--- title: "Big brands win most AI answers. Here’s where small sites still get in" description: "New data shows big travel brands lead AI answers on ChatGPT and Google. It also shows which questions leave room for smaller sites, and what to do." url: https://dumbcmo.com/blog/big-brands-ai-search-openings-small-sites category: "Getting found" tags: ["news", "ai search", "aeo", "chatgpt", "ai overviews", "small business", "travel"] published: 2026-10-31 updated: 2026-10-31 reading_time: 8 min author: "The DumbCMO" --- # Big brands win most AI answers. Here’s where small sites still get in > **TL;DR:** In BrightEdge’s holiday travel data, the biggest brands lead AI answers in every category. But they matter less on “inspire me” questions, where YouTube, Reddit and experience-led sites show up more. That’s your door: real experience, clear answers, honest comparisons, and saying where you work. [Notebook](https://dumbcmo.com) › [Blog](https://dumbcmo.com/blog) › Getting found › Big brands win most AI answers. Here’s where small sites still get in If you run a small business, AI search can feel like a party where only the famous names get invited. Ask about hotels and you hear about the big chains. Ask about flights and you hear about the big airlines. New data says that feeling is mostly right. It also says there’s a side door. Here’s what the numbers show, where the door is, and what to do this week. ## In normal-people words ## What the data says BrightEdge, a company that sells SEO and AI search tracking tools, looked at US holiday travel questions on **Google AI Overviews** and **ChatGPT**, using its own tracking tool, from August to September 2026. It compared airlines, hotels, cruise lines and booking sites against their direct competitors. The headline: **American Airlines, Royal Caribbean and Expedia lead their categories on both engines.** Hotels are closer: Hilton leads on Google’s AI, Marriott leads on ChatGPT. **Who leads AI answers for US holiday travel (share of visibility among same-category brands)** | Category | Google AI Overviews | ChatGPT | | --- | --- | --- | | Hotels | Hilton, 28.3% | Marriott, 29.4% | | Booking platforms | Expedia, 31.3% (Kayak 14.4%) | Expedia, gap to Kayak 1.4x | | Airlines | American Airlines, 26.6% | American Airlines, 25.3% | | Cruise lines | Royal Caribbean, 24.8% | Royal Caribbean, 28.8% | The hotel and Expedia-vs-Kayak figures on Google come from BrightEdge’s public summary. The airline, cruise and ChatGPT gap figures come from the full report, as quoted by Search Engine Journal. > **The DumbCMO:** Big brands are big in AI answers. In other news, water is wet. The useful part is the next bit. ## Before you panic: what this data is and isn’t - **It’s travel only, and US only.** Don’t assume your bakery in Pune faces the same picture. Use it as a pattern, not a law. - **It measures visibility, not sales.** BrightEdge says the results describe observed visibility, “not bookings or market share”. - **The two engines were tested with different sets of questions.** So comparing Google’s numbers with ChatGPT’s is rough. - **It comes from a company that sells AI tracking.** That doesn’t make it wrong. It’s worth knowing. ## Where the side door is: the type of question This is the part that matters for you. BrightEdge split questions by what the person wanted. **How often booking platforms appear in Google AI Overviews answers, by question type** | Question type | Booking platforms appear in | | --- | --- | | Inspiration (“where should I go…”) | 12% of prompts | | Comparison (“X or Y…”) | 25% of prompts | | Booking intent (“book a…”) | 38% of prompts | | Budget words like “cheap”, “deal”, “last-minute” | 78% of answers, vs 17% of other answers | According to the full report as quoted by Search Engine Journal: - **Only 9% of tracked Google AI Overviews prompts had booking intent.** Inspiration and comparison questions made up most of the panel. - **YouTube, Reddit and AAA were more prominent in inspiration questions.** Hotels and cruise lines showed up more in comparison questions. - **Expedia alone appeared in 44% of budget-related answers.** BrightEdge calls this “an observed association, not evidence” that those words cause a brand to appear. So most questions people asked weren’t “book me a room”. They were “help me decide”. And on “help me decide”, the giants matter less and real people’s experience matters more. Search Engine Journal’s Roger Montti reads it the same way. His opinion: the opening for smaller sites is in questions where human experience and judgement are what people want. He even encourages travel bloggers to “eat Reddit’s lunch with expertise”. ## The chai stall version At a big wedding, the caterer with the famous name gets the main