AI Visibility Index for the Fresh Dog Food Market Universe

Brandi AI Reveals Which Fresh Dog Food Brands “Raise the Woof” in AI Answers

When dog owners ask AI which fresh dog food to trust, which brands does AI actually call forward, spotlight, and explain—and why?

Behind every AI-generated recommendation is a judgment call. This report digs into how those decisions are made, which brands consistently get called to heel, and which authority signals determine who earns a place in AI-generated answers—and who gets left waiting by the door.

Summary

When pet owners turn to AI for guidance on fresh dog food, they assume they’re getting neutral, well-balanced advice—the kind you’d trust to pass the sniff test. In reality, AI answer engines fetch from a much smaller bowl of brands. They rely on a narrow, repeatable set of authority signals to decide which brands make the cut, which get extra treats in the narrative, and which are quietly left off the leash altogether.

Brandi AI’s AI Visibility Index for the Fresh Dog Food Market Universe looks at how seven leading AI answer engines—ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Google Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity—respond to real buyer-stage questions about fresh dog food. Drawing on more than 17,500 AI-generated answers collected daily over one month (Jan. 1–31, 2026), the analysis tracks which brands show up, which get top billing, how sentiment is framed, and which sources AI keeps coming back to like a favorite chew toy.

The findings uncover a critical truth: good vibes alone don’t earn a spot in the pack. Positive sentiment may get a tail wag, but it doesn’t guarantee visibility. Brands that dominate AI-generated explanations do so because they’re consistently reinforced across independent, high-trust sources that AI recognizes as evidence. Over time, these brands become the alpha references as category anchors—used by AI to explain tradeoffs, compare options, and guide decisions—even when buyers don’t explicitly name them..

This report shows who’s currently leading the pack in the AI conversation around fresh dog food, who’s gaining ground, and who’s at risk of being left chasing the narrative. It also makes one thing clear: AI visibility isn’t a lucky fetch. It’s the result of consistent, observable authority—signals strong enough for AI to recognize, remember, and reuse.

How AI Answer Engines Determine Brand Visibility

How AI Decides Which Brands to Talk About

When faced with product questions in categories such as fresh dog food, AI answer engines aren’t trying to chase popularity, reward the biggest marketing budget, or surface every available option. Their goal is simpler: to deliver answers that are credible, fully explainable, and can withstand scrutiny.

In practice, this leads to several consistent behaviors:

• AI prioritizes explainability over popularity: Brands are selected based on how well they help AI explain the category, clarify tradeoffs, and structure comparisons—not on brand awareness or market share alone.
• AI favors repeatable authority signals: Brands reinforced across multiple independent, high-trust sources—such as major media outlets, institutional references, and expert-driven reviews—are far more likely to be included consistently.
• AI rewards category anchors: Certain brands become reference points that AI uses repeatedly to frame quality, pricing, nutrition standards, or subscription models. Once a brand occupies this role, it tends to appear across multiple buyer-stage questions.
• AI resists single-source narratives: Even strongly positive sentiment does not translate into durable visibility if it is not corroborated by external evidence AI recognizes as authoritative.
• AI treats omission as a valid outcome: Brands that lack sufficient authority reinforcement are not criticized or downgraded—they are simply excluded from answers altogether.

The following rankings highlight these behaviors. They show which brands AI brings into the conversation without being asked, which ones take the lead when the field gets crowded, and which brands AI consistently relies on to help buyers navigate the fresh dog food category at every stage of the decision-making journey.

Competitive Visibility Rankings

AI Visibility Leadership in the Fresh Dog Food Market

This section looks at which brands AI answer engines consistently pull into the mix when responding to buyer-stage questions about fresh dog food—who gets included, who gets emphasized, and who AI keeps coming back to for guidance. These rankings aren’t about popularity contests or brand likability. They reflect observable AI behavior: which brands AI introduces on its own, which it uses to shape explanations, and which it treats as essential when making sense of the category.

GEO Awareness

Unprompted Brand Inclusion in AI Buyer Answers

GEO Awareness measures how often AI brings a brand into its answers when the brand isn’t called out in the prompt. These questions span discovery, evaluation, and decision stages. A high GEO Awareness score signals that AI sees the brand as fundamental to the category—and introduces it naturally, without needing a nudge.

