Gap Insurance: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand leads the gap insurance category in valid recommendation coverage, and by how much?
• What happened to recommendation coverage across the category in October 2026?

In October 2026, USAA held the category lead in valid recommendation coverage at 72.2%, ahead of State Farm at 71.4%, a gap of 0.8 percentage points. This is the highest-citation month in the four-month series, with 6,774 citations observed across 763 unique domains.

The largest baseline-to-current increase was Progressive, which rose 62.6 percentage points from 0.0% in July 2026 to 62.6% in October 2026. The largest baseline-to-current decline was Progressive RV Insurance, down 39.2 percentage points from 39.2% in July 2026 to 0.0% in October 2026.

October 2026 reversed the August-to-September softening across most of the category. Eight of the ten baseline brands recorded significant month-over-month increases, including State Farm (up 16.8 points), USAA (up 14.3 points), Travelers (up 13.6 points), Allstate (up 11.3 points), Erie Insurance (up 7.7 points), Farmers (up 7.4 points), Liberty Mutual (up 6.6 points), and American Family Insurance (up 5.7 points). Nationwide's month-over-month change was not significant, and Progressive RV Insurance recorded a significant month-over-month decline. State Farm also extended its gains in top-three and rank-one placement (see Placement Snapshot below).

The benchmark processed 800 source prompt-surface observations in each month, producing 385 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

August 2026 and September 2026 sat between these endpoints, with 302 and 416 qualified observations respectively.

Qualified surface breadth counts the canonical AI surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. All six families were represented in each month of the series.

The brand list held at 10 tracked brands in each month, though the composition shifted. July 2026 and September 2026 tracked American Family Insurance and Progressive RV Insurance as standalone entities; August 2026 and October 2026 tracked Progressive under that name. These naming shifts affect direct comparisons; see the Recommendation Coverage Movement section.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Gap Insurance

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many prompts survive qualification into the public gap insurance benchmark?
• Why are brand-level percentages based on qualified observations rather than the raw collection?

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. The table below shows how observations were processed in the baseline month and the current month.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. See the AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology for full details.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which gap insurance brands have the highest valid recommendation coverage?
• How do State Farm's top-three and rank-one rates compare with its coverage rank?

This table is the primary current-month benchmark view, sorted by valid recommendation coverage.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate is the share of qualified observations in which the brand is mentioned at all.
• Valid recommendation coverage is the share of qualified observations in which the brand receives a valid recommendation.
• Top-three rate is the share of qualified observations in which the brand appears among the top three recommended options.
• Rank-one rate is the share of qualified observations in which the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment scores the tone of brand mentions on a scale from negative to positive.

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which gap insurance brands gained or lost the most recommendation coverage since July 2026?
• How do the Progressive and Progressive RV Insurance naming changes affect baseline comparisons?
• Why do USAA and State Farm differ on first-position recommendations despite similar coverage?

The table lists every entity tracked in the series. American Family appears with a current and baseline figure of 0.0% because it was tracked only in August 2026 under that name; the entity American Family Insurance carries the multi-month series. Progressive and Progressive RV Insurance are separate tracked entities whose measurements alternate across the series, which compresses direct baseline-to-current comparison for those two rows.

Largest Increase: Progressive

Progressive rose 62.6 percentage points from 0.0% in July 2026 to 62.6% in October 2026, matching its August 2026 level of 61.9%. The brand was not measured as "Progressive" in July 2026 or September 2026, so its baseline-to-current movement reflects the naming shift across the series. Within October 2026, Progressive recorded 241 valid recommendations across the 385 qualified observations, alongside a 34.8% top-three rate and 0.8% rank-one rate.

Largest Decline: Progressive RV Insurance

Progressive RV Insurance fell 39.2 percentage points from 39.2% in July 2026 to 0.0% in October 2026. The brand was tracked in July 2026 at 39.2% and in September 2026 at 21.4%; its October 2026 entity value is 0.0%. As with Progressive, this movement partly reflects the alternating entity tracking across the series rather than a like-for-like coverage change within a single named entity.

Category Leader: USAA

USAA led the benchmark with 72.2% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, down slightly from 74.1% in July 2026. The gap to State Farm, the current second-place brand, was 0.8 percentage points. State Farm's top-three rate of 48.3% and rank-one rate of 33.0% both exceed USAA's figures in October 2026 (28.8% and 13.8% respectively). State Farm recorded the larger rank-one rate increase between the two leading brands, up 7.5 percentage points from 25.5% in July 2026, while USAA's rank-one rate rose 5.7 percentage points over the same period, from 8.1% to 13.8%. Coverage proximity between the two brands does not translate to parity in first-position recommendations.

Erie Insurance and Nationwide are the only other brands, besides Progressive RV Insurance, classified as significant decliners across the baseline-to-current window, down 6.8 points and 12.5 points respectively in valid recommendation coverage since July 2026.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Which gap insurance brand converts the most qualified observations into top-three placements?
• How much do placement rates differ between USAA, State Farm, and Travelers?

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

State Farm leads all tracked brands in first-position recommendation rates, converting 48.3% of qualified observations into top-three placements and 33.0% into rank-one placements. This is a substantial margin over the coverage leader, USAA. Close coverage can still hide different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

All qualified observations in all four months fell into the Brand Recommendation class.

The current public series measures brand-recommendation discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the Pricing & Value or Multi-Brand Comparison classes.

Historical Measurement Record

Questions This Section Answers

• Has the gap insurance benchmark leader been stable across the four-month series?
• Which month produced the largest coverage movement, and for which brand?

This is an evergreen benchmark URL. New measurements are added to the same report.

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

This public benchmark does not measure market share, attributable sales, every possible AI response, organic-search ranking, social mention volume, or private/sponsored channels. A metric movement alone does not establish causality. The benchmark cannot distinguish platform behavior from measurement effects, and it does not establish why any brand's standing moved.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often in gap insurance AI recommendations?
• What types of sources dominate the citation layer, and are any brand-owned domains included?

Across the October 2026 measurement, 6,774 citations were observed across 763 unique domains.

Citations are distributed across a broad set of sources, with the top 10 domains accounting for roughly 41.2% of total citations and the remaining 59.8% split across 753 other domains. No tracked brand's own domain appears in the top 10 list. The sources that dominate are third-party review and comparison sites (nerdwallet.com, thezebra.com, insurify.com), general personal-finance publishers (usnews.com, marketwatch.com, cnbc.com), and broad consumer destinations (google.com, youtube.com).

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index is a neutral, industry-level benchmark tracking how AI and search surfaces recommend brands across canonical surface families. All figures are drawn from audited monthly measurement capsules. Each month is measured independently, and new measurements are added to this report over time.

• 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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