AI search visibility report finds 53% of B2B companies absent from ChatGPT and AI Search

AnswerManiac.ai study benchmarks HR tech, fintech and B2B SaaS companies and identifies patterns associated with stronger AI search visibility

AnswerManiac.ai has released its State of AI Search for B2B SaaS: Q2 2026 AI Visibility Report, a study measuring whether 100 B2B companies appear when buyers ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for solutions to specific business problems.

“We created this report to make AI search less of a black box. We show which brands appear in AI Search, and which do not, the report gives marketing teams a baseline for understanding AI Search.”

— Andrew Swiler, CEO Answermaniac.ai

The AI search visibility study found that 53 of the 100 tracked companies were not mentioned in any tested response. Forty-seven appeared at least once, while only 22 were cited by both AI engines.

“We created this report to make AI search less of a black box for B2B companies. By showing which brands appear in ChatGPT and Perplexity, and which 53 out of 100 do not, the report gives marketing teams a practical baseline for understanding their visibility, identifying gaps and deciding what to improve first,” said Andrew Swiler, CEO of AnswerManiac.ai.

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The research covered three B2B categories:

HR tech: 15 of 32 companies were cited. Multiplier, Assembly, Breezy HR, Gem, Papaya Global, Timely, TalentLMS and 15Five each received a 100% visibility score.
Fintech: 16 of 33 companies were cited. Justt, Treasury Prime, Dwolla, MX and Footprint each scored 100%, while Unit scored 75%.
B2B SaaS: 16 of 35 companies were cited. Scribe, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, Avoma, Close and Crisp each scored 100%, while Trainual scored 75%.
AnswerManiac.ai developed 42 user-intent queries based on problems B2B buyers might bring to an AI engine. The study avoided relying on general “best software” prompts. Example queries asked for payroll software that can handle multistate tax compliance and identity-verification tools that can detect synthetic identities without hurting conversion rates.

Each query was submitted once to ChatGPT using GPT-4o and once to Perplexity using Sonar Pro, producing 84 query-engine tests. Researchers recorded whether each relevant company appeared by name.

A company’s overall AI visibility score represents the percentage of relevant queries in which it was cited, averaged across both engines. Companies scoring 75% to 100% were classified as highly visible. Companies that were never cited received a 0% score and were classified as invisible.

Perplexity cited more companies than ChatGPT across all three categories. The report also found that highly visible companies commonly publish detailed comparison pages, use-case guides and integration documentation. They tend to maintain recent content, structured data and references from established third-party or community sources.

The study is intended as a baseline rather than a comprehensive measure of AI search visibility. It covers two AI engines, and responses may vary between sessions. Gemini and Claude were excluded from this research cycle because of API access constraints. AnswerManiac.ai plans to include additional engines and multi-run averaging in future quarterly reports.

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