We Ran 10 SaaS Brands Through AI Search: Here's Who Wins

By Yasser Drif, Founder @ QuerySignal

You rank on page 1 of Google. Your content strategy is solid. But when a buyer asks ChatGPT "what's the best CRM for small teams?" does your brand even come up?

For most SaaS companies, the answer is no.

We tested 10 well-known B2B SaaS brands across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to find out who AI engines actually recommend. The results were clear: some brands dominate AI answers, while others are completely invisible, despite strong traditional SEO.

Here's what we found.

The Test

We picked 10 B2B SaaS brands across 5 categories: CRM, project management, email marketing, productivity, and customer support. Two brands per category. One market leader and one strong contender.

For each, we ran 20 buying-intent queries across ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Gemini, and Perplexity. Queries like:

• "What's the best [category] tool for [use case]?"

• "Compare [Brand A] vs [Brand B]"

• "[Category] software recommendations for startups"

• "Is [Brand] worth it in 2026?"

We tracked three things: mention rate (how often the brand appeared), recommendation rate (how often it was the top pick), and sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative framing).

The Results

Here's the summary. The numbers represent how often each brand was mentioned and recommended across all 60 queries (20 per AI engine).

A few things jump out immediately. The gap between winners and losers in the same category is massive. And it has nothing to do with product quality.

The 3 Traits of AI Search Winners

After digging into why some brands dominate and others disappear, we found three consistent patterns.

1. Comparison content that AI can parse

HubSpot, Notion, and Mailchimp all have extensive "vs" comparison pages. Not just their own marketing. Third-party review sites, G2 roundups, and community discussions all compare them against alternatives using clear, structured language.

AI engines love structured comparisons. When someone asks "best CRM for startups," ChatGPT doesn't just pull from one source. It synthesizes across multiple sources that frame the brand in a comparative context.

Brands like Coda and ConvertKit? Barely any third-party comparison content. Their marketing focuses on features, not positioning. And AI engines treat them like they don't exist in the competitive conversation.

Takeaway: Create comparison and "vs" content for your top 5 competitors. Not just on your blog. Earn mentions on review sites, community forums, and partner content.

2. Third-party validation at scale

The brands that win AI recommendations don't just talk about themselves. Other people talk about them.

HubSpot has thousands of Reddit threads, YouTube reviews, G2 reviews, and industry articles mentioning it by name. When Perplexity or Gemini tries to answer "what CRM should I use?" they're pulling from that ecosystem.

Pipedrive, despite being a solid CRM, has a fraction of that third-party footprint. Same with Freshdesk compared to Intercom. The volume and diversity of external mentions is a massive signal for AI engines.

Takeaway: Invest in PR, community presence, and partnerships that generate organic third-party mentions. SEO alone won't cut it when AI pulls from Reddit and YouTube just as much as from your blog.

3. Consistent product positioning

This one surprised us. The brands that win in AI search describe themselves the same way, everywhere. Their homepage, docs, G2 profile, LinkedIn, integration pages, and press mentions all use consistent language.

Notion is "the connected workspace." That phrase shows up in every source AI engines reference. So when ChatGPT describes Notion, it has a clear, unified story to tell.

ConvertKit rebranded to Kit recently, and their positioning is fragmented across old and new brand mentions. AI engines are confused about what the product even is. That confusion translates to fewer recommendations.

Takeaway: Audit your positioning across every touchpoint. Is your product description consistent on your website, G2 profile, LinkedIn, docs, and integration directories? AI engines synthesize all of it.

The Google vs AI Disconnect

Here's maybe the most interesting finding. Google rankings and AI visibility don't always line up.

Pipedrive ranks on page 1 for plenty of CRM keywords. Their SEO game is solid. But in AI answers, they barely show up. Why? Because AI engines don't just look at who ranks. They look at who gets discussed, compared, and recommended across the web.

Freshdesk tells the same story. Strong Google presence, but Intercom owns the AI conversation because Intercom has more community discussion, more comparison content, and clearer positioning.

If you're relying on Google rankings as your only measure of visibility, you're missing a huge (and growing) channel.

What To Do About It

If your brand looks more like Coda than Notion in this study, don't panic. Here's the playbook:

1. Run the audit. Check what AI engines actually say about your brand right now. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity buying-intent queries for your category. Or use QuerySignal to automate this across hundreds of queries at once.

2. Build comparison content. Create "vs" pages, alternative roundups, and "best [category] for [use case]" guides. Target the exact queries buyers are asking AI.

3. Earn external mentions. Get active on Reddit, get listed on comparison sites, encourage customer reviews on G2 and Capterra. AI engines weight third-party sources heavily.

4. Fix positioning consistency. Audit every place your brand is described online. Make sure the story is the same everywhere.

5. Track progress. AI answers change constantly. What ChatGPT says about you this month may be different next month. Set up monitoring so you catch shifts early.

The Bottom Line

AI search is already reshaping how B2B buyers discover and evaluate software. The brands that will win aren't just the ones with great Google rankings. They're the ones building visibility across every source AI engines pull from.

If you want to see where your brand stands, QuerySignal tracks your AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and more. You get a clear picture of who's winning, why, and what to fix.

Start your free trial at querysignal.ai and see what AI search really says about your brand.