The short answer
- There is no single “AI search” — different buyers favour different tools, and the right focus depends on who you sell to.
- ChatGPT is the mass-market default; Google’s AI reaches buyers inside ordinary search; Perplexity is favoured by researchers because it shows its sources; Claude is common in enterprise settings.
- Bing Copilot and Grok matter for specific audiences — corporate Microsoft environments and tech-sector buyers respectively.
- Spreading effort evenly across all of them is usually a mistake; weight the platforms your actual buyers use.
- An audit starts with the three most common platforms and adds the others by buyer audience.
“AI search” is a convenient phrase, but it hides something important: there is no single AI your buyers use. There are several, each with a different audience and a different character. Where you focus depends entirely on who you are trying to reach.
ChatGPT — the mass-market default
ChatGPT is where most people start. If a buyer asks an AI tool who to work with, there is a strong chance they are using this one. For broad B2B — professional services, general technology, most categories — it is the natural starting point for any AI visibility conversation, simply because of reach.
Google AI and AI Overviews — visibility inside ordinary search
Google now places AI-generated answers at the very top of search results, above the links, the ads and the organic listings. Many buyers encounter this AI layer without realising it is AI at all. Appearing in the Google AI answer is, in effect, the new version of ranking first — and it reaches the enormous audience already searching on Google every day.
Perplexity — the researcher's tool of choice
Perplexity is favoured by people who research thoroughly, because it shows its sources — you can see exactly where each claim comes from. That makes it popular with analysts, consultants, clinicians and senior buyers, and especially relevant in professional services, medical devices and financial services, where decisions are evidence-led and shortlists are built carefully.
Claude — common in enterprise settings
Claude is widely used inside large organisations, where procurement teams, technical leads and enterprise buyers evaluate vendors. If you sell to large companies, or are building towards enterprise clients, being recommended in Claude means being considered at the level where serious decisions are made.
Bing Copilot and Grok — audience-specific, but not negligible
Bing Copilot is built into Microsoft Edge and Windows, which makes it the default AI assistant in many corporate environments — and being present in Bing’s index tends to help across more AI tools than people expect. Grok is growing quickly among tech-sector audiences. Neither is for everyone, but for the right buyer they matter.
So where should I focus?
Not everywhere at once. Spreading effort evenly across every platform is how budgets get diluted and nothing moves. The better approach is to weight the platforms your buyers actually use:
- Selling broadly to business? ChatGPT and Google’s AI carry the most weight.
- Selling to research-driven professionals — medtech, finance, legal, consulting? Perplexity earns disproportionate attention.
- Selling to large enterprises? Claude matters more than its overall usage suggests.
- Operating in Microsoft-heavy corporate environments? Do not overlook Bing Copilot.
An AI Visibility Initial Review covers ChatGPT, Google’s AI and Perplexity as standard. The Diagnostic Audit adds Claude, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot or Grok where they match your specific buyers — chosen by audience, not applied as a one-size-fits-all set.
The takeaway
The platform question is really a buyer question. Decide who you are trying to reach, work out which tools they reach for, and concentrate there. An independent audit makes that concrete: it measures where you stand on the platforms that matter to your audience and ignores the noise from the ones that do not.