Table: GEO Awareness — Brand Inclusion in Unbranded AI Buyer Answers about Fresh Dog Food

Interpretation

Brands with high GEO Awareness aren’t just visible—AI introduces them as part of the answer itself. Repeatedly, AI brings these brands into the conversation because it considers them essential for explaining fresh dog food options, even when buyers ask broad, open-ended questions.

GEO Share of Voice (SOV)

Narrative Control in Competitive AI Answers

GEO Share of Voice measures how much of the overall fresh dog food conversation a brand controls when multiple relevant brands could reasonably appear in the same answer. A high SOV indicates that AI does more than simply mention the brand—it uses it to anchor explanations, frame comparisons, and guide recommendations.

Table: GEO Share of Voice — Narrative Control in Competitive AI Answers about Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Brand Name	Percentage
1	The Farmer’s Dog	13%
2	JustFoodForDogs	10%
3	Ollie	10%
4	Nom Nom	9.3%
5	PetPlate	7.4%
6	FreshPet	5.7%
7	Spot & Tango	5.2%
8	Purina	2.4%
9	Hill’s Pet Nutrition	2.0%
10	We Feed Raw	0.8%
11	Orijen	0.6%
12	Butternut Box	0.1%

Interpretation

Share of Voice reflects narrative dominance, not simple presence. Brands with high SOV are used by AI to define quality, pricing tiers, nutrition standards, and delivery models. In AI-mediated buyer journeys, these brands shape understanding rather than compete for attention.

Comparative Sentiment Analysis 

Qualitative Framing of Brands in AI-Generated Answers

Inclusion and narrative control decide whether a brand makes it into AI-generated answers; sentiment determines the tone once it’s there. This section looks at how AI frames fresh dog food brands—the language it uses, the qualifiers it applies, and the recommendations it serves up alongside them.

Sentiment scores range from 1 (most negative) to 10 (most positive) and reflect AI’s qualitative framing—not customer reviews, survey data, or social media sentiment.

Table: Sentiment Scores — Qualitative Brand Framing in AI Answers about Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Brand Name	Score
1	The Farmer’s Dog	8.1
2	JustFoodForDogs	7.9
3	Orijen	7.7
4	Hill’s Pet Nutrition	7.7
5	Nom Nom	7.7
6	PetPlate	7.6
7	Spot & Tango	7.5
8	Ollie	7.5
9	Purina	7.4
10	FreshPet	7.3
11	Butternut Box	7.1
12	We Feed Raw	7.0

Interpretation

Sentiment scores cluster closely across brands, signaling that AI rarely frames fresh dog food options in a negative light. Instead, it focuses on tradeoffs and contextual fit. The result is an important takeaway: sentiment alone doesn’t explain why some brands consistently dominate AI-generated answers while others show up only occasionally—or not at all.

Comparative Sentiment by Buyer Concern

How AI Differentiates Brands Based on Buyer Concerns

Rather than crowning a single “best” option, AI adjusts its recommendations based on what matters most to the buyer at that moment. The table below shows how AI differentiates brands when specific concerns—quality, price, customer service, and trust—take priority.

Table: Sentiment by Buyer Concern Across Fresh Dog Food Brands

Ranking	Nutritional Value	Quality	Price	Customer Service	Trust
1	The Farmer’s Dog	The Farmer’s Dog	Purina	Hill’s Pet Nutrition	Hill’s Pet Nutrition
2	Hill’s Pet Nutrition	Hill’s Pet Nutrition	FreshPet	JustFoodForDogs	Butternut Box
3	Nom Nom	Nom Nom	Orijen	Ollie	JustFoodForDogs
4	JustFoodForDogs	JustFoodForDogs	Butternut Box	The Farmer’s Dog	Purina
5	PetPlate	We Feed Raw	PetPlate	Butternut Box	The Farmer’s Dog
6	Spot & Tango	Ollie	Ollie	PetPlate	We Feed Raw
7	We Feed Raw	Purina	Hill’s Pet Nutrition	Nom Nom	Ollie
8	Ollie	Orijen	The Farmer’s Dog	We Feed Raw	Nom Nom
9	Orijen	PetPlate	Spot & Tango	Spot & Tango	PetPlate
10	Purina	Spot & Tango	Nom Nom	Purina	Spot & Tango
11	FreshPet	FreshPet	JustFoodForDogs	Orijen	Orijen
12	Butternut Box	Butternut Box	We Feed Raw	FreshPet	FreshPet

