Home Warranties: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which home warranty brand leads AI recommendation coverage in October 2026, and by how much?
• Which brands moved beyond normal variation this month, and in which direction?

American Home Shield led valid recommendation coverage in October 2026 at 91.5%, up from 89.7% in July 2026. The gap to the next brand stood at 14.7 percentage points, with Liberty Home Guard at 76.8% in October 2026, down from 84.6% in July 2026.

The largest coverage increase across the series came from AFC Home Warranty, which entered the tracked set in October 2026 at 48.6%. American Residential Warranty also entered at 4.9%, and Cinch Home Services rose to 61.2% in October 2026 from 55.6% in July 2026, up 5.6 points. The largest decline was AFC Home Club, which fell to 0.0% in October 2026 from 23.4% in July 2026, a drop of 23.4 points, as part of a brand-tracking adjustment explained below. Select Home Warranty fell to 30.3% from 40.2%, down 9.9 points, and Liberty Home Guard fell to 76.8% from 84.6%, down 7.8 points.

October 2026 was a mixed month. Three brands moved beyond normal variation to the upside on a year-to-date basis: AFC Home Warranty, American Residential Warranty, and Cinch Home Services. Seven brands moved beyond normal variation to the downside across the full series.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 694 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

August 2026 and September 2026 sat between these two months, with 635 and 686 qualified observations respectively. Qualified surface breadth counts the six canonical AI/search surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.

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

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many of the 800 source prompt-surface observations qualified for the public benchmark?
• What does the qualified observation count represent compared with the raw collection universe?

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. Link AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which home warranty brands lead on valid recommendation coverage, presence, and rank-one rate?
• How did 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty and the other mid-tier brands place in the October standings?

This table is the primary current-month benchmark view.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a recommendation-shaped answer.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is recommended within the top three positions.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: tone of brand mentions, from 0 (all negative) to 1 (all positive).

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which home warranty brand recorded the largest coverage increase since the July 2026 baseline?
• What drove AFC Home Club's 23.4-point decline in recommendation coverage?

AFC Home Club and AFC Home Club * reflect a brand-identity adjustment across the series. The consolidated AFC Home Club line returned in September 2026, while AFC Home Warranty entered the tracked set in October 2026. Significant prior-to-current moves also occurred in October 2026: AFC Home Warranty rose 48.6 points from September 2026, American Home Shield rose 7.1 points, American Residential Warranty rose 4.9 points, AFC Home Club fell 27.0 points, and ARW Home fell 5.7 points.

Largest Increase: AFC Home Warranty

AFC Home Warranty entered the tracked set in October 2026 at 48.6% valid recommendation coverage, up from 0.0% in July 2026. The brand's presence rate stood at 52.2% in October 2026, and its top-three rate reached 30.1%. Its rank-one rate was 2.7%, and it recorded a net sentiment of 1.0.

Largest Decline: AFC Home Club

AFC Home Club fell to 0.0% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026 from 23.4% in July 2026, a drop of 23.4 points. The brand's coverage fell from its September 2026 reading of 27.0% to 0.0% in October, and its presence rate fell to 0.0% as part of the brand-identity adjustment described above. Select Home Warranty and Choice Home Warranty also recorded significant declines across the full series, each falling in every month since July 2026. Liberty Home Guard also recorded a significant decline from baseline to current, though its coverage ticked up from September to October.

Category Leader: American Home Shield

American Home Shield led valid recommendation coverage at 91.5% in October 2026, up from 89.7% in July 2026. The brand recorded the highest rank-one rate in the category at 65.1%, up 6.1 points from 59.0% in July 2026, and appeared in 98.9% of qualified observations. Liberty Home Guard remained the second-ranked brand at 76.8%.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brands convert top-three placements into first-position recommendations most often?
• How did Liberty Home Guard's rank-one rate compare with American Home Shield and Cinch Home Services?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. American Home Shield held the strongest placement, with a 65.1% rank-one rate in October 2026, while Liberty Home Guard's top-three rate was 53.8%, but its rank-one rate was only 12.7%.

Close coverage can still hide very different first-position rates. American Home Shield converted most of its top-three placements into first position, while Liberty Home Guard and Cinch Home Services saw a larger share land in second or third place.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

All qualified observations in July and October 2026 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 American Home Shield held the coverage lead across every measurement period?
• What did the leader's coverage look like across the July through October 2026 readings?

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, not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

This public benchmark does not measure:

• Market share or sales attributable to AI recommendations.
• Every possible AI response or surface beyond the six canonical families.
• Organic-search ranking or non-AI discovery channels.
• Social media mention volume or sentiment outside AI answer surfaces.
• Private or sponsored channels, including brand-managed AI experiences.
• Causality from a metric movement alone; the benchmark records the change, not its cause.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains were cited most often across AI platform responses in October 2026?
• Which source types dominate AI citations, and how concentrated are they?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, the benchmark recorded 5,642 citations drawn from 353 unique domains.

Citations are moderately concentrated: the top 10 domains account for roughly 58 percent of all citations, while the remaining 343 domains share the rest. One tracked brand's own domain appears in the top 10, ahs.com at rank 8. Consumer review and personal-finance outlets dominate the list, with consumeraffairs.com, nerdwallet.com, marketwatch.com, cnbc.com, and money.com together representing a substantial share, alongside home-improvement publisher thisoldhouse.com and community forum reddit.com. Official brand domains are otherwise largely absent, suggesting that third-party editorial and review sources shape AI recommendations more heavily than company-controlled content.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how AI assistants surface and recommend brands across six canonical AI/search surface families: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. It is published monthly as a neutral industry benchmark.

Research links:

• 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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