Money Market Accounts: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which money market account brand leads recommendation coverage in October 2026, and by how much?
• What were the largest coverage gains and declines since the July 2026 baseline?

Ally Bank leads valid recommendation coverage in October 2026 at 71.0%, ahead of Capital One at 66.0%, a gap of 5.0 percentage points between the two leaders. Ally Bank's coverage is up 8.6 points from 62.4% in July 2026, and it has now risen for two consecutive months after a dip in August 2026.

The largest coverage increase since baseline came from Capital One, which entered the benchmark at 66.0% in October 2026 from 0.0% in July 2026, an increase of 66.0 percentage points. The largest coverage decline was CIT Bank (Acquiring Company: First Citizens BancShares, Inc), which fell to 0.0% in October 2026 from 57.1% in July 2026, a drop of 57.1 percentage points. Both movements reflect changes in the tracking set label rather than within-month movement.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 670 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the number of canonical AI surface families, out of six, that produced at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.

September 2026 recorded 684 qualified observations. Recommendation-shaped answer share rose for the second consecutive month, reaching 60.7% in October 2026.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Money Market Accounts

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• Why is the public benchmark smaller than the raw prompt observations collected?
• How do AI responses get qualified into the public money market account benchmark?

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. See the AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which money market account brands lead in presence, recommendation coverage, and top-three placement?
• How do rank-one rates and net sentiment differ across the tracked banks?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: Share of qualified observations in which the brand is mentioned at all.
• Valid recommendation coverage: Share of qualified observations in which the brand receives a clear, attributable recommendation.
• Top-three rate: Share of qualified observations in which the brand appears among the first three recommended options.
• Rank-one rate: Share of qualified observations in which the brand is recommended first.
• Net sentiment: Positive mentions 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 money market account brands moved most since the July 2026 baseline, and how much of that reflects tracking-set label changes?

The movement table below compares October 2026 to the July 2026 baseline. The tracking set was updated in September 2026, and several brands are now recorded under simpler names. Movements for brand names that entered or left the tracking set reflect that change rather than a shift in coverage.

Several brands also moved significantly between September and October 2026. Marcus by Goldman Sachs rose 11.6 percentage points from 52.0% in September 2026 to 63.6% in October 2026. UFB Direct-Parent Company(Axos Financial, Inc.) rose 10.4 points from 19.4% to 29.8%. Synchrony Bank rose 7.9 points from 17.5% to 25.4%. Discover Home Loans declined 10.7 points from 11.0% in September 2026 to 0.3% in October 2026. Quontic Bank declined 5.0 points from 13.5% to 8.5%.

Largest Increase: Capital One

Capital One entered the benchmark with valid recommendation coverage of 66.0% in October 2026, up from 0.0% in July 2026, an increase of 66.0 percentage points. Presence rate measured 71.9% in October 2026, with a top-three rate of 38.8% and a rank-one rate of 9.1%. Capital One was not tracked in the July 2026 baseline under its current name. The entry places Capital One second overall, and its coverage has risen in each of the two months since it entered the tracking set. Capital One's rank-one rate of 9.1% places it behind CIT Bank at 9.4% for first-position recommendations despite its higher overall coverage.

Largest Decline: CIT Bank (Acquiring Company: First Citizens BancShares, Inc)

CIT Bank (Acquiring Company: First Citizens BancShares, Inc) fell to 0.0% in October 2026 from 57.1% in July 2026, down 57.1 percentage points. The tracking set introduced a CIT Bank entry at 50.3% in October 2026 and retired the longer-form name, so the recorded decline reflects a change in the brand label used in the tracking set. In July 2026, presence rate was 64.2% and top-three rate was 30.7%. The recorded decline is a tracking-label change rather than a loss of AI visibility.

Category Leader: Ally Bank

Ally Bank led valid recommendation coverage at 71.0% in October 2026, up from 70.6% in September 2026 and 62.4% in July 2026. Ally Bank has now held the leader position for two consecutive months and has risen in each of the last two months after a dip in August 2026. Its top-three rate of 49.0% and rank-one rate of 18.5% both lead the category. Marcus by Goldman Sachs, which shared the leader position at the July 2026 baseline, finished October 2026 at 63.6%, a gap of 7.4 points to the leader.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• How did top-three and rank-one placement differ between Ally Bank, Capital One, and Marcus by Goldman Sachs?
• How can a small coverage gap translate into a large difference in first-position recommendations?

Coverage rates alone do not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Among the leading brands, placement patterns varied in October 2026.

Ally Bank had the highest top-three rate at 49.0% in October 2026 and the highest rank-one rate at 18.5%. Close coverage can still hide materially different first-position rates. Capital One's 66.0% coverage yields a 9.1% rank-one rate, while Ally Bank's 71.0% coverage produces an 18.5% rank-one rate, roughly double the chance of appearing first despite only a 5.0-point coverage gap.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent classes appear in the current money market account benchmark, and which ones remain empty?

All qualified observations in both months fell into the Brand Recommendation class, representing discovery and consideration.

The current public series measures the Brand Recommendation 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

• How has the money market account coverage leader changed across the four measurements?
• Which month recorded the largest single-brand coverage movement in the 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

• Market share or total addressable market
• Attributable sales or revenue outcomes
• Every possible AI response across all surfaces
• Organic-search ranking
• Social mention volume
• Private or sponsored channels
• Causality from a metric movement alone

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are most frequently cited across AI platforms for money market account recommendations?
• How concentrated are citations across the top domains, and does any tracked brand's own site appear?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, 5,959 citations were observed across 498 unique domains.

Citations are moderately concentrated: the top 10 domains account for 52.0% of all citations, while the remaining 488 domains account for the other 48.0%. No tracked brand's own domain appears in the top 10. Financial comparison and review sites (bankrate.com, nerdwallet.com, investopedia.com) dominate, followed by general news and finance outlets (cnbc.com, forbes.com, finance.yahoo.com, wsj.com, usnews.com). Reddit is the only user-generated content source in the top 10.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index is a neutral industry benchmark that tracks how often brands are recommended across major AI chat, answer, and search surfaces. The project records presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment in plain, comparable terms.

• 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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