Supermarkets,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about supermarkets — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Tesco owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Tesco is the default answer.
Named in 33% of supermarkets answers, typically in position 1.4. Asda follows at 28%, Sainsbury's at 22%.
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 | Tesco | 33% | 1.4 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Asda | 28% | 3.2 | 10% | — |
| 3 | Sainsbury's | 22% | 3.2 | 10% | 33% |
| 4 | Morrisons | 18% | 3.6 | 5% | — |
| 5 | Aldi | 12% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 6 | Lidl | 12% | 3.7 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Waitrose | 12% | 4.9 | 0% | 0% |
| 8 | Next | 10% | 2.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Co-op | 10% | 5.5 | 0% | — |
| 10 | Ocado | 8% | 3.4 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Marks & Spencer | 8% | 3.8 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Sous Chef | 5% | 1.0 | 14% | 67% |
| 13 | Fine Food Specialist | 3% | 2.5 | 10% | 100% |
| 14 | Amazon Fresh | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | 0% |
| 15 | Boots | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
The referees of supermarkets.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering supermarkets questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Sous Chef converts reads into citations. Sainsbury's doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Sous Chef converts 67% of reads; Sainsbury's just 33%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tesco | 33% | 1.4 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Asda | 28% | 3.2 | 10% | — |
| 3 | Sainsbury's | 22% | 3.2 | 10% | 33% |
| 4 | Morrisons | 18% | 3.6 | 5% | — |
| 5 | Aldi | 12% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 6 | Lidl | 12% | 3.7 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Waitrose | 12% | 4.9 | 0% | 0% |
| 8 | Next | 10% | 2.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Co-op | 10% | 5.5 | 0% | — |
| 10 | Ocado | 8% | 3.4 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Marks & Spencer | 8% | 3.8 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Sous Chef | 5% | 1.0 | 14% | 67% |
| 13 | Fine Food Specialist | 3% | 2.5 | 10% | 100% |
| 14 | Amazon Fresh | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | 0% |
| 15 | Boots | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
The models do not agree on who leads.
Ask about supermarkets and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Asda, Gemini → Tesco, ChatGPT → Tesco. Their top-five lists share just 22% of names.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asda | 30% | 50% | 5% | 45pp |
| Tesco | 30% | 50% | 20% | 30pp |
| Sainsbury's | 30% | 30% | 5% | 25pp |
| Co-op | 0% | 25% | 5% | 25pp |
| Ocado | 10% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| Aldi | 5% | 20% | 10% | 15pp |
| Lidl | 5% | 20% | 10% | 15pp |
| Next | 5% | 20% | 5% | 15pp |
| Morrisons | 15% | 25% | 15% | 10pp |
| Marks & Spencer | 5% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
Editorial carry supermarkets.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Editorial supply the most citations; Product pages convert best — 82% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial | 30 | 31 | 49% |
| How-to guides | 27 | 24 | 53% |
| Listicles | 21 | 13 | 62% |
| News | 11 | 3 | 79% |
| Product pages | 9 | 2 | 82% |
| category-page | 9 | 3 | 75% |
| Other | 8 | 26 | 24% |
| Comparisons | 6 | 6 | 50% |
Named author is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the supermarkets pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Named author is worth 8 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 17pp 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Named author | 140 | 59% | 129 | 50% | +8pp |
| Answer up front | 113 | 59% | 156 | 51% | +8pp |
| Updated this year | 79 | 53% | 190 | 55% | -2pp |
| Comparison table | 44 | 41% | 225 | 57% | -16pp |
| Hard statistics | 73 | 42% | 196 | 59% | -17pp |
Tesco 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. Set against how often those pages are actually cited.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tesco | 19 | 50% | 6 |
| Sous Chef | 8 | 100% | 3 |
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.
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 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:09:44 GMT.