AI Tools Recommend Brands, But Send the Link Elsewhere

AI tools frequently recommend brands without linking directly to their official websites. According to a recent analysis by Shopify agency Shero Commerce, only 2.8% of 1,851 sources cited across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity belonged to the brand itself.

Shero studied shopping queries across 60 product categories and collected every source the three AI tools surfaced. Most links pointed to non-brand sites — the largest single category of sources included sites like Good Housekeeping, Verywell Fit, and Reviewed.com, accounting for 59% of all links. The same pattern held even when brands were recommended by name: across all platforms, the study found 159 brand recommendations total, and only 31% linked to the brand's own page. For instance, both ChatGPT and Perplexity recommended brands like Gymshark, Alo, and Beyond Yoga in response to a query for 'squat-proof leggings,' but linked out to third-party sites instead.

Google AI Mode showed an even starker pattern: brands from the sample were mentioned or recommended in just 9.5% of checks across the 60 categories, and roughly a third of categories saw none of the sampled brands appear at all.

Shero also checked product descriptions across Shopify stores and found that 20% of the sample matched or closely resembled descriptions on other sites — a pattern seen more often among retailers reselling the same product than among competing Shopify brands. The researchers suggest such duplicated text could make it harder to identify a clear source, though it doesn't prove that duplication directly causes third-party sites to capture more links.

For ecommerce brands, the study is an important warning: being 'recommended' by AI and being 'cited as a source' are two different outcomes. A brand can be named in an AI's answer to a shopping query while the link goes to someone else's site entirely. Shero doesn't yet offer a clear explanation for why these particular sources get chosen, but it points to the need for dedicated testing on whether restructuring brand pages or adding original content could improve the odds of earning the link.