Personal Insurance: AI Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

The Zebra led the Personal Insurance index in August 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 85.5%, narrowly ahead of Insurify at 84.8%. The gap between the two leaders was 0.7 percentage points in August 2026.

Two brands moved beyond normal month-to-month variation. Compare.com recorded the largest coverage increase, rising 7.1 percentage points from 75.7% to 82.8%. NerdWallet Insurance also rose significantly, with coverage increasing from 16.4% in July 2026 to 21.5% in August 2026, up 5.1 percentage points. No tracked brand recorded a significant coverage decline in August 2026.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 705 qualified observations in July 2026 and 708 in August 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth refers to the number of 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 both months.

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

Research Scope and Qualification

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 Market Discovery Methodology

Current Brand Standings

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 where the brand appears in the AI response, regardless of recommendation status.
• Valid recommendation coverage is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist.
• Top-three rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears in the first three recommended positions.
• Rank-one rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment measures the balance of positive over negative mentions, from -1.0 to +1.0.

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Largest Increase: Compare.com

Compare.com's 7.1-point coverage gain was the largest movement in the benchmark. The brand's valid recommendation coverage rose from 75.7% in July 2026 to 82.8% in August 2026, which moved beyond normal month-to-month variation on the primary coverage metric. The brand's presence rate also rose from 83.8% to 87.6%, and its top-three rate increased from 62.0% to 70.8% over the same period. Rank-one placement rose from 11.5% in July 2026 to 16.8% in August 2026.

Largest Increase: NerdWallet Insurance

NerdWallet Insurance's 5.1-point coverage gain moved beyond normal variation, but the brand remains in the lower tier. Valid recommendation coverage rose from 16.4% in July 2026 to 21.5% in August 2026. The brand's rank-one placement rose from 0.1% in July 2026 to 1.6% in August 2026. Presence rate held near 30.9% in August 2026, up from 29.4% in July 2026. Net sentiment rose from 0.61 in July 2026 to 0.73 in August 2026.

Category Leader: The Zebra

The Zebra maintained the highest valid recommendation coverage in August 2026 at 85.5%, up from 82.0% in July 2026. This increase of 3.5 percentage points was within normal variation on the primary coverage metric. The brand's top-three rate rose 5.4 points, but its rank-one rate fell from 23.0% to 18.9% — presence is improving while first-choice preference is weakening. The brand's presence rate held steady at 94.8% in both months.

Lowest Coverage: MoneyGeek

MoneyGeek recorded the lowest valid recommendation coverage in the August 2026 benchmark at 0.3%, down from 0.7% in July 2026, a decline of 0.4 percentage points — the only directional decline among all nine tracked brands. The brand's presence rate was 6.9%, its top-three rate 0.3%, its rank-one rate 0.1%, and its net sentiment 0.06, the lowest sentiment score in the standings.

MoneyGeek's visibility is almost entirely failing to convert into recommendation. Its 6.9% presence rate shows the brand is being surfaced in AI responses at a modest but non-trivial rate, yet only 0.3% of qualified observations placed MoneyGeek in a valid recommendation shortlist — a presence-to-recommendation gap of 6.6 percentage points. This is a material gap: MoneyGeek is technically part of the information environment AI systems draw on, but is essentially excluded from the recommendation layer that consumers actually see, and coverage moved further in the wrong direction between July and August while every other low-coverage brand except MoneyGeek held flat or improved.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Why is MoneyGeek's 6.9% presence rate failing to convert into valid recommendations (0.3%), and what specifically drove the coverage decline from 0.7% to 0.3% between July and August 2026 while eight of the nine tracked brands moved flat or upward?

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. The three leading brands by valid recommendation coverage show different placement patterns in August 2026.

Insurify was recommended first in 43.8% of qualified observations — more than double the rank-one rate of either The Zebra (18.9%) or Compare.com (16.8%) — despite all three brands having similar levels of overall coverage. Close coverage can still hide very different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

All qualified observations in both months fell into the Brand Recommendation class, where the AI response directly recommends one or more named brands.

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, attributable sales, every possible AI response, organic-search ranking, social mention volume, private or sponsored channels, or causality from a metric movement alone. It captures how nine tracked brands appear across six canonical AI surface families in response to personal insurance queries.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Market Discovery Index tracks how brands surface, appear, and are recommended across major AI-assisted search surfaces, using a consistent methodology that treats each brand and surface on its own terms.

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

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