Pet Retail / Pet Supplies: AI Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

August 2026 was a stable month for the Pet Retail / Pet Supplies category. No brand moved beyond normal month-to-month variation, and all seven tracked brands are classified as stable this month. Chewy holds the category lead in valid recommendation coverage at 25.6%, a 1.2 percentage point lead over second-place PetSmart at 24.7%.

Since the July 2026 baseline, valid recommendation coverage has moved modestly across the category: Chewy from 20.9% to 25.6%, PetSmart from 22.5% to 24.7%, Pet Supplies Plus from 9.1% to 11.0%, Petco from 24.0% to 24.4%, Hollywood Feed from 4.5% to 4.3%, and Tractor Supply from 11.6% to 11.2%, while Petsense held flat at 2.1% in both months. The gap between Chewy and Tractor Supply, the widest spread in the category, widened from 9.3 points at baseline to 14.4 points in August 2026.

The benchmark evaluated 800 prompt-surface observations in each month, producing 582 qualified observations in August 2026 after qualification, up from 516 in July 2026.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth refers to the number of canonical AI surface families with at least one qualified observation. The six canonical families are ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.

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

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio’s analysis of how AI search is recommending Pet Retail and Supplies.

Current Brand Standings

Hollywood Feed records the highest net sentiment in the current standings at 0.55, but its recommendation-position metrics remain substantially below the category leaders: 4.3% valid recommendation coverage, a 2.1% top-three rate, and a 1.0% rank-one rate.

Chewy records 25.6% valid recommendation coverage, while Hollywood Feed stands at 4.3%. That recommendation gap matters because Hollywood Feed is entering valid recommendation shortlists considerably less often in the situations measured by this benchmark. The current benchmark does not establish the cause of that gap, making the mechanism behind it the clearest issue requiring investigation.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompts, AI/search surfaces, recommendation positions, or evidence sources are associated with Hollywood Feed's lower valid recommendation coverage relative to the category leader?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned at all, in any context.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist or equivalent.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in the top three recommended positions.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is the first or primary recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative mention tone, scaled to the number of mentions.

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Hollywood Feed moved from 4.5% valid recommendation coverage in July 2026 to 4.3% in August 2026, a 0.2-point decline that remains within the category's normal month-to-month variation.

Category Leader: Chewy

Chewy leads the category with 25.6% valid recommendation coverage in August 2026, up from 20.9% in July 2026. Chewy also holds the highest top-three rate at 19.9% (up from 16.3%) and the highest rank-one rate at 14.6% (up from 13.8%) in August 2026. Every brand tracked in the category moved within normal month-to-month variation, so no brand is called out beyond the leader here.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Among the leading cluster, rank-one rates vary widely despite similar coverage levels.

Chewy, PetSmart, and Petco sit within 1.2 percentage points of each other on coverage, but Chewy's rank-one rate of 14.6% is substantially higher than PetSmart's 5.0% and Petco's 1.9% in August 2026.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

The qualified observations in both months fell into the brand recommendation class.

All qualified observations in both months sit in a single class. The current public series measures brand recommendation discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the pricing and 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 attributable sales
• Every possible AI response across all surfaces and configurations
• Organic-search ranking performance
• Social media mention volume
• Private or sponsored AI channels
• Causality from a metric movement alone

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Market Discovery Index is a neutral, industry-level benchmark that tracks how brands appear and are recommended across the major consumer AI surfaces. It is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, surface, answer, brand outcome, and recommendation placement. The benchmark records the change; it does not, by itself, establish why the change occurred.

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

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