AI Visibility Report Q3 2026

The headline findings

• Three industries have a new AI leader since Q2 2026: OUTsurance in short-term insurance, EasyEquities in investment and asset management, and Eduvos in private tertiary education.
• The AI shortlist got shorter: when the assistants rank providers, their lists now average 3.7 places, down from 4.8, so the top positions are worth more than ever.
• Category leaders strengthened: the median leader now scores 53.7/100 (Q2: 48.3), and only 2 of 19 industries are still wide open (Q2: 5). No brand scores above 75; the strongest is MTN in mobile networks at 63.9.
• Household names are mentioned often but recommended rarely: Cell C (mobile networks), Frogfoot and MetroFibre (fibre networks), Absa (SME banking) and Nedbank (retail banking) are named in most answers yet seldom the actual recommendation.
• The assistants lean on a small set of sources: mybroadband.co.za was cited in 403 answers across 14 industries, with BusinessTech, Wikipedia, RateWeb and Hippo also shaping answers.

What changed since Q2 2026

Three new AI leaders, eight industries where the race changed shape, and the brands making real strides.

See how AI recommendations changed →

Who AI recommends in each South African industry

The brand each assistant most often puts forward when a South African asks for the best option, scored 0-100. Click an industry for the full league table.

The AI Visibility Quality Score

The AI Visibility Quality Score is a 0-100 measure of how strongly AI assistants put a brand forward. It combines how often the brand is mentioned with the rank position it is given in each answer, averaged across all 180 AI answers per industry (20 buyer-intent questions, asked to three assistants, repeated three times). Answers that do not name the brand count as zero. Whether a brand is actively recommended or merely listed is reported separately, as the Mentioned vs. Recommended measure.

How AI is changing brand discovery

South African buyers increasingly open their search not on Google but inside an AI assistant - "what is the best provider for me?" The assistant answers with a short, confident list. The brands it names enter the consideration set; the brands left off never get a chance. This report measures who the assistants name, recommend and rank across the industries South Africans buy in. For the wider shift behind these numbers, see how AI search is changing traffic.

How the report was built

We asked ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic) and Gemini (Google) - each with live web search enabled, and each on the model a South African gets by default - the real buyer-intent questions South Africans ask. Twenty questions per industry, asked to three assistants, repeated three times each: 180 answers per industry, 3,415 in total, collected during October 2026. For every answer we captured which brands were mentioned, which were actively recommended, and where they ranked, then scored each brand on the 0-100 Quality Score. The same questions are asked every quarter, so movement can be tracked.

Read the full methodology →

Which websites shape AI answers about South African brands

Across all 19 industries, these are the domains the assistants cited most often. Earning presence on these sources is one of the most direct ways to influence what AI recommends.