Kitchen & Bathroom Fixtures: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Kohler leads the October 2026 benchmark with a valid recommendation coverage of 78.0%, followed by Delta Faucet at 70.1%, a gap of 7.9 percentage points between the leader and the next brand. October 2026 was a quiet month at the category level: no tracked brand recorded a significant rise or decline in valid recommendation coverage, and every brand's coverage change fell within normal month-to-month variation. The largest coverage increase was DreamLine, which moved from 8.2% in September 2026 to 8.8% in October 2026, up 0.6 points. The largest coverage decline was American Standard, which moved from 40.6% in September 2026 to 36.9% in October 2026, down 3.7 points. Across the full baseline-to-current series, coverage was broadly steady, with seven brands recording small declines and two brands recording small increases, none of them beyond normal variation.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 628 after qualification in October 2026, down from 638 in September 2026.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the number of canonical AI surface families with at least one qualified observation in the month. The six families are ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, and all six were represented in both months.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Kitchen & Bathroom Fixtures

Research Scope and Qualification

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. The table below shows how the October 2026 observation set was built from the collection.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. For the full stage-by-stage qualification rules, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which kitchen and bathroom fixture brands lead the October 2026 AI recommendation standings?
• How do presence rate, valid recommendation coverage, and rank-one rate differ across the tracked brands?
• Why can a brand with high presence still have low valid recommendation coverage?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: the share of qualified observations in which the brand is mentioned at all, whether or not it is recommended.
• Valid recommendation coverage: the share of qualified observations in which the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist. This is the primary benchmark metric.
• Top-three rate: the share of qualified observations in which the brand is placed among the first three recommendations.
• Rank-one rate: the share of qualified observations in which the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: how positively the brand is described across the mentions it receives, 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

• Did any kitchen and bathroom fixture brand move significantly in recommendation coverage this month?
• Which brand recorded the largest coverage gain, and which recorded the largest decline?
• What do VIGO's movement and gap to the category leader say about its recommendation position?

September 2026 is the only prior month in the comparable series, so each brand's movement since baseline is also its month-over-month change. No brand moved beyond normal month-to-month variation.

Category Leader: Kohler

Kohler remained the category leader in October 2026, with valid recommendation coverage of 78.0%, down 0.8 points from 78.8% in September 2026. Its top-three rate held at 68.2% in October 2026, down 0.8 points from 69.0% in September 2026, and its rank-one rate was 16.1% in October 2026, down 2.5 points from 18.6% in September 2026. Its presence rate was 96.8% in October 2026, down 1.2 points from 98.0% in September 2026.

Largest Increase: DreamLine

DreamLine recorded the largest coverage increase this month, with valid recommendation coverage of 8.8% in October 2026, up from 8.2% in September 2026, a rise of just 0.6 points. Its top-three rate was 7.3% in October 2026, up 0.3 points from 7.0% in September 2026, while its rank-one rate was 2.9% in October 2026, down 0.9 points from 3.8% in September 2026.

Largest Decline: American Standard

American Standard recorded the largest coverage decline this month, with valid recommendation coverage of 36.9% in October 2026, down from 40.6% in September 2026, a fall of 3.7 points. Its presence rate was 49.0% in October 2026, down 5.5 points from 54.5% in September 2026, and its top-three rate was 7.3% in October 2026, down 4.5 points from 11.8% in September 2026. Its rank-one rate was 0.3% in October 2026, down 0.5 points from 0.8% in September 2026.

VIGO

VIGO's valid recommendation coverage was 11.6% in October 2026, up 0.3 points from 11.3% in September 2026. Its presence rate stood at 14.3%, its top-three rate at 6.9%, its rank-one rate at 2.1%, and its net sentiment at 0.8 — a mildly positive score in line with most of the category.

Kohler records 78.0% on valid recommendation coverage, while VIGO stands at 11.6%, a gap of 66.4 percentage points. Delta Faucet achieves a 28.7% rank-one rate, compared with 2.1% for VIGO. The more important issue is what these gaps mean for VIGO's recommendation position: VIGO's presence rate of 14.3% shows it is being mentioned in AI responses, but its valid recommendation coverage of 11.6% confirms that presence is converting into a shortlist appearance only a fraction of the time, and into a first-choice recommendation in just 2.1% of qualified observations. This is a measurable recommendation gap against the category leader, not a marginal one, and it has not materially changed across the only two measured months.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Why is VIGO's presence in AI-generated answers converting into valid shortlist recommendations and first-choice placements at such a low rate compared to the category leaders, and what in the underlying content, citation, or product-data environment is driving that gap?

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Which leading brands convert recommendation coverage into first-choice placements most often?
• How much do rank-one rates vary among brands with similar top-three rates?

Coverage shows whether a brand appears in a recommendation shortlist, but it does not show how prominently the brand is placed. Among the three brands with the strongest coverage, Delta Faucet carried the highest rank-one rate in October 2026 at 28.7%, ahead of Moen at 26.1% and Kohler at 16.1%, even though Kohler held the highest overall coverage.

The three leading brands sit close together on coverage, but their rank-one rates differ by more than 12 points, showing that a similar share of shortlists can still hide different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent classes are represented in the qualified observations?
• What does the absence of Pricing & Value and Multi-Brand Comparison observations mean for the benchmark's current scope?

All qualified observations in both months fell into the Brand Recommendation class. The current public series measures that class of discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the Pricing & Value or Multi-Brand Comparison classes.

Historical Measurement Record

Questions This Section Answers

• Does the current measurement record support a trend or only a baseline-to-current comparison?
• How has the category leader and largest brand movement changed between the two measured months?

The record below summarizes each measured month at the category level, anchored to the valid recommendation coverage leader and the largest single-brand movement recorded that month.

Evidence and Source Layer

Questions This Section Answers

• What information does the benchmark retain from each prompt-level observation?
• Does a source's presence in AI citations prove it caused a brand recommendation?

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, the AI or search surface, the answer, the 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 benchmark does not measure market share.
• It does not measure attributable sales or revenue.
• It does not capture every possible AI response, only the qualified observations collected.
• It does not measure organic-search ranking.
• It does not measure social mention volume.
• It does not cover private or sponsored channels.
• It 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 responses in the kitchen and bathroom fixtures category?
• How concentrated are citations among the top domains versus the long tail?
• Which cited sources are retail, editorial, or brand-owned domains?

Across all AI platform responses in this measurement period, 6,686 citations were observed, drawn from 1,201 unique domains.

Citations are broadly distributed: the top 10 domains together account for roughly 36% of the 6,686 citations, leaving the majority spread across the remaining 1,191 domains. YouTube and Google lead the list, followed by a cluster of retail and home-improvement sources. One tracked brand's own domain appears in the top 10: deltafaucet.com ranks eighth at 1.4% share. Retail and marketplace sites, including homedepot.com, amazon.com, and lowes.com, are prominent, alongside editorial and review sources such as bobvila.com, houzz.com, and thespruce.com.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index is a neutral industry benchmark that tracks how brands appear in AI-generated answers across major AI and search surfaces. It records presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment at the category level so that brands can be compared on the same measured terms.

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

Get a Company-Level Authority Index

The public industry benchmark shows category-level standings. A company-level Authority Index can go deeper.

Get my free AI Company Index