Big Retail in the answer engines
We tracked 10 businesses in Big Retail. When the AI engines answered questions about this industry, they mentioned one of those businesses 87% of the time, and linked to a business's own website in 48% of answers.
We asked 30 questions about prices in this industry. 1 of the answers named no business from the study at all. Pricing questions are where product brands are at their strongest, and that is exactly what makes the service industries in this study stand out.
| Engine | Named | Own website linked | No AI answer given |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 88% | 36% | 0 of 50 |
| Perplexity | 86% | 60% | 0 of 50 |
| Google AI Overviews | 87% | 47% | 3 of 50 |
How often an answer linked to a business's own website varied a lot: from 36% on ChatGPT up to 60% on Perplexity. ChatGPT mentioned these businesses most often, in 88% of its answers.
| Kind of question | Named | Answers scored |
|---|---|---|
| Category ("who's the best") | 75% | 28 |
| Cost ("what does it cost") | 97% | 30 |
| Comparison ("X or Y") | 97% | 30 |
| Brand ("is X any good") | 90% | 30 |
| Problem ("how do I") | 76% | 29 |
These businesses came up most often on cost and comparison questions, in 97% of answers, and least often on category questions, in 75%. That is a gap of 22 percentage points between the best case and the worst.
Every business measured in Big Retail for this edition. The rules for how they were picked are in the full methodology.
- 01Big W
- 02Bunnings
- 03Chemist Warehouse
- 04Harvey Norman
- 05JB Hi-Fi
- 06Kmart
- 07Myer
- 08Officeworks
- 09Rebel
- 10The Good Guys
Being mentioned is not the same as being linked, and only one of them is yours to control.
The same three engines, across 50 buyer questions written for your business.
All 1,459 answers have been scored once.
An independent second scorer is now re-checking a 10% sample. When that finishes, the verified figures replace these and every change is logged below.
We publish the agreement rate whatever it turns out to be.
Changelog
- v1.08 September 2026Every figure in the dataset re-checked and validated by our data team. No numbers changed.
- v1.0August 2026Initial release, first-pass scoring.