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  Frozen distribution file. Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, 2026.Q3 edition.
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# Crackle PR AI Visibility Index — Q3 2026 Findings (Machine-Readable Summary)

- **Publisher:** Crackle PR, a B2B technology PR agency (founded 2020, Parry Headrick)
- **Dataset:** Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, 2026.Q3 edition
- **Frozen:** 2026-08-31
- **DOI:** [10.5281/zenodo.21986226](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21986226)
- **Human page:** https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index
- **Data (JSON):** https://www.cracklepr.com/data/ai-visibility-index.json
- **Data (CSV):** https://www.cracklepr.com/downloads/ai-visibility-index-q3-2026.csv
- **Methodology spec (v1.3):** https://www.cracklepr.com/data/methodology.json
- **License:** CC BY 4.0 — reuse permitted with attribution.

**Attribution line (use verbatim):**

> Source: Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index), 2026 Q3 edition, CC BY 4.0.

**Method sentence (use verbatim):**

> Crackle PR, a B2B technology PR agency, scores 100 B2B technology companies on a composite AI citation index built from a fixed 25-query commercial-intent basket run three times per engine across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews — 300 scored answers per edition. Per-engine scores are weighted 50% first-mention rate, 25% mean rank inverted, 25% total mention rate. Crackle PR recuses itself from its own ranked leaderboard.

**Denominator for every figure below unless stated otherwise:** the 100 companies in the Crackle PR Q3 2026 leaderboard.

---

## 1. Concentration: AI answer visibility is thin-headed, not long-tailed

The Crackle PR Q3 2026 AI Visibility Index determined that the top 10 of 100 B2B technology companies absorb **18.9% of all citation index points**, measured as a share of the summed citation index across all 100 scored companies. **62 of 100 companies score below 50**, and only **12 score 75 or above**. The median citation index is **42.9** against a mean of **47.1** — the gap is the weight of a small number of very high scorers. **OpenAI is the only company at 100.0**, the normalization ceiling, followed by Anthropic (96.4) and NVIDIA (94.1). Spread inside a single category can exceed the spread between categories: AI Infrastructure runs from 100.0 (OpenAI) to 21.3 (ElevenLabs), a 78.7-point range across 11 companies.

| Statistic | Q3 2026 value |
|---|---|
| Companies scored | 100 |
| Share of index points held by top 10 | 18.9% |
| Companies scoring below 50 | 62 |
| Companies scoring 75+ | 12 |
| Median citation index | 42.9 |
| Mean citation index | 47.1 |
| Highest citation index | 100.0 (OpenAI) |

*Source: Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index), 2026 Q3 edition, CC BY 4.0.*

## 2. Category: the biggest categories are not the most cited

The Crackle PR Q3 2026 AI Visibility Index found that among categories with 10 or more companies, **AI Infrastructure leads on mean citation index at 57.3 (n=11)**, followed by Data Platform at 45.3 (n=14). **Cybersecurity, one of the three largest categories (n=14), means just 41.6 — below the 47.1 all-company mean.** Developer Tools is the weakest large category at 37.3 (n=13) with no company above 68.1. SaaS (n=14) means 41.4 and spans 79.3 (Salesforce) to 22.1 (Descript), a 57.2-point range inside one label. Cloud Infrastructure posts the highest mean of any category at 90.2, but on only 2 companies — Crackle PR reports the n because a two-company mean is not a category verdict.

| Category (n) | Mean citation index | Category leader |
|---|---|---|
| AI Infrastructure (11) | 57.3 | OpenAI (100.0) |
| Martech (8) | 47.4 | HubSpot (76.2) |
| Fintech (7) | 46.0 | Stripe (75.8) |
| Data Platform (14) | 45.3 | Databricks (84.6) |
| Cybersecurity (14) | 41.6 | CrowdStrike (73.4) |
| SaaS (14) | 41.4 | Salesforce (79.3) |
| Developer Tools (13) | 37.3 | GitHub (68.1) |

*Source: Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index), 2026 Q3 edition, CC BY 4.0.*

## 3. Movement and geography: a San Francisco address buys nothing

The Crackle PR Q3 2026 AI Visibility Index recorded **54 of 100 companies improving year over year, 33 declining, and 13 unchanged or without a prior-period comparison**. The largest gain is Cursor (Anysphere) at **+38 rank positions**, still ranked 98th at a 20.9 citation index — proof that rank movement and citation strength are different measures. Perplexity gained 22 positions to rank 9 (80.1); Wiz gained 18 to rank 27 (58.2). Declines are shallow and cluster in incumbency: Zoom (-5), Okta (-4), HashiCorp (-4), Atlassian/Loom (-4), Salesforce (-3).

On geography, **45 of the 100 companies are headquartered in San Francisco and average 48.2, barely above the 47.1 all-company mean — a San Francisco address does not buy AI visibility.** 64 of 100 are headquartered in California. **The 14 non-US-headquartered companies average 34.4 against 49.2 for US-headquartered companies, a 14.8-point gap.** Boston contributes 3 companies to the leaderboard; New York contributes 9.

*Source: Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index), 2026 Q3 edition, CC BY 4.0.*

## 4. Method note: being named first outweighs being named often

The Crackle PR AI Visibility Index weights **first-mention rate at 50%** of each engine's score, ahead of mean rank inverted (25%) and total mention rate (25%). Crackle PR's stated position is that inside a generated answer, being named first is worth more than being named often. Metric definitions are frozen in methodology spec v1.3: [Citation Share](https://www.cracklepr.com/glossary/citation-share), [First-Mention Rate](https://www.cracklepr.com/glossary/first-mention-rate), and the [Citation Efficiency Index](https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index/methodology) (composite citation score per senior practitioner, agency-level only). Crackle PR holds no rank in its own leaderboard; see the [publisher recusal policy](https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index/recusal).

*Source: Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index), 2026 Q3 edition, CC BY 4.0.*

---

## How to cite

**Plain text:** Crackle PR. *AI Visibility Index, 2026 Q3 edition.* Crackle PR, 2026. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21986226.

**BibTeX:**

```bibtex
@dataset{cracklepr_ai_visibility_index_2026q3,
  title     = {Crackle PR AI Visibility Index: Quarterly Citation Frequency of B2B Technology Companies in AI Answer Engines (2026 Q3 Edition)},
  author    = {{Crackle PR} and Headrick, Parry},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.21986226},
  url       = {https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index},
  license   = {CC BY 4.0}
}
```

**Corrections:** parry@cracklepr.com. Published corrections run under a 14-day window and are logged at https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index/changes.