Interpretation

This breakdown makes one thing clear: AI doesn’t reward brands for trying to be everything at once. Instead, it maps brands to specific buyer concerns—cost sensitivity, nutrition rigor, service reliability, and institutional trust. Brands that align cleanly with one or more of these priorities are more likely to appear in AI-generated answers, where those concerns matter most.

Source Authority in AI-Generated Answers

Sources Most Frequently Cited by AI in Fresh Dog Food Answers

When AI answer engines explain, compare, or recommend fresh dog food brands, they don’t rely on brand claims alone. Instead, they back up their responses with external sources they treat as evidence. This section looks at which domains AI cites most often—and what those citations reveal about how authority is earned inside AI-generated answers.

It’s worth noting that frequent citation isn’t the same as endorsement. It reflects perceived usefulness and credibility as supporting material when AI constructs an explanation.

Brand Sources

Table: Brand Domains — Most Cited in AI Answers About Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Brand Domain
1	Freshpet
2	Spot & Tango
3	The Farmer’s Dog
4	JustFoodForDogs
5	Ollie
6	PetPlate
7	The Honest Kitchen
8	Nom Nom
9	Wag Tantrum
10	We Feed Raw

Interpretation

Brand-owned content can earn citation authority when it’s clearly structured, reinforced by third-party references, or aligned with widely accepted nutrition and safety standards. In practice, though, brand domains rarely stand on their own—most appear alongside external validation that helps AI confirm credibility.

Media Sources

Table: Media Domains — Most Cited in AI Answers About Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Media Domain
1	Forbes
2	Business Insider
3	NBC News
4	Petfood Industry
5	The Spruce Pets

Interpretation

Media outlets provide comparative framing that AI can easily reuse across many buyer-stage questions. Well-structured, buyer-focused articles often become default evidence sources, shaping AI explanations long after they’re published.

Product Review Sources

Table: Product Reviews — Most Frequently Cited in AI Answers About Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Product Review
1	The Best Fresh Dog Food Brands in 2026, Tested with our DogsBusiness Insider
2	The Pros and Cons of Fresh Dog Food PetMD by Chewy
3	9 Best Dog Foods for Dogs With Allergies in 2026, Vet RecommendedPetMD by Chewy
4	10 Best Dog Food Delivery Services Of 2025 Forbes
5	Best Fresh Dog Food 2026: 6 Vet-Recommended Brands Forbes

Interpretation

A small number of high-trust comparison articles account for a disproportionate share of AI citations. Once AI integrates these sources, it can shape recommendations across multiple platforms and buyer intents simultaneously.

Institutional and Scientific Sources

Table: Institutional & Scientific Domains — Most Cited in AI Answers About Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Institutional/Scientific Domain
1	American Kennel Club
2	National Institutes of Health
3	Auburn University
4	Tufts University
5	American Animal Hospital Association

Interpretation

Institutional references act as stabilizers in AI-generated answers. Even when brands are discussed positively, AI often grounds its explanations in veterinary guidance, academic research, or recognized professional organizations to reinforce credibility.

User-Generated Content and Social Media Sources

Table: User-Generated Content and Social Media Domains — Most Cited in AI Answers About Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Platform
1	Reddit
2	YouTube
3	Facebook
4	Quora
5	Instagram

Interpretation

User-generated content and social media platforms act as contextual amplifiers in AI-generated answers. Rather than acting as hard proof, they give AI a peek behind the curtain—showing how things actually play out in real life, where the rough edges are, and what tradeoffs people run into day to day.

Buyer Demand Signals

Buyer Pain Points Shaping AI Fresh Dog Food Answers

Buyers don’t approach AI with abstract curiosity. They come with specific concerns, constraints, and unresolved tradeoffs. These recurring questions help explain why certain brands and sources consistently surface in AI-generated answers—while others do not.

