Top Brands Methodology
This page explains how the rankings published under /top-brands are produced, what they represent, and what they explicitly do not represent. It is the authoritative source for the Top Brands ranking method.
Findable's product measurement methodology is a separate document: /methodology.
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What a Top Brands page is
Each Top Brands page records which businesses four AI assistants named when asked one buyer-style question about a single industry in a single city. It is a record of AI answers, published so anyone can see which businesses AI systems currently surface in that market.
It is not a review site, a directory listing, or an assessment of the quality of any business.
How a ranking is produced
- One buyer-style question is written for the industry and city — for example, asking which providers in that industry are most recommended in that city, and requesting names and locations.
- The same question is asked of each monitored AI system: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity.
- Every business named in each answer is recorded, along with the position it appeared in and a short excerpt of the answer.
- For each business and each system, the outcome is recorded as mentioned, not mentioned, or no data where that system returned no usable answer.
- The recorded businesses are ordered by the rules below, the top ten are shown in the main table, and the remaining businesses that were named by at least one system are listed beneath it.
- The result is written to a published page carrying the date the answers were collected.
How businesses are ordered
Ordering is mechanical. No editorial judgement, payment or relationship affects position.
| Order applied | Rule |
|---|---|
| 1 | How many of the four monitored AI systems mentioned the business, highest first. |
| 2 | The earliest position the business reached in any of those answers, earliest first. |
| 3 | How many systems placed the business in the first three names of their answer, highest first. |
| 4 | A fixed tie-break so businesses that are equal on all of the above always render in the same order. |
The first rule does most of the work: a business named by all four AI systems ranks above a business named by three, regardless of how prominently either was described. Breadth of agreement across systems is treated as the strongest available signal, because a single system naming a business first may simply reflect that system's own sources.
What the evidence column shows
Each ranked business lists, per AI system, whether it was mentioned and, where available, an excerpt from the answer in which it was named. Excerpts are quoted from the AI answer as recorded; they are the AI system's wording, not Findable's assessment and not the business's own description.
Freshness and updates
Every Top Brands page is a static snapshot. It reflects the answers collected on the date shown on the page and is not regenerated automatically. There is no refresh cadence, no live feed and no continuous monitoring behind these pages. If the AI systems change their answers tomorrow, the published page does not change with them.
Coverage is limited to the industry and city combinations published on /top-brands. A market that is not listed has not been observed.
What a Top Brands ranking is not
- Not the AI Visibility Score. The AI Visibility Score is a separate Findable metric for an individual brand's presence across its own tested prompt set. Top Brands ordering does not use it. See /guides/ai-visibility-score.
- Not an endorsement. Inclusion means AI systems named the business, not that Findable recommends it.
- Not paid placement. Position cannot be bought, and no business is excluded for declining to work with Findable.
- Not a quality rating. No reviews, credentials, pricing or service outcomes are evaluated.
- Not exhaustive. A business absent from a page was not named by the monitored systems in response to that one question — which is not evidence that the business is unsuitable, or even that it would be absent from a differently worded question.
Corrections and removal requests
Findable publishes what the AI systems returned. If a page contains a factual error about a business — a wrong name, a wrong location, or a mismatched excerpt — or if a business would like its entry reviewed, use the contact form at /contact.
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