BrandInsightAI Insights
Food · a live data story

Chocolate,
according to AI

Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about chocolate — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Cadbury owns the conversation.

0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated

The podium

Cadbury is the default answer.

Named in 33% of chocolate answers, typically in position 1.9. Heroes follows at 33%, Melt Chocolates at 33%.

Heroes
33% of answers
Cadbury
33% of answers
Melt Chocolates
33% of answers
The full board

Every brand AI names, ranked.

Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.

#BrandVisibilityAvg. positionCitation shareRead→cited
1Cadbury 33% 1.9 2%
2Heroes 33% 1.9 0%
3Melt Chocolates 33% 2.6 5% 100%
4Lindt 28% 2.8 12% 71%
5Galaxy 23% 2.6 2% 17%
6Hotel Chocolat 20% 3.6 19% 32%
7Maltesers 18% 3.8 0%
8Snickers 17% 3.5 0%
9Twix 17% 3.5 0%
10Celebrations 17% 3.8 2%
11Milky Way 15% 3.2 0%
12Charbonnel et Walker 13% 2.9 9% 36%
13Bounty 13% 3.5 0%
14KitKat 13% 3.5 0%
15Mars 13% 3.5 0%
What AI wants here

Chocolate is decided on attraction.

Being named is visibility. Underneath it, every answer describes a brand in three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. In chocolate, Hotel Chocolat leads attraction at 122 against Nestlé at 80, indexed on the category at 100.

Attraction
Hotel Chocolat122
Nestlé80
42-point spread · tracks being named -0.07
Affinity
Lindt115
Nestlé91
24-point spread · tracks being named 0.06
Attachment
Cadbury115
Guylian92
23-point spread · tracks being named 0.61
Lindt: Attraction 115, Affinity 115, Attachment 108
Lindt
Complete desire
Hotel Chocolat: Attraction 122, Affinity 112, Attachment 104
Hotel Chocolat
Complete desire
Ferrero Rocher: Attraction 112, Affinity 109, Attachment 107
Ferrero Rocher
Complete desire
AttractionAffinityAttachment

Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. See the full chocolate desire edition →

What AI searched for first

Before it answers, it goes looking for Galaxy.

An assistant does not answer from memory alone. It runs its own web searches first, and whoever it searches for is the shortlist it then chooses from. Across 69 searches in chocolate, Galaxy is named in 17% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web does not report its searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.

Galaxy 17%
Hotel Chocolat 17%
Cadbury 13%
Charbonnel et Walker 13%
Lindt 9%
Godiva 4%
Claude
Searches per question1.2
Names a brand6%
Names a year18%
Goes to a site0%
Gemini
Searches per question1.7
Names a brand0%
Names a year7%
Goes to a site0%
ChatGPT
Searches per question1.3
Names a brand46%
Names a year36%
Goes to a site27%
UK boxed chocolates gift professional thank you Fortnum Mason Hotel Chocolat Charbonnel et Walker official
ChatGPT
UK large chocolate bars sharing size supermarket price 2026 Dairy Milk Galaxy Lidl Aldi Tesco Sainsbury's
ChatGPT
UK boxed chocolates gift packaging luxury 2026 Hotel Chocolat Charbonnel et Walker Fortnum Mason Neuhaus
ChatGPT
best boxed chocolate assortments UK Christmas gifting 2026 Hotel Chocolat Fortnum Charbonnel et Walker
ChatGPT

These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.

Who AI trusts here

The referees of chocolate.

The independent sources AI models cite when answering chocolate questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.

tesco.com 9 cites
joybuy.co.uk 7 cites
nhs.uk 7 cites
wholesalesweets.co.uk 6 cites
dallmannconfections.com 5 cites
bbcgoodfood.com 4 cites
cadburygiftsdirect.co.uk 4 cites
barry-callebaut.com 3 cites
chococraft.com 3 cites
gov.uk 3 cites
Read is not cited

Lindt converts reads into citations. Galaxy doesn't.

When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Lindt converts 71% of reads; Galaxy just 17%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.