The pain points below capture moments of uncertainty, when buyers are looking for reassurance, clarity, or risk reduction. In those moments, AI prioritizes evidence it can trust over marketing language.

Table: Top Buyer Pain Points Surfacing in AI Answers about Fresh Dog Food

Ranking	Pain Point	Explanation
1	The Trust Gap	Skepticism is driven by vague sourcing, unclear certifications, and ethical claims that are difficult for dog owners to verify.
2	The Allergy Anxiety Loop	Fear-driven trial-and-error cycles experienced by owners managing food sensitivities, intolerances, or medically required diets.
3	The Premium Price Cliff	Sticker shock from high list prices, rigid subscription models, and a perceived collapse in value once introductory pricing ends.
4	The Chaos of Frozen Food Delivery	Delivery delays, thawed shipments, freezer overcrowding, and logistics issues that undermine the promise of convenience.
5	The Daily Friction Tax	Ongoing prep time, thawing schedules, portioning complexity, and routine disruptions that accumulate into long-term fatigue.

Interpretation

Brands that surface repeatedly in AI answers are those that help resolve buyer concerns with verifiable signals—clear ingredient sourcing, veterinary validation, transparent pricing explanations, or reliable logistics narratives. Brands that don’t address these tensions directly may still receive positive sentiment when mentioned, but often struggle to maintain consistent inclusion in AI-generated answers.

Market Interpretation

January 2026 Performance Highlights

Top Dog: The Farmer’s Dog 

The Farmer’s Dog has firmly taken the lead across the metrics that most directly shape AI-generated explanations. The brand shows up most unprompted, claims the biggest share of narrative territory when competitors enter the yard, and maintains strong positive sentiment across buyer-stage contexts—all without having to jump through hoops.

More importantly, AI answer engines consistently treat The Farmer’s Dog as the category’s top reference point. It’s the brand AI instinctively fetches when explaining what fresh dog food is, how it compares to kibble, and which tradeoffs buyers should sniff out before choosing an alternative. That kind of staying power isn’t a fluke—it reflects durable authority, reinforced through repeatable citations and steady third-party validation that keeps the brand at the front of the pack.

Fastest Climber: Hill’s Pet Nutrition 

Hill’s Pet Nutrition posted the biggest jump in AI citations during the reporting period, growing by more than 300 percent. That surge is driven by strong alignment with institutional trust signals—especially veterinary guidance and academic research—which gives the brand a solid foundation for AI-generated answers.

AI increasingly turns to Hill’s Pet Nutrition when buyers start asking health-focused questions, from allergies to digestive sensitivity to trust-based decisions. While the brand doesn’t yet roam as widely as direct-to-consumer leaders, its authority profile makes it a dependable reference point—one AI leans on to steady the conversation when medical credibility really matters.

Small Bark, Big Bite: Spot & Tango

Spot & Tango may be a smaller pup in the fresh dog food yard, but it’s got a very loud bark in AI. That’s because answer engines fetch what’s clear, consistent, and easy to explain—not who owns the biggest bowl or the most fridge space. Even with  less than 5% estimated U.S. market share, Spot & Tango pulls off 15% GEO Awareness (#7), 5.2% GEO Share of Voice (#7), and a tail-wagging 17% Domain Citations (#2). Spot & Tango sits, stays, and explains—turning a small pawprint in the market into a trail AI keeps following across its answers.

Best in Show: Business Insider

Business Insider emerged as the single most influential source shaping AI answers in the fresh dog food category. One comparison article—The Best Fresh Dog Food Brands in 2026, Tested with Our Dogs—pulled the most AI citations across platforms, becoming the go-to reference that AI likes to fetch.

