Figure from the Q3 2026 edition · the current Index edition is Q4 2026 · see it here
54 of 100
companies improved their AI citation index year over year
Rank movement and citation strength are different measures
Published by Parry Headrick · Updated Sep 7, 2026 · CC BY 4.0
The finding, verbatim
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.
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.”
How it was measured
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.
Denominator
The 100 companies in the Crackle PR Q3 2026 AI Visibility Index leaderboard.
What this number does not prove
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.
Cite this statistic
Reuse is permitted under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. The underlying data is public: raw CSV, JSON, and the DOI deposit.
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.21986226Full scoring rules, weights, and margin of error: Index methodology.
Go deeper
- →AI Visibility IndexThe full leaderboard, dataset, and quarterly editions.
- →Index methodologyQuery basket, scoring weights, and margin of error.
- →Publisher recusal policyWhy Crackle PR holds no rank in its own leaderboard.
- →AI visibility scoreHow Crackle PR scores a single company's answer-engine presence.
More statistics from this edition
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