search), 2024) — Largest AI search surface by global query volume — appears on more than 40% of US Google searches as of 2026.
- Gemini (Google DeepMind, 2023) — Google's flagship AI assistant, integrated across Google Workspace, Android, and the web Gemini app.
- Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft, 2023) — Microsoft's AI assistant integrated across Windows, Bing, Microsoft 365, and Edge.
- Grok (xAI, 2023) — xAI's AI assistant, integrated into X (formerly Twitter) and available standalone.
- DuckDuckGo AI Chat / DuckAssist (DuckDuckGo, 2023) — DuckDuckGo's privacy-respecting AI chat interface and DuckAssist instant-answer feature.
Measure your visibility across all of them.
The free GEO Score tool runs your domain through ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. The full CiterLabs Sprint adds Google AI Overviews and tracks +20pt lift across all four.