| Engine | Tends to reward | Your lever |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Being present in Bing's index; established, well-referenced sources; clear comparison and list content | Bing Webmaster Tools + IndexNow. Then Chapters 5 and 13. |
| Google AI Overviews | Conventional Google ranking strength; heavy weighting to sites already performing organically | Classic SEO. Nothing exotic. Google says so itself. |
| Google AI Mode | Depth of coverage across many sub-questions rather than one strong page | Topic clusters: one strong pillar page plus specific pages answering each sub-question properly. |
| Perplexity | Fresh, specific, well-sourced pages; more willing to cite smaller sites | Original data and recency. Often the easiest engine for a small business to break into. |
| Claude | Documentation, primary sources, careful and complete explanations | Thorough, honest, well-structured reference content. |
| Copilot | Whatever Bing ranks | Inherits your Bing work. No separate effort required. |
How to choose where to spend
Do not spread across six. Pick using two questions:
- Where are your buyers? Consumer and small-business audiences skew heavily to ChatGPT and to Google's AI features because they are the default. Technical and enterprise buyers use Perplexity and Claude more than their market share suggests. Ask five customers what they use; it is a better answer than any market-share chart.
- Where are you closest to breaking through? If you are already cited occasionally on Perplexity and never on ChatGPT, the marginal effort on Perplexity is far cheaper. Push where you have traction.
For most businesses reading this the honest answer is: get ChatGPT and Google right, spot-check the others quarterly. That is not a hedge, it is where the users are.
These systems are non-deterministic. The same prompt, same engine, five minutes apart, can produce different sources. Personalisation, location and session history all move results, and asking from your own logged-in account is close to worthless as a measurement because the system knows who you are.
If you want a number rather than a vibe, you need the same prompt set, run repeatedly, from a clean session. Chapter 18.
Ask five actual customers which AI tool they use. Optimise for that one. The market-share statistics are about the world; your customers are about your business.