Running Shoes,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about running shoes — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Asics owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Asics is the default answer.
Named in 43% of running shoes answers, typically in position 2.1. Hoka follows at 30%, New Balance at 30%.
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.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Asics | 43% | 2.1 | 32% | 16% |
| 2 | Hoka | 30% | 2.6 | 3% | 0% |
| 3 | New Balance | 30% | 2.9 | 11% | 16% |
| 4 | Brooks | 30% | 3.3 | 16% | 22% |
| 5 | Saucony | 28% | 3.3 | 14% | 26% |
| 6 | Adidas | 17% | 2.8 | 3% | 17% |
| 7 | Nike | 17% | 3.0 | 11% | 23% |
| 8 | Salomon | 10% | 2.0 | 5% | 11% |
| 9 | On | 7% | 2.0 | 5% | 67% |
| 10 | Inov-8 | 7% | 2.5 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Puma | 5% | 2.7 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Altra | 5% | 5.3 | 0% | 0% |
| 13 | Mizuno | 3% | 2.5 | 0% | — |
| 14 | La Sportiva | 3% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Topo Athletic | 3% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
Asics is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.
Being named is visibility. Underneath it, asked to rate each brand directly, the AI assistants judge it three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. They put 58% of the 26 brands rated above indifference. Hoka leads the brands the answers name, at 80% of maximum Desire. On attachment, the most divided driver, Hoka indexes 119 against VJ Sport at 73, on a category average of 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared (84 / 92 / 100 / 108 / 116). Above indifference means Desire above two-thirds of its maximum. See the full running shoes desire edition →
Before it answers, it goes looking for Asics.
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 83 searches in running shoes, Asics is named in 29% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web, Copilot do not report their searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.
These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.
The referees of running shoes.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering running shoes questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
On converts reads into citations. Hoka doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? On converts 67% of reads; Hoka just 0%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Asics | 43% | 2.1 | 32% | 16% |
| 2 | Hoka | 30% | 2.6 | 3% | 0% |
| 3 | New Balance | 30% | 2.9 | 11% | 16% |
| 4 | Brooks | 30% | 3.3 | 16% | 22% |
| 5 | Saucony | 28% | 3.3 | 14% | 26% |
| 6 | Adidas | 17% | 2.8 | 3% | 17% |
| 7 | Nike | 17% | 3.0 | 11% | 23% |
| 8 | Salomon | 10% | 2.0 | 5% | 11% |
| 9 | On | 7% | 2.0 | 5% | 67% |
| 10 | Inov-8 | 7% | 2.5 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Puma | 5% | 2.7 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Altra | 5% | 5.3 | 0% | 0% |
| 13 | Mizuno | 3% | 2.5 | 0% | — |
| 14 | La Sportiva | 3% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Topo Athletic | 3% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
All three models agree: Asics.
A rare consensus — every model puts Asics first, and their top-five lists overlap 100%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brooks | 15% | 40% | 35% | 25pp |
| Asics | 35% | 55% | 40% | 20pp |
| New Balance | 20% | 40% | 30% | 20pp |
| Saucony | 15% | 35% | 35% | 20pp |
| Adidas | 5% | 25% | 20% | 20pp |
| Inov-8 | 0% | 15% | 5% | 15pp |
| Altra | 0% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| Hoka | 30% | 35% | 25% | 10pp |
| On | 10% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Mizuno | 10% | 0% | 0% | 10pp |
How-to guides carry running shoes.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; How-to guides convert best — 97% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 207 | 6 | 97% |
| Editorial | 129 | 7 | 95% |
| Listicles | 76 | 14 | 84% |
| Reviews | 68 | 5 | 93% |
| Comparisons | 65 | 9 | 88% |
| Product pages | 43 | 6 | 88% |
| Other | 27 | 14 | 66% |
| Community threads | 19 | 14 | 58% |
Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the running shoes pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 24 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 6pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structured data | 655 | 91% | 135 | 67% | +24pp |
| Named author | 424 | 92% | 366 | 81% | +10pp |
| Answer up front | 222 | 92% | 568 | 85% | +7pp |
| Specifications | 230 | 92% | 560 | 85% | +7pp |
| Cites its sources | 56 | 91% | 734 | 87% | +4pp |
| Comparison table | 181 | 86% | 609 | 87% | -1pp |
| Updated this year | 288 | 84% | 502 | 89% | -5pp |
| Hard statistics | 226 | 83% | 564 | 89% | -6pp |
On 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. La Sportiva is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| On | 50 | 40% | 10 |
| Salomon | 33 | 50% | 10 |
| Nike | 29 | 59% | 17 |
| Brooks | 21 | 60% | 15 |
| Saucony | 18 | 12% | 108 |
| Hoka | 18 | 3% | 30 |
| Asics | 17 | 46% | 41 |
| La Sportiva | 17 | 0% | 3 |
| New Balance | 6 | 61% | 18 |
| Adidas | 3 | 75% | 4 |
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.
The questions running shoes 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.
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 Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:03:10 GMT.