We asked Perplexity the buyer's question for 835 companies. 74% weren't named in any answer.

The headline numbers

Put simply: for about three in four companies, a buyer asking AI the obvious question for their category would not hear their name at all.

The shortlist is short

An average answer named about 3.5 businesses. On Google a buyer scrolls past ten links; in an AI answer they read a few names and start calling. There is no page two.

One answer is a snapshot, not a verdict

When we asked the same thing two slightly different ways, fewer than half the names repeated 63% of the time. That is why we run each question more than once and on more than one wording before telling anyone where they stand.

What we saw behind the numbers

• Broad questions reward fame. Asked for the "best strategic HR consultancy in India", AI named Bain, PwC, Deloitte and Mercer. Asked about the specific work a boutique firm does for the buyers it serves, the answers changed to specialists of its own size. Small firms mostly lose to vague questions, not to giants.
• AI repeats how the internet describes you. A premium studio we tested was missing when AI was asked for the best in its city, but named when asked for affordable options. Listings, reviews and articles that talk about price gave it a price label its own website never used.

How we ran it

• 835 companies, mostly in India, each tested on its own category.
• The plain question a buyer would type for that category, run three times on Perplexity with live web search on.
• No company is named in this write-up. The same method, with more questions and four engines, is described in our methodology.