Lindt · read 7×71%
Charbonnel et Walker · read 11×36%
Hotel Chocolat · read 31×32%
Galaxy · read 6×17%
Full data table
#BrandVisibilityAvg. positionCitation shareRead→cited
1Cadbury33%1.92%
2Heroes33%1.90%
3Melt Chocolates33%2.65%100%
4Lindt28%2.812%71%
5Galaxy23%2.62%17%
6Hotel Chocolat20%3.619%32%
7Maltesers18%3.80%
8Snickers17%3.50%
9Twix17%3.50%
10Celebrations17%3.82%
11Milky Way15%3.20%
12Charbonnel et Walker13%2.99%36%
13Bounty13%3.50%
14KitKat13%3.50%
15Mars13%3.50%
Which AI you ask

Three models. Three different answers.

Ask about chocolate and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Lindt, Gemini → Melt Chocolates, ChatGPT → Heroes. Their top-five lists share just 43% of names.

Claude recommends
Lindt
named in 40% of its answers
Gemini recommends
Melt Chocolates
named in 70% of its answers
ChatGPT recommends
Heroes
named in 35% of its answers

Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.

Melt Chocolates 60pp
Lindt 20pp
Celebrations 20pp
Mars 20pp
Bounty 20pp
Charbonnel et Walker 20pp
Galaxy 15pp
Snickers 15pp
ClaudeGeminiChatGPT
The data behind this chart
BrandClaudeGeminiChatGPTSpread
Melt Chocolates20%70%10%60pp
Lindt40%25%20%20pp
Celebrations30%10%10%20pp
Mars25%5%10%20pp
Bounty25%5%10%20pp
Charbonnel et Walker0%20%20%20pp
Galaxy30%15%25%15pp
Snickers25%15%10%15pp
Milky Way25%10%10%15pp
Twix25%15%10%15pp
What AI reads here

category-page carry chocolate.

Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. category-page supply the most citations; Product pages convert best — 95% of the ones models opened were actually cited.

category-page
131 cited · 15 read only
90% of reads cited
Editorial
123 cited · 78 read only
61% of reads cited
Product pages
105 cited · 6 read only
95% of reads cited
How-to guides
65 cited · 6 read only
92% of reads cited
Listicles
48 cited · 12 read only
80% of reads cited
Reviews
30 cited · 12 read only
71% of reads cited
Other
28 cited · 57 read only
33% of reads cited
News
18 cited · 6 read only
75% of reads cited
The data behind this chart
Page typeCitedRead but not citedConversion
category-page1311590%
Editorial1237861%
Product pages105695%
How-to guides65692%
Listicles481280%
Reviews301271%
Other285733%
News18675%
What gets cited

Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.

Of the chocolate pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 18 percentage points; cites its sources pages fare 64pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.

Structured data +18pp
Specifications +14pp
Answer up front +4pp
Named author -7pp
Hard statistics -15pp
Updated this year -33pp
Comparison table -33pp
Cites its sources -64pp
The data behind this chart
FeaturePages withCited %Pages withoutCited %Difference
Structured data57078%27360%+18pp
Specifications15583%68870%+14pp
Answer up front32175%52270%+4pp
Named author32868%51575%-7pp
Hard statistics34863%49578%-15pp
Updated this year21948%62481%-33pp
Comparison table15945%68478%-33pp
Cites its sources8414%75979%-64pp
Citation readiness

Kinder builds pages AI can quote.

Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Cadbury is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.

BrandReadinessPages citedPages profiled
Kinder 75 100% 3
Celebrations 50 100% 3
Chococo 43 60% 5
Firetree Chocolate 38 75% 8
Galaxy 33 38% 8
Melt Chocolates 30 7% 132
Lindt 30 12% 152
Harry Specters 29 29% 14
Pump Street Chocolate 29 15% 20
Cadbury 29 2% 130

Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.

What the answers answer

The questions chocolate pages have to settle.

Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.

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Keep exploring

Nineteen more categories.

Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:27:59 GMT.

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