The Indian AI Search Audit: 500 Queries, 25 Brands, 777 Citations

We ran 500 AI search queries against 25 Indian brands across 16 verticals over 72 hours in late May 2026, and the result rewrites what Indian brand teams should be optimizing for.

**The headline:** the domains that AI engines cite most heavily on Indian buyer queries are not brand websites. They are Instagram (the single most-cited domain), one indie listicle blog (jimmyluxury.in), YouTube, Reddit, Practo, app stores, and aggregators. The first brand-owned website does not appear in the top-cited list until position 12. Marketing teams at every brand we audited are pouring resources into SEO content that — in the AI search era — is being read past in favor of the surfaces above.

To our knowledge, this is the first published research on Indian brand visibility across the major AI search platforms.

Methodology

**Sample.** 25 prospects across 16 verticals, weighted toward Indian consumer brands (D2C beauty, D2C apparel, healthcare, fintech, real estate, hospitality, insurtech, jewellery) and Indian-headquartered SaaS. Brands range from local SMBs to unicorns (Acko, Pristyn Care) to Series B startups (Snitch, Pilgrim, Foxtale).

**Queries.** 10 queries per prospect, designed around the prospect’s stated ICPs. Query types span unbranded category searches ("best AI coding tool"), brand-named comparisons ("Acko vs HDFC ERGO"), and intent-specific deep cuts.

**Platforms.** 2 AI search platforms per query — **Google AI Overview (AIO)** and **ChatGPT (web interface)**. 10 queries × 2 platforms × 25 brands = **500 cells** measured. AIO cells were captured via screenshot and parsed for cited URLs.

**Citation extract.** From the AIO cells, every cited URL was extracted into a citation graph: 777 URLs across 500 cells. All queries were run through real browser sessions, not LLM APIs.

Finding 1: The most-cited domains for Indian buyer queries are not brand websites

The top 5 most-cited domains across all 500 cells were:

**instagram.com** (21 citations)
**jimmyluxury.in** (14 citations)
**youtube.com** (12 citations)
**practo.com** (11 citations)
**play.google.com** (11 citations)

**sugarcosmetics.com** was the first brand-owned website to appear, at position 12 with 7 citations. Instagram received three times the citations of any brand site.

This holds across verticals. In Beauty, Instagram leads. In Healthcare, Practo leads. In Real Estate, MagicBricks leads. The earned and rented surfaces are converting to AI search citation share; owned-property SEO investment is not.

Finding 2: The 40-point gap between branded and unbranded query surface rates

**Branded comparison** (contains "vs"): Brands surfaced in **73.3%** of cells.
**Unbranded "best X"**: Brands surfaced in **33.5%** of cells.

If a user is already searching "Acko vs HDFC ERGO," Acko surfaces because the query forced its mention. The actual battle is in the unbranded category surface. In those queries, only one in three brands surfaces, and the ones that do are those with strong third-party citation graphs.

Finding 3: Per-brand AIO vs ChatGPT asymmetry is large and consistent

AIO and ChatGPT have different retrieval pipelines. A brand that ranks highly on one frequently does not rank on the other.

**Snitch:** 10% AIO surface / 90% ChatGPT surface (80-point gap)
**Pristyn Care:** 80% AIO surface / 30% ChatGPT surface (50-point gap)

There is no single "AI search optimization" strategy. You have to measure your brand on each platform separately. (This is exactly why Citare's Brand Radar tracks all 5 major AI platforms).

Finding 4: Newer-funded brands surface as well as more-established ones

Series A and B startups (49% average surface rate) are surfacing on AI search at essentially the same rate as more-established funded challenger brands (46%). Older, local-tier brands sit at a 27% surface rate.

AI search does not have a historical-authority moat. A Series A startup that invests intentionally in third-party citation surfaces can match or exceed the AI search visibility of a unicorn that’s been building classical SEO for a decade.

Finding 5: A single indie listicle blog dominates an entire category’s AI citations

The second-most-cited domain overall was **jimmyluxury.in** — an independent listicle blog. AI engines cited it 14 times across D2C menswear queries. One person’s listicle blog out-cites every single D2C apparel brand’s own marketing site combined.

AI engines reach for comprehensive third-party listicles when answering category questions. The brands listed inside that blog get the AI citation. The strategic move: identify the 3-5 listicle equivalents in your category and get listed in them.

Five practical actions for Indian brand teams

**Audit your Instagram presence specifically for buyer-intent search behavior.** Tag products and use category hashtags AI engines crawl.
**Get into the comprehensive listicle blogs in your category.**
**Be present on the aggregators that dominate your vertical.**
**Build YouTube and Reddit presence (or seed it).**
**Measure your AI search visibility separately for each platform.**

*Want to know where you stand across ChatGPT, AIO, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity? Try Citare's free tier today.*