Home Equity Loans: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand leads the Home Equity Loans benchmark in recommendation coverage?
• Which brands recorded coverage gains beyond normal month-to-month variation?
• How did the Bank of America and U.S. Bank naming shifts affect comparability?

Navy Federal Credit Union leads the Home Equity Loans benchmark with 72.8% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, up from 66.0% in August 2026. The gap to the next brand is narrow: Figure recorded 58.2% in October 2026, up from 53.0% in August 2026, a gap of 14.6 percentage points between the top two brands.

The largest coverage increase this month came from Aven, which rose from 31.9% in September 2026 to 40.7% in October 2026, up 8.8 points beyond normal month-to-month variation, and from 31.1% in August 2026 to 40.7% in October 2026, up 9.6 points. Spring EQ also recorded a gain beyond normal month-to-month variation, moving from 4.1% in September 2026 to 9.1% in October 2026, up 5.0 points, and from 3.9% in August 2026 to 9.1% in October 2026, up 5.2 points.

Category composition changed this month: Bank of America, which led the benchmark in August 2026 at 66.3% and September 2026 at 69.6%, does not appear under that name in October 2026. Bank of America Corp. entered the benchmark in October 2026 at 55.5% valid recommendation coverage. Similarly, U.S. Bank, tracked at 31.1% in August 2026 and 35.7% in September 2026, does not appear under that name in October 2026; U.S. Bancorp entered at 23.6%. These naming shifts affect the comparability of those brands' series across the full baseline-to-current period.

Bank of America Corp. and U.S. Bancorp both show increases beyond normal month-to-month variation from their first appearance, while Bank of America and U.S. Bank show declines beyond normal month-to-month variation to zero. These movements reflect the naming transition rather than organic coverage changes for the same entity.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 364 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification, up from 338 in August 2026.

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 benchmark reached the full breadth of six families in both August and October 2026. September 2026, the intermediate month, recorded 339 qualified observations and a recommendation-shaped answer share of 46.9%.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Home Equity Loans

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• Why is the qualified benchmark denominator smaller than the raw collection?
• Which observations count toward brand-level percentages?

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design.

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

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which home equity lenders lead the October 2026 standings by valid recommendation coverage?
• How do presence rate, top-three rate, and rank-one rate differ across the tracked brands?

This table is the primary current-month benchmark view, sorted by valid recommendation coverage. Figures are for October 2026.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in any form.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand receives a valid recommendation, the primary benchmark metric.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears among the top three recommendations.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears as the very first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative mentions divided by total mentions, on a scale from -1 to 1.

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand posted the largest coverage increase since baseline?
• Why did Bank of America and U.S. Bank appear to drop to zero?
• Did any brands decline for reasons other than the naming transition?

Largest Increase: Aven

Aven moved from 31.9% valid recommendation coverage in September 2026 to 40.7% in October 2026, up 8.8 points, an increase beyond normal month-to-month variation. Across the full series, Aven rose from 31.1% in August 2026 to 40.7% in October 2026, up 9.6 points. The brand recorded 108 valid recommendations in September 2026 and 148 in October 2026. Its top-three rate rose from 9.1% in September 2026 to 23.6% in October 2026, and its rank-one rate rose from 3.8% to 12.4% over the same period.

Largest Decline: Bank of America

Bank of America recorded 66.3% valid recommendation coverage in August 2026 and 69.6% in September 2026 but does not appear under that name in October 2026. This reflects the brand appearing under the name Bank of America Corp. in the current month rather than a change in underlying recommendation behavior for the same entity.

Category Leader: Navy Federal Credit Union

Navy Federal Credit Union leads the category with 72.8% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, up from 66.0% in August 2026. The brand recorded 230 valid recommendations in September 2026 and 265 in October 2026. Its top-three rate rose from 27.2% in August 2026 to 28.0% in October 2026, and its rank-one rate rose from 2.1% to 3.6% over the same period. The leader position has been stable across the series.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand appears first most often despite not leading in coverage?
• How can similar coverage rates hide different first-position rates?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Bank of America Corp. leads rank-one placement at 21.4%, appearing first in more than one in five qualified observations, despite holding the third-highest coverage rate. Navy Federal Credit Union holds the highest coverage but a much lower rank-one rate.

Similar coverage can hide very different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

All 364 qualified observations in October 2026 fell into the Brand Recommendation class, as did all 338 qualified observations in August 2026.

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

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 or sales attribution
• Every possible AI response across all tools and configurations
• Organic-search ranking performance
• Social media mention volume
• Private or sponsored channels (such as closed enterprise AI deployments)
• Causality from a metric movement alone

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often across AI platform responses?
• Which tracked brand domain appears in the top 10 cited sources?
• How concentrated are citations across the leading domains?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, 6,087 citations were observed referencing 900 unique domains.

Citations are moderately distributed: the top domain, bankrate.com, accounts for 9.4% of all citations, and the top 10 domains together represent roughly 37% of the 6,087 citations observed. Navy Federal Credit Union's own domain (navyfederal.org) appears at rank 6 with 192 citations, making it the only tracked brand domain in the top 10. Review and comparison sites (bankrate.com, nerdwallet.com, themortgagereports.com, credible.com) dominate the list, alongside mainstream financial news outlets (cnbc.com, finance.yahoo.com, forbes.com, money.com) and one government-adjacent search domain (google.com).

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index benchmarks how AI search and assistant surfaces present brands in a given category, based on a defined set of research questions and public prompt-surface observations. The benchmark tracks presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment as distinct signals. New measurements are added to the same evergreen report so the series builds 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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