Pet Retail Pet Supplies: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which pet supplies brand leads the October 2026 benchmark, and how close is the race at the top?
• Which brands moved beyond normal month-to-month variation between July and October 2026?

Petco leads the October 2026 Pet Retail Pet Supplies benchmark with a valid recommendation coverage of 33.0%, up from 24.0% in July 2026. Its lead over the next brand, Chewy at 32.6%, is 0.4 percentage points, and both sit ahead of a second cluster formed by Pet Smart at 23.0% and Tractor Supply at 20.8%.

Five brands registered increases beyond normal month-to-month variation between July 2026 and October 2026: Petco (up 9.0 points to 33.0%), Chewy (up 11.7 points to 32.6%), Tractor Supply (up 9.2 points to 20.8%), Pet Supplies Plus (up 7.0 points to 16.1%), and Pet Smart, which moved from no valid recommendation coverage in July, August, and September 2026 to 23.0% in October 2026. One brand declined beyond normal variation over the same span: PetSmart, which fell from 22.5% in July 2026 to 0.0% in October 2026, its second consecutive month of decline. The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 491 qualified observations after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the number of canonical AI/search surface families with at least one qualified observation. The six families are ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. August 2026 and September 2026 sit between the baseline and current months and are shown for reference in the sections below.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Pet Retail Pet Supplies

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many prompt-surface observations were collected versus qualified for the public benchmark?
• What does the qualification step exclude from the public denominator?

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 AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brands rank highest on valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, and what separates them?
• How do presence rate and top-three rate differ across the leading pet supplies brands?

Brands are sorted by valid recommendation coverage for October 2026.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in the AI response.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in the first three recommended positions.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is the single first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative sentiment over all brand mentions.

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

Hollywood Feed: Company Position

Hollywood Feed holds a presence rate of 11.8% in October 2026, with that presence converting into a valid recommendation coverage of 6.9%, a top-three rate of 3.3%, and a rank-one rate of 0.4%. Net sentiment stands at 0.7, the highest of any tracked brand in the category. Coverage has moved from 4.5% in July 2026 to 6.9% in October 2026, a rise of 2.4 percentage points, with most of that movement occurring within the most recent month (up from 5.1% in September 2026).

Petco records 33.0% on valid recommendation coverage, while Hollywood Feed stands at 6.9%. The more important issue is what that gap means for Hollywood Feed's recommendation position: even accounting for Hollywood Feed's narrower presence rate, the brand's recommendation and first-choice numbers trail every other tracked competitor. Chewy achieves a rank-one rate of 19.8%, compared with 0.4% for Hollywood Feed, meaning that on the occasions Hollywood Feed does appear, it is converting into a first-choice recommendation at a small fraction of the category leaders' rate. This is a measurable competitive gap on the benchmark's two highest-priority commercial metrics, and the source data does not yet explain its cause.

Highest-priority diagnostic: What is limiting Hollywood Feed's conversion from AI presence into valid recommendation coverage and first-choice placement, relative to Petco and Chewy?

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand posted the largest increase in valid recommendation coverage since July 2026?
• What happened to PetSmart's recommendation coverage between July and October 2026?

The category also moved sharply month over month into October 2026. Chewy rose 11.3 percentage points from 21.3% in September 2026, Petco rose 12.4 points from 20.6%, Tractor Supply rose 8.7 points from 12.1%, and Pet Supplies Plus rose 6.1 points from 10.0%. PetSmart fell 20.8 points from 20.8% in September 2026 over the same span. Hollywood Feed rose 1.8 points from 5.1% and Petsense held flat, both within normal variation.

Largest Increase: Pet Smart

Pet Smart recorded the largest baseline-to-current increase in the benchmark, moving from 0.0% valid recommendation coverage in July 2026 to 23.0% in October 2026, a rise of 23.0 percentage points. The brand carried no qualified recommendation coverage in July, August, or September 2026, so the entire movement is concentrated in October 2026. Its presence rate in October 2026 was 62.9%, its top-three rate 20.4%, its rank-one rate 6.5%, and its net sentiment 0.5. Across the same four months, PetSmart, the separately tracked brand spelled as one word, moved in the opposite direction.

Largest Decline: PetSmart

PetSmart posted the largest baseline-to-current decline, falling from 22.5% valid recommendation coverage in July 2026 to 0.0% in October 2026, a drop of 22.5 percentage points. The decline spans two consecutive months: the brand fell from 30.5% in August 2026 to 20.8% in September 2026, then to 0.0% in October 2026. No supporting metric is reported for PetSmart in October 2026 in this series.

Category Leader: Petco

Petco holds the top position in valid recommendation coverage at 33.0% in October 2026, up from 24.0% in July 2026. It also posted the largest top-three rate in the benchmark at 29.1%, ahead of Chewy at 27.9%. Chewy continues to lead the field on rank-one rate at 19.8%, more than three times Petco's 6.3%.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand converts AI recommendations into first-choice placement most often, and how wide is that gap?
• How different are the placement profiles of Petco, Chewy, and Pet Smart despite similar coverage?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. The leading brands by coverage show distinct placement profiles in October 2026.

Close coverage can still hide different first-position rates. Chewy's rank-one rate of 19.8% in October 2026 is more than three times higher than both Petco's 6.3% and Pet Smart's 6.5%, even though all three brands sit within roughly 10 percentage points of one another on coverage.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent classes produced qualified observations in the pet supplies benchmark?
• Does the current benchmark capture pricing or multi-brand comparison questions?

All qualified observations in both months 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 the benchmark consistently measured the same brands and surfaces across months?
• How much did the leader's coverage shift month to month across the measurement period?

Evidence and Source Layer

Questions This Section Answers

• What evidence does the benchmark retain for each AI recommendation observation?
• Does a brand being cited as a source prove it caused the AI recommendation?

This 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 to a given query.
• Organic-search ranking positions.
• Social media mention volume.
• Private or sponsored channels.
• Causality from a metric movement alone.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often in AI answers for pet supplies, and how concentrated is the citation pool?
• Which pet supplies retailer and marketplace domains appear in the top 10 cited sources?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, the benchmark recorded 7,153 citations drawn from 1,672 unique domains.

Citations are moderately concentrated at the top and spread broadly below it: the ten leading domains account for a combined 38.7% share, while the remaining 1,662 domains carry the balance. Four tracked brand domains appear in the top 10: chewy.com, petco.com, tractorsupply.com, and petsmart.com. Retailer and marketplace domains dominate the list, though a search platform (google.com), a community forum (reddit.com), and two social or video platforms (facebook.com and youtube.com) also rank highly, indicating that AI answers in this category draw on a mix of first-party retail pages, user discussion, and general web properties.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how often and how prominently brands are surfaced and recommended across six major AI/search surface families. It is a neutral, directional industry benchmark focused on recommendation presence, placement, and sentiment.

• 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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