The First Brand in an AI Recommendation Gets 9% Fewer Words Than the Brands After It

Ask an AI engine for the best robot vacuum and the answer lists five models. The first gets a line or two: a strong all-rounder, good value. The fourth gets a paragraph explaining who it suits, what makes it different and why you might pick it over the rest.

That matters to anyone tracking how AI engines present their brand. Most AI visibility reports record position: whether you were named, and whether you came first. But the words an answer spends on a brand are its sales pitch. A brand with a longer write-up gets more of its features, strengths and use cases in front of the reader.

Being named first does not buy the longest pitch. The first brand in an AI product recommendation gets 9.1% fewer words than the brands named after it, 30 against 33 on average, and gets more words than the later brands in 40.8% of answers. Word counts climb further down the list, peaking at 36.2 words for the fifth brand.

On September 23, 2026 we asked 2,000 "best product or service" questions in 20 categories, from home appliances to insurance, to five AI engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews (the AI summary above Google's search results). We kept the 15,102 answers that named at least three brands.

For each brand, we counted the words an answer wrote about it: every word from the point the brand is first named until the next brand is first named. Position is the order in which brands are first named, so the first brand is the one the answer names first. We then averaged the word counts by position and by AI engine. The median is the middle value: half of first brands get more words, half fewer.

The first brand averages 30 words, against 33 for brands in later positions. The median shows the same gap, 21 words for the first brand against about 28 for the rest. The first brand gets more words than the average later brand in 40.8% of answers, so in most AI recommendations the lead pick gets no more words than the average brand after it.

The pattern is not a straight line. The second brand gets the fewest words, 28.8, then counts climb to 36.2 at the fifth position. AI engines tend to open with a short verdict on the top picks and give fuller explanations to the options further down the list, where a brand is often described by who it suits and how it differs from the picks above it.

On four of five AI engines the first brand gets fewer words than later ones. The gap is widest on Perplexity, where the first brand gets 18.4 words against 26.3 for the rest, 30% fewer, and on ChatGPT, 17.8 against 22.8. On those two engines the first brand gets under 20 words on average.

Google AI Overviews reverses the pattern, giving the first brand 34.9 words against 30.3 for the rest. Gemini and Google AI Mode write the longest brand descriptions overall, at 36 to 44 words per brand, about twice what ChatGPT and Perplexity write. The same brand can therefore get a two-line mention on ChatGPT and a full paragraph on Gemini for the same question.

Measure more than rank. The average first brand gets about 30 words and the median first brand 21. A brand in third or fourth place can get a longer, more persuasive description than the first pick. When you track AI answers, record what is said about your brand and how much, alongside where you appear.

Give AI engines material for a fuller write-up. The words an answer uses about you come from the sources it reads, so clear product pages and review coverage that spell out who your product suits, what it does better and what it costs give the engine more to say, wherever you land in the list.

Then check the answers themselves: ask each engine the "best" questions your customers ask and compare your write-up with your competitors'. Working with an ai seo company that tracks both your position and what AI engines say about you shows where a fuller description would help.

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