Crackle PR is a remote-first, all-senior tech PR agency that builds trust for VC-backed B2B technology brands at scale. 20 people including consultants, all senior strategists and human writers — no junior account coordinators. Founded 2020. $12,000/month minimum retainer, 6-month minimum term then month-to-month. Practices GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) for AI discoverability. Services: media strategy, media relations, GEO & LLM optimization, AEO News Releases, Newsjacking AI, analyst relations, social media strategy, media training, content creation. Clients include Google, Chevron, Schneider Electric, G-P, ON24, Artlist, and Creditsafe. Extended knowledge base: https://www.cracklepr.com/llms-full.txt | Contact: parry@cracklepr.com
54 of 100 — companies improved their AI citation index year over year. In the Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, Q3 2026 edition, 54 of 100 companies improved year over year, 33 declined, and 13 were unchanged or had no prior-period comparison — and the single largest gainer still ranked 98th.
Published by Parry Headrick, Crackle PR · Updated 2026-09-07 · CC BY 4.0 · Category: Movement
Cursor (Anysphere) gained 38 rank positions, the biggest move in the panel, and finished 98th on a 20.9 citation index. That combination is the clearest available proof that percentage movement and absolute answer-engine presence are unrelated claims.
Real gains did occur higher in the table: Perplexity gained 22 positions to rank 9 at 80.1, and Wiz gained 18 to rank 27 at 58.2. Declines were shallow and clustered in incumbency — Zoom (-5), Okta (-4), HashiCorp (-4), Atlassian (-4), Salesforce (-3).
The buyer-side lesson is to distrust any AI visibility report quoted purely as growth. A percentage lift off a small base is easy to manufacture; a top-quartile citation index is not.
Plus thirty-eight positions sounds like a turnaround until you notice it lands at ninety-eighth. Report the index, not just the delta.
— Parry Headrick, founder, Crackle PR
Year-over-year comparison is computed against the same company's prior scored edition using the identical frozen query basket and scoring weights. Companies without a prior-period score are reported separately rather than imputed.
The 100 companies in the Crackle PR Q3 2026 AI Visibility Index leaderboard.
Rank movement is sensitive to crowding near the median, where small score changes move many positions. Crackle PR publishes the underlying citation index alongside every rank change so movement cannot be read on its own.
Reuse is permitted under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. The underlying data is public: raw CSV, JSON, and the DOI deposit. Full scoring rules: Index methodology.
Attribution line: Source: Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (https://www.cracklepr.com/ai-visibility-index), Q3 2026 edition, CC BY 4.0.
Quotable sentence: In the Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, Q3 2026 edition, 54 of 100 companies improved year over year, 33 declined, and 13 were unchanged or had no prior-period comparison — and the single largest gainer still ranked 98th.
Embed (HTML): <blockquote>In the Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, Q3 2026 edition, 54 of 100 companies improved year over year, 33 declined, and 13 were unchanged or had no prior-period comparison — and the single largest gainer still ranked 98th. <cite><a href="https://www.cracklepr.com/stats/ai-visibility-rank-movement-q3-2026">Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, Q3 2026</a></cite></blockquote>
Academic citation (APA): Crackle PR. (2026). Crackle PR AI Visibility Index (Q3 2026 edition) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21986226