Refrigerator: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which refrigerator brand led the category in October 2026, and by how much?
• Which brands recorded the largest single-month recommendation coverage gains?

Whirlpool led the refrigerator category in October 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 57.6%, a gap of 0.5 percentage points ahead of second-place Bosch at 57.1%. The two largest single-month coverage increases were recorded by Bosch, up 7.8 points to 57.1% in October 2026 from 49.3% in September 2026, and LG, up 7.7 points to 48.7% from 41.0%. The largest decline since the July 2026 baseline was KitchenAid, down 9.5 points to 36.8% in October 2026 from 46.3% in July 2026.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 448 qualified observations in October 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. The six families are ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. In August 2026 and September 2026, the intermediate months, qualified surface breadth held at six families as well.

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

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many prompt-surface observations qualified for the public refrigerator benchmark?
• What separates the raw collection universe from the qualified benchmark 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 the AI Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which refrigerator brands lead on valid recommendation coverage in October 2026?
• How do presence rate, top-three rate, and rank-one rate differ across the tracked brands?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned at all.
• 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 top recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative mention tone, as a share of all mentions.

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which refrigerator brand recorded the largest single-month coverage increase, and was it meaningful against the baseline?
• Which brand saw the largest decline since the July 2026 baseline, and where did it lose ground?

Largest Increase: Bosch

Bosch recorded the largest single-month coverage increase in October 2026, up 7.8 points to 57.1% from 49.3% in September 2026. Against the July 2026 baseline of 56.8%, Bosch moved up 0.3 points, a change within normal variation. Bosch's rank-one rate rose to 14.7% in October 2026 from 9.1% in July 2026, an increase of 5.6 percentage points.

Largest Decline: KitchenAid

KitchenAid's valid recommendation coverage fell to 36.8% in October 2026 from 46.3% in July 2026, a decline of 9.5 percentage points. KitchenAid declined across the series before a partial recovery of 1.9 points in October 2026 from 34.9% in September 2026. Its top-three rate fell to 6.5% in October 2026 from 10.1% in July 2026, a decline of 3.6 percentage points.

Category Leader: Whirlpool

Whirlpool led the category in October 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 57.6%. Its coverage declined 2.2 points against the July 2026 baseline of 59.8%, following a 7.5-point increase in October 2026 from 50.1% in September 2026. Whirlpool held the highest rank-one rate among the top three brands at 12.0% in October 2026.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Which leading refrigerator brand holds the highest rank-one recommendation rate?
• How can brands with similar coverage still differ in how prominently they are placed?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Among the leading brands, top-three and rank-one rates reveal meaningful placement differences.

Bosch held the highest first-position recommendation rate at 14.7% in October 2026 while Whirlpool and GE Appliances sat behind at 12.0% and 5.6% respectively. Similar coverage levels can still hide different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

In both months, all qualified observations fell into the brand recommendation 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

Questions This Section Answers

• Who has led refrigerator recommendation coverage across each month since the July 2026 baseline?
• What were the largest single-month coverage movements recorded in the series?

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.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often across AI platform responses in the refrigerator category?
• Are citations concentrated among a few authorities or spread across a wide information base?

Across all AI platform responses in this measurement period, 6,841 citations were observed across 1,060 unique domains.

Citations in this vertical are broadly distributed, with no single domain capturing more than one tenth of the total. The top ten domains together account for 2,426 of 6,841 citations, and the remainder is spread across more than a thousand sources, indicating that AI answers draw on a wide information base rather than a narrow set of authorities. Retail and review sources dominate the list, with consumerreports.org, reviewed.com, homedepot.com, lowes.com, bestbuy.com, and donsappliances.com all appearing, alongside the specialty retailer blog.yaleappliance.com and community platforms youtube.com and reddit.com. No tracked brand's own domain appears in the top ten.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Market Discovery Index tracks how often brands appear in AI-generated recommendations and how prominently they are placed across major AI surfaces. It provides a neutral category-level view of AI recommendation coverage for industry observers.

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