Which companies does AI recommend, and why? (2026)
Asked who to hire or what something costs, Claude searched the web 84% of the time and cited small firms' own sites far more than review sites or big brands. Asked how to do something, it searched 16% of the time, based on 132 answers I logged in October and November 2026.
Two questions from the test, as they happened
How much does a fractional RevOps consultant cost per month?
fractional RevOps consultant cost per month 2026
Most fractional RevOps consultants charge about $3,000 to $15,000 a month. Many small and mid-size companies end up paying $5,000 to $10,000 ...
- opsethic.com
- ven.studio
- mergeyourdata.com
- webtonic.io
- mountainise.com
How do I clean up duplicate records in my CRM?
Cleaning up duplicates works best as a step-by-step process ... Back up first. Export your contacts, companies and deals before you change anything. Merges usually can't be undone ...
No search. No sources.
Ask it about your company
Open a new chat in Claude or ChatGPT with web search on. Paste each one with your own words in the brackets, and run it 3 times; the answers change from run to run.
Who are the best [your service] providers for [the kind of company you sell to] in [your region]? Name specific companies and link their sites.
How much does [your service] cost in 2026?
What do you know about [your company name]? Where did you find it?
For each answer, write down whether you're named, whether your site is linked, and which sites it cites instead. That last list is your real competition in AI search.
What it suggests
Answer the questions it searches for. A page that names what you do, who it's for and what it costs is the kind it reads.
Title the page like the short search. “How much does X cost? (2026)” matches what it types; a clever headline doesn't.
Your own site counts more than a directory listing. That's one sample in one field, so treat it as a lead to test, not a law.
All the numbers 132 answers
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Who-to-hire questions that searched | 87% (46 of 53) |
| Cost and should-I questions that searched | 80% (33 of 41) |
| How-to questions that searched | 16% (6 of 38) |
| Words in the question / in its first search | 12.2 / 7.3 |
| First searches that added the year | 52% (44 of 85) |
| Searches / sites read / sites cited, per answer | 1.3 / 10.1 / 5.5 |
| Citations / distinct sites / cited once | 469 / 176 / 81 |
| Consultancy / vendor / guide / marketplace share | 56% / 34% / 8% / 2% |
| Clutch, Reddit, LinkedIn, Forbes, Gartner citations | 0 |
How this was measured
25 questions a B2B buyer asks about sales operations, CRM and call scoring, put to Claude (claude-opus-5-5) through its API with web search on, on 3 days between 2026-10-20 and 2026-11-03. Some questions were asked up to 3 times, so the 132 answers overlap and are not 132 independent tests. Each answer's searches, the sites it read and the sites it cited were logged by code; each site's type comes from how its own home page describes it. Questions that named a specific company were left out. ChatGPT and Perplexity weren't part of this run. The two exchanges above are condensed from logged answers; an ellipsis marks where text was cut.
Free to quote and reuse, with a link to this page. Suggested citation: Outblox, Which companies does AI recommend, November 2026, outblox.com/ai-search-recommendations. Every cited site with its count is in the CSV.