Figure from the Q3 2026 edition · the current Index edition is Q4 2026 · see it here
41.6
mean citation index for cybersecurity companies vs 47.1 panel mean
Cybersecurity is one of the largest categories and one of the least cited
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, the 14 cybersecurity companies scored averaged a 41.6 citation index — 5.5 points below the 47.1 all-company mean — despite cybersecurity being one of the three largest categories in the panel.
Category size and category citation strength are not the same thing. Cybersecurity ties for the largest label in the Q3 panel at 14 companies, and still means below the panel average, with CrowdStrike (73.4) the only clear category anchor.
AI Infrastructure, by contrast, leads every category with 10 or more companies at a 57.3 mean on 11 companies. Developer Tools is the weakest large category at 37.3 with no company above 68.1.
For a security vendor, the practical implication is that competitive noise does not translate into answer-engine presence. Crowded categories generate more coverage volume and more interchangeable coverage, and interchangeable coverage is exactly what answer engines compress away.
Q3 2026 mean citation index by category
| 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) |
“In a crowded category, more coverage is not more visibility. Answer engines deduplicate sameness, and most security messaging is the same message.”
How it was measured
Category labels were assigned per company before scoring and frozen with the edition. Category means are unweighted averages of the normalized 0–100 citation index within each label; Crackle PR reports n alongside every category mean and does not treat categories with fewer than 10 companies as verdicts.
Denominator
The 100 companies in the Crackle PR Q3 2026 AI Visibility Index leaderboard.
What this number does not prove
Single-label categorization forces multi-product companies into one bucket. Spread inside a category can exceed the spread between categories — SaaS spans 79.3 to 22.1 — so a category mean describes the label, not any individual company in it.
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, the 14 cybersecurity companies scored averaged a 41.6 citation index — 5.5 points below the 47.1 all-company mean — despite cybersecurity being one of the three largest categories in the panel.Embed (HTML)
<blockquote>In the Crackle PR AI Visibility Index, Q3 2026 edition, the 14 cybersecurity companies scored averaged a 41.6 citation index — 5.5 points below the 47.1 all-company mean — despite cybersecurity being one of the three largest categories in the panel. <cite><a href="https://www.cracklepr.com/stats/cybersecurity-ai-citation-gap">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.
- →Cybersecurity PR agencyCrackle PR's security practice and named client outcomes.
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