Inaugural SearchScore.AI Discovery Index benchmarks 2,981 brands across 15+ industries, highlighting AI Visibility as the next frontier of digital brand discovery
India, 80.7% of brands operating in the Indian market are yet to achieve High AI Visibility, according to The State of AI Discovery in India (Q1 FY2026–27), the inaugural SearchScore.AI Discovery Index released by DareAISearch.
The benchmark study analysed 2,981 brands across 15+ industries using 59,620 AI prompts to understand how brands are discovered, cited and recommended across leading AI-powered search platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The report found that only 19.3% of brands currently achieve High AI Visibility, while 80.7% remain below the benchmark, highlighting a significant opportunity for businesses as consumers increasingly rely on AI to compare products, evaluate services and recommend brands before making purchase decisions.
The findings reflect a broader shift from traditional search to AI-powered discovery, where AI is evolving from an information retrieval tool into a trusted decision-making layer. As a result, AI Visibility is emerging as a critical business metric alongside traditional search performance and brand awareness.
Key findings of the report include:
- Only 19.3% of brands currently achieve High AI Visibility.
- AI recommendations are increasingly concentrated among stronger brands.
- Trusted digital ecosystems play a growing role in shaping AI recommendations.
- AI Visibility is not one-size-fits-all and varies significantly across industries.
- AI Visibility is emerging as a strategic business metric.
The study also found that brands recorded an average AI Visibility Score of 30/100, while India’s AI Discovery Pulse remains in the “Early Stage,” indicating that AI Visibility is still an emerging competitive differentiator rather than an established market standard.
Commenting on the findings, Siddhartha Vanvani, Founder & CEO, DareAISearch, said, “Consumers are increasingly asking AI to compare products, evaluate services and recommend brands before making decisions. As AI becomes a trusted decision-making layer, businesses need to optimise not only for search engines but also for AI recommendations. The SearchScore.AI Discovery Index provides organisations with a benchmark to measure their AI Visibility and identify opportunities to strengthen their digital authority in an AI-first world.”
The report also found that AI recommendations increasingly extend beyond owned websites, with trusted third-party ecosystems playing a critical role. Publishers account for 30% of AI citations, followed by communities and user-generated content (25%), video platforms (20%), marketplaces (15%) and reference sources (10%).
To strengthen AI Visibility, the report recommends that organisations focus on four strategic priorities:
- Understanding consumer intent
- Building digital authority
- Strengthening information quality
- Expanding citation footprints across trusted digital ecosystems