Key Takeaways

• AI only lets a few dogs into the yard: AI doesn’t give every fresh dog food brand a run at the park. It consistently trots out a small pack it trusts and leaves the rest waiting by the gate. If a brand lacks authority signals AI recognizes, it’s not judged—it’s ignored.
• Good vibes get a tail wag, not a spot: Most brands get talked about nicely when they show up. But friendly framing alone won’t earn a place in the answer. AI decides who gets included in the answer before it worries about tone. Authority gets you in the door; sentiment just scratches behind the ears.
• AI runs the pack order: AI doesn’t see the market as one big dog pile. It organizes brands into a clear pack hierarchy—leaders that explain the category, trusted vets of the conversation, situational subs, and the dogs that never get called at all. Where you sit in the pack determines how often you get heard.
• You can’t just say you’re a good dog: AI doesn’t take a brand’s word for it. It wants outside validation—media, experts, institutions—to vouch for you. A few strong “good dog” references from trusted sources can outweigh a whole yard full of self-promotional barking.
• Being left out Is worse than a bad review: The real danger isn’t getting growled at—it’s being left out of the walk entirely. When AI skips a brand, buyers never compare it, question it, or consider it. And because the silence happens upstream, many brands don’t realize they’ve been dropped from the pack until it’s too late.

Conclusion

Why AI Visibility Has to Be a Daily Walk, Not a One-Time Trick

AI visibility shows whether a brand has earned enough trust to be called back—again and again—inside AI-generated answers. That trust isn’t built in one fetch. It’s reinforced across independent sources, sustained across multiple AI answer engines, and shown consistently at every stage of the buyer journey.

This isn’t a one-off win. It’s learned behavior.

Shaping AI visibility takes more than posting content or scoring the occasional media mention. It requires coordination between what a brand says, what others say about it, and how long those signals stick around. In other words, AI watches patterns—not stunts.

To stay in AI’s good graces, brands need to show:

• Consistency across sources, with owned content, media coverage, reviews, and institutional references all telling the same story and backing each other up
• Reinforcement across platforms, with visibility that keeps showing up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and the rest of the pack
• Alignment across buyer-stage questions, with relevance that holds from early sniffing to final decision-making
• Ongoing measurement and intervention, with the ability to spot changes in AI behavior and adjust before you fall out of the rotation

Treating AI visibility like a one-time trick—publish, hope, repeat—leaves outcomes to chance. Training it as an operational discipline, on the other paw, lets brands spot weak signals, strengthen what’s working, and steadily shape how AI understands and talks about them over time.

How Brandi AI Puts AI Visibility on a Leash

Brandi AI is built to turn AI visibility from a gut feeling into something you can actually inspect. Instead of guessing based on indirect signals, it goes straight to the source—analyzing AI-generated answers themselves to show how brands are understood across platforms and buyer moments.

Rather than just telling you where your brand shows up, Brandi AI shows how and why it appears—or why it’s not getting called at all.

Brandi AI surfaces:

• AI mentions: Whether or not your brand makes it into answers across the major AI engines.
• AI Share of Voice: Whether AI relies on your brand to explain and compare, or just gives it a quick name-check.
• Citation authority: When AI treats your content—or someone else’s—as evidence worth fetching.
• Narrative themes: The traits, concerns, and ideas AI consistently associates with your brand.
• Platform gaps: Where visibility holds across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and where the leash slips.

Together, these signals create a clear baseline for how AI includes, trusts, and frames your brand—so progress can be tracked, trained, and improved over time, not left to chance.

What Brandi AI Helps You Improve

Once AI visibility is out in the open, it’s no longer something you wonder about—it’s something you can train. With a clear baseline in place, Brandi AI helps brands move from chasing hunches to making smart, evidence-driven adjustments that shape how AI explains, compares, and recommends them over time.

Brandi AI points out:

• Which existing pages need a good grooming—expanded, clarified, or reshaped—to earn AI citations
• Which buyer-stage questions are missing from the yard and need new content to fill the gaps
• Which content formats AI reliably fetches when building answers
• Where outside “good dog” validation—from media, experts, or institutions—is needed to reinforce trust
• Which platforms and publications most strongly influence AI’s version of the story

The result is fewer wild chases and more cause-and-effect you can actually see. Instead of asking, “What content should we make next?” teams can ask the far more useful question: “What proof does AI still need before it lets us into the pack?”

Ready to Move from Insight to Intervention?

Chasing optimization without measurement is like throwing a tennis ball in the dark—you might get lucky, but you probably won’t know where it landed. Measuring AI visibility without acting on it isn’t much better; you’ve spotted the squirrel, but you never give chase.

