Lucreya Research // Press Kit

Press Kit: Who AI Recommends in GTM Software (2026)

Snapshot June 7, 2026 · Available for immediate publication · Read the full study

Study summary

What: an original measurement of which go-to-market (GTM) software tools and which web sources three AI answer engines recommend and cite when buyers ask for tool advice.
Engines: Perplexity, ChatGPT (web search), and Google AI Overviews.
Scope: 20 GTM buying-intent queries across marketing, SEO/GEO, and sales; 60 AI answers captured; 162 Perplexity source citations logged.
When: a dated snapshot captured June 7, 2026. AI answers are volatile; the published protocol can be re-run to reproduce.
License: open data under CC-BY 4.0.

Quotable findings

Reddit was cited in 15 of 20 Perplexity answers, more than any other source. No other domain appeared in more than 30 percent of queries.

Lucreya, "Who AI Recommends," June 2026

Roughly four in five cited pages were third-party (independent roundups, review blogs, comparison sites, and forums) rather than the recommended vendor's own website.

Lucreya, "Who AI Recommends," June 2026

Across 14 category questions the three engines named the same top tool only 5 times; on 3 they named three different tools, and all three of those full-disagreement questions fall in the GEO and AI-search-visibility category.

Lucreya, "Who AI Recommends," June 2026

On settled categories the engines converge on one winner (Apollo for prospecting, Clay for enrichment, Surfer for SEO optimization, 11x for AI SDR); on the GEO category itself they do not, meaning that shelf is still contested.

Lucreya, "Who AI Recommends," June 2026

Why it matters

As buyers shift research from search results to AI answers, the question for any brand is no longer just "do we rank" but "does the AI recommend us, and what does it cite when it does." This study shows the answer is usually a third-party page, not the vendor's own site, and that the newest category, GEO and AI-visibility tooling, is the one where the engines have not yet agreed on a winner. For marketers and agencies, that is both a warning (your landing page is rarely the cited source) and an opening (the unsettled categories are winnable).

Methodology note

Perplexity exposes a full cited-source list, so the source autopsy is scoped to Perplexity's high-fidelity capture; ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews are used for the cross-engine tool-recommendation comparison because their citation lists are not exposed at the same fidelity. Source types were classified from domain signatures, with one cited page coded directly as a structural exemplar. Proportions are approximate and labelled as such in the data. No claim is made that Lucreya is itself cited by any engine.

Dataset and downloads

data.json (full raw rows, per-engine recommendations, Perplexity citations, analysis)
CSV (one row per query per engine)
Full study with interactive cross-engine divergence table
Companion dataset: the 30-tool AI GTM pricing and capability index

License: CC-BY 4.0. Attribute to "Lucreya, lucreya.com." Charts and figures may be reproduced with attribution and a link to the study.

Media contact

Vincent Wesley Couey, Lucreya
[email protected]
lucreya.com

Available for written interviews and data walkthroughs. No vendor paid for inclusion or placement in this study.