NEW YORK, Aug. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Profound today released the Summer 2026 Profound Index Report, finding that a brand’s AI Search leadership in the U.S. provides little indication of how it will rank in Europe. Across industries with multi-region data, 80% produced an EMEA leader that had never ranked first in the U.S.
The Profound Index is the definitive leaderboard for AI Search, powered by more than 1.9 billion real user conversations across more than 50 industries and all major Answer Engines. Each quarter, Profound analyzes this data to understand how brands rank in AI-generated answers, which sources influence those answers and how changes to AI models affect brand visibility.
“This quarter’s Index makes clear that AI visibility isn’t one number. It shifts by region, and the sources behind each answer can shift even faster,” said Brandon Punturo, Data Scientist at Profound. “Marketers need to understand their visibility market by market, and the sources driving it.”
The Summer 2026 Profound Index highlights four findings about how geography and model updates are influencing brand visibility and the sources that shape AI-generated answers:
Winning the answer in the U.S. means nothing for Europe
In 24 of the 30 industries with cross-market data in the Index, at least one European market had a No. 1 brand that ranked outside the U.S. top five. Airlines, banking, grocery, insurance, gyms and real estate showed some of the clearest local patterns.
Across all multi-region industries, 80% produced an EMEA winner that the U.S. had never seen at the top. For marketers operating internationally, the findings show that U.S. AI visibility provides little indication of where a brand will rank in individual European markets.
Only seven global brands led across markets
Very few brands maintained leadership across countries. Toyota, Shell and McDonald’s ranked first in every available market in their respective industries, while IKEA, Marriott, Skyscanner and Amazon demonstrated broad but not universal reach.
Every other category was decided locally. For marketers, building AI visibility in Europe requires local content, local citations and local earned media.
Local markets cited local sources, by a wide margin
The geographic differences extended beyond the brands appearing in AI answers to the sources Answer Engines used to produce them.
In markets where a net-new regional brand led, country-specific domains such as .fr, .de and .co.uk accounted for between 46% and 59% of all citations, depending on the model. In markets where no local brand led, that share was 12 to 17 percentage points lower.
For marketers, the data shows that translation alone does not move AI visibility across borders. Building visibility in individual European markets requires earning authority within the local sources Answer Engines rely on.
June model updates rebuilt the source layer without changing brand leaderboards
Following a ChatGPT update on June 24, citations per answer fell 10.4%, while unique cited domains dropped across 56 of 58 industries.
Brand rankings remained considerably more stable. Nine of the top ten leading brands in the median industry retained their positions, even as roughly three of every ten top-cited domains turned over.
The brand ranking remained stable while the evidence underneath it changed. For marketers, the source layer is more volatile than the brand layer, meaning a brand can hold its AI Search rank while losing the publications and pages that previously supported it.
The Summer 2026 Profound Index Report is now available.
The Profound Index is the definitive leaderboard for AI Search, powered by real user conversations spanning more than 50 industries across major Answer Engines. It gives marketers a view into which brands lead AI Search, the sources influencing their visibility and how performance changes across markets and models.
About Profound
Profound is the fastest growing AI marketing platform used by 15% of the Fortune 500 like Comcast, Walmart, and U.S. Bank, and innovators like Ramp, MongoDB, and Figma. It’s the workbench where marketers research, write, report, and collaborate with Profound’s AI Marketer to get their brand chosen by the Answer Engines consumers increasingly rely on. Built on 2B+ real user prompts and growing, Profound shows what people ask AI and what the models say back. Profound’s AI Marketer proactively pairs that data with your business context to surface opportunities, deploy Agents, and measure the impact to improve with every use. Learn more at TryProfound.com.
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