Emotional Support Animal Services: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand leads the emotional support animal services category in valid recommendation coverage?
• Which brand recorded the largest coverage decline in October 2026, and how large was it?

Pettable leads the category in valid recommendation coverage at 65.9% in October 2026, ahead of ESA Doctors at 40.1%, a gap of 25.8 points. US Service Animals recorded the largest coverage increase in the category, rising from 7.1% in September 2026 to 11.1% in October 2026, a gain of 4.0 points, though the movement remains within normal month-to-month variation. CertaPet recorded the largest coverage decline, falling from 44.4% in September 2026 to 36.1% in October 2026, a drop of 8.3 points — the only movement in the category beyond normal variation. The category leader remained stable.

The benchmark began with 701 prompt-surface observations in October 2026 and produced 252 qualified observations after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the canonical AI surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. The maximum is six.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Emotional Support Animal Services

Research Scope and Qualification

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. For methodology details, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• How much does Pettable's recommendation coverage lead the rest of the category?
• How do presence, valid recommendation coverage, and rank-one rate differ across the tracked ESA brands?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears at all, whether recommended or not.
• Valid recommendation coverage is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation context. This is the primary benchmark metric.
• Top-three rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears among the top three recommendations.
• Rank-one rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment is the balance of positive and negative mentions among all brand mentions.

For formulas and denominator rules, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions.

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which ESA brand's coverage decline fell outside normal month-to-month variation?
• What does CertaPet's coverage loss mean for its recommendation position relative to Pettable?
• Did US Service Animals' coverage gain represent a trend or normal variation?

Largest Increase: US Service Animals

US Service Animals recorded the largest coverage increase in the category, rising from 7.1% in September 2026 to 11.1% in October 2026, a gain of 4.0 points. The brand's top-three rate also rose from 5.5% to 9.1%, and its presence rate increased from 24.4% to 28.2%. Net sentiment moved from 0.3 to 0.4. The movement remains within normal month-to-month variation and is not yet a trend.

Largest Decline: CertaPet

CertaPet held 52.8% presence and 36.1% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, with a 32.5% top-three rate and a 5.2% rank-one rate. This followed the single largest coverage decline in the category: down 8.3 points from 44.4% in September 2026 — the only movement in the category beyond normal variation. Presence rate declined from 64.6% to 52.8%, and top-three rate fell from 41.2% to 32.5%. Rank-one rate held at 5.2%, and net sentiment held at 0.7.

Pettable records 65.9% valid recommendation coverage and a 45.6% rank-one rate, while CertaPet stands at 36.1% coverage and 5.2% rank-one — a 29.8-point coverage gap and a 40.4-point rank-one gap. The more important issue is what that gap means for CertaPet's recommendation position: CertaPet is still visible in roughly half of qualified observations, but that presence is converting into first-choice recommendations at a far lower rate than the category leader, and coverage itself is now moving in the wrong direction while every other tracked brand except the leader either rose or held steady. A single-month drop of this size, isolated to one brand, is a measurable competitive issue that the category average does not explain.

Highest-priority diagnostic: What changed in CertaPet's AI-surface presence, citation environment, or answer content between September and October 2026 that caused an 8.3-point coverage decline while presence-to-recommendation conversion (reflected in the 5.2% rank-one rate) remained flat and well below Pettable's?

Category Leader: Pettable

Pettable remained the category leader in October 2026 with 65.9% valid recommendation coverage, up 2.6 points from 63.3% in September 2026. The brand's top-three rate held at 57.9%, and its rank-one rate was 45.6%, down 1.3 points from 46.9%. Presence rate remained at 93.2%. Net sentiment held at 0.7. The leader position was stable across both months.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Why can two ESA brands with similar recommendation coverage have such different first-position rates?
• Where did CertaPet lose top-three placement ground relative to its closest coverage peer?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. The table below shows top-three and rank-one rates for the leading brands.

ESA Doctors and CertaPet hold close coverage figures, at 40.1% and 36.1% respectively, yet their rank-one rates are nearly identical at 5.2%, showing that similar coverage can still mask different first-position rates. CertaPet's top-three rate fell from 41.2% to 32.5% between September and October, a decline not mirrored by ESA Doctors over the same period, meaning CertaPet is losing placement ground even relative to its closest coverage peer.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent classes had qualified observations in the emotional support animal services benchmark?
• What gaps remain in the buyer-intent classes this benchmark currently measures?

All qualified observations fell into the brand recommendation class in October 2026.

The current public series measures brand recommendation discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the pricing and value or multi-brand comparison classes.

Historical Measurement Record

Questions This Section Answers

• Does the available history support a trend in ESA recommendation coverage or only a single month of movement?

Evidence and Source Layer

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, AI/search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources. Source presence is evidence about the information environment. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

• Does not measure market share or attributable sales.
• Does not capture every possible AI response.
• Does not measure organic-search ranking.
• Does not measure social mention volume.
• Does not include private or sponsored channels.
• Does not establish causality from a metric movement alone.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often across AI platform responses about emotional support animal services?
• Which third-party trust sources appear prominently alongside official brand domains in the citation environment?
• Do CertaPet's citations explain its recommendation coverage decline?

The benchmark observed 5,292 citations across all AI platform responses in October 2026, drawn from 876 unique domains.

Citations are moderately concentrated: the top 10 domains account for roughly 48.8% of all citations, with pettable.com alone capturing 17.6%. Three tracked brand domains appear in the top 10: pettable.com, certapet.com, and esadoctors.com. Review and consumer-protection sources, including reddit.com, consumeraffairs.com, and bbb.org, also feature prominently, suggesting that third-party trust signals shape the citation environment alongside official brand sites. CertaPet's own domain remains the third most-cited source in the category at 4.3% share, which indicates that the citation decline alone does not fully account for CertaPet's coverage drop — the diagnostic question above remains open.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how AI assistants and search surfaces recommend brands within a vertical. It measures presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment across six canonical AI surface families, using a qualified observation set as the public denominator. The benchmark is updated monthly and retains historical measurements on the same report URL.

• AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Research Standards
• Modeled AI Visibility Authority Value

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