Brandi AI closes the loop by linking real AI behavior directly to content, sourcing, and narrative decisions. The result? AI visibility stops being a game of fetch-and-hope and becomes something you can train, guide, and reliably call back—turning an unpredictable outcome into a controllable command. 

→ Schedule a Brandi AI demo

Report Purpose and Usage

Why This Report Exists and How It Should Be Used

This report exists to make AI answer behavior visible at a time when buyer understanding is increasingly shaped before direct brand engagement. As AI becomes the primary entry point for product research and comparison, brands need a way to observe—not assume—how they are represented.

The AI Visibility Index for the Fresh Dog Food Market Universe is designed to serve three practical purposes:

1. Benchmarking: It provides a point-in-time snapshot of which brands currently influence AI-mediated buyer understanding within the fresh dog food category.
2. Diagnosis: It reveals where authority is earned, where it is missing, and which sources AI relies on to reinforce credibility.
3. Strategic Direction: It identifies where intervention is most likely to change outcomes—whether through content clarification, third-party validation, or narrative alignment.

This report should be used as an operational reference, not a static scorecard. AI visibility is dynamic, and rankings will evolve as content signals, sources, and AI models change.

How to Interpret the Findings

• Rankings reflect AI behavior, not consumer preference or brand quality.
• Visibility indicates inclusion and narrative usage, not endorsement.
• Absence from AI answers reflects insufficient authority reinforcement, not negative sentiment.

When used correctly, this report helps teams move from anecdotal assumptions to evidence-based decisions about AI visibility.

Report Identity and Scope

Report Identity, Scope, and Intent Declaration

Report name: AI Visibility Index for the Fresh Dog Food Market Universe
Publisher: Brandi AI
Publication date: February 18, 2026
Report type: AI Visibility & Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Analysis
Primary purpose: Measure observable AI answer behavior
Intended use: Brand visibility benchmarking, content strategy, and authority diagnostics
Audience: Brand leaders, marketers, analysts, media, and AI visibility practitioners

This report analyzes how AI answer engines discover, prioritize, describe, and cite fresh dog food brands when responding to buyer-intent questions. It evaluates AI behavior directly, rather than relying on consumer opinions, search rankings, or self-reported brand metrics.

Scope & Entity Definitions

Market universe definition: This report evaluates commercial fresh dog food brands actively sold in the U.S. consumer market.

Included:

• Fresh dog food brands
• Kibble and packaged fresh dog food brands
• Subscription-based and retail-distributed fresh dog food brands

Excluded:

• Homemade or DIY diets
• Veterinary-only prescription diets
• Supplements and treats
• Non-dog pet food products

Geographic scope: United States
Audience context: Consumer (B2C) dog owners

Methodology Details

Methodology Overview

This section explains what was measured, how the data were collected, and how the results should be interpreted. The goal is transparency: to make clear what the AI Visibility Index captures—and what it does not.

What Is Being Measured

The AI Visibility Index for the Fresh Dog Food Market Universe measures competitive visibility inside AI-generated answers, where buyer perceptions are increasingly formed before direct interaction with brands.

As AI becomes the primary entry point for product research and vendor comparison, this analysis identifies:

• Which brands AI includes in responses to buyer-intent questions
• Which brands AI emphasizes when multiple options compete for attention
• Which brands AI treats as credible reference points
• Which external sources AI relies on to explain the category

The focus is on observable AI behavior, not inferred intent or theoretical relevance.

Data Collection Window

Reporting period: January 1 – January 31, 2026
Measurement frequency: Daily
Total AI answers analyzed: 17,796

Results represent a point-in-time snapshot of AI behavior during the reporting window. AI visibility is dynamic and may shift as content signals, source authority, and AI models evolve.

AI Answer Engines Included

This analysis evaluates responses generated by the following AI answer engines:

• ChatGPT
• Google AI Mode
• Google AI Overviews
• Google Gemini
• Grok
• Microsoft Copilot
• Perplexity

All platforms were weighted equally. No manual adjustments were made for response length, citation density, or platform-specific bias.

Buyer-Stage Prompt Design

Prompts were structured around three buyer stages:

• Discovery-stage prompts: Broad, exploratory questions where buyers seek orientation or education. Examples: “Best fresh dog food for dogs,” “Is fresh dog food healthier than kibble?”
• Evaluation-stage prompts: Comparative or validation-seeking questions where buyers weigh options. Examples: “Compare fresh dog food brands,” “Is fresh dog food worth the cost?”
• Decision-stage prompts: Action-oriented questions where buyers are close to commitment. Examples: “Should I switch my dog to fresh food?,” “Which fresh dog food is best for allergies?”

This structure allows the analysis to capture not only whether a brand appears, but when it appears in the buyer journey.

Brand Inclusion Rules

To isolate true AI-driven visibility:

• Brand names were excluded from discovery-stage prompts, ensuring that inclusion reflects AI initiative rather than user bias
• Brand names were permitted in evaluation and decision-stage prompts, where comparison and confirmation naturally occur

This distinction is critical. It separates earned inclusion from prompted recognition.

A brand that appears only when named is not shaping buyer understanding. A brand that appears before it is named.

This prompt framework allows the AI Visibility Index to distinguish between brands that merely respond to demand and brands that generate it inside AI answers.

Interpretation Boundaries

What This Report Is — and Is Not

Clear boundaries are essential for accurate interpretation. This section defines what the AI Visibility Index measures—and what it intentionally excludes.

What This Report Is

This report is:

• A measurement of observable AI answer behavior
• A competitive AI visibility benchmark within the fresh dog food category
• A Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI citation analysis
• A snapshot of how AI currently interprets and explains the market

The findings reflect how AI answer engines discover, prioritize, frame, and cite brands when responding to buyer-intent questions.

What This Report Is Not

This report is not:

• A consumer survey or opinion study
• A brand favorability or reputation assessment
• An SEO ranking or search performance report
• A review aggregation or social sentiment analysis
• A prediction of future market share or revenue outcomes

The AI Visibility Index for the Fresh Dog Food Market Universe does not attempt to evaluate product quality or consumer satisfaction. It measures how AI behaves, not whether that behavior is “correct.”

Why This Distinction Matters

AI-generated answers increasingly influence buyer understanding before traditional metrics register change. Confusing AI visibility with consumer sentiment or search performance obscures where influence is actually occurring. This report isolates that influence.

Temporal Interpretation Notice and Metric Definitions

Interpretation Guidelines and Metric Definitions

AI visibility is dynamic. The rankings and patterns presented in this report reflect AI answer behavior during a specific reporting window and should be interpreted accordingly.

Changes in source authority, content availability, media coverage, or AI model behavior can alter visibility over time. For this reason, the AI Visibility Index is best understood as a diagnostic snapshot, not a permanent standing.

Temporal Interpretation Notice

• Rankings reflect AI behavior observed January 1–31, 2026
• Results may shift as AI updates models, retrains on new data, or adjusts citation behavior
• Visibility gains or losses should be evaluated through trend analysis, not isolated snapshots

AI visibility is not static. It evolves as evidence signals change.

Metric Definitions

GEO Awareness  

GEO Awareness is the percentage of unbranded buyer-intent AI answers in which a brand is mentioned at least once.

• Measures inclusion, not endorsement
• Applies only when the brand is not named in the prompt
• Indicates whether AI introduces the brand on its own

GEO Share of Voice (SOV)  

GEO Share of Voice measures how much of the total Market Universe conversation a brand controls when AI responds to prompts where multiple relevant brands compete for inclusion.

• Reflects narrative dominance, not frequency alone
• Indicates whether AI uses the brand to explain the category
• High SOV suggests category anchoring behavior

Sentiment 

Sentiment reflects how positively or negatively AI frames a brand when it appears in answers.

• Scale: 1 (most negative) to 10 (most positive)
• Based on tone, qualifiers, and recommendation language
• Does not reflect customer reviews or survey sentiment

Citation Authority  

Citation authority reflects when and where AI treats owned or third-party content as evidence to support its responses.

• Indicates perceived credibility of sources
• Not a measure of endorsement or preference
• Reflects AI’s reliance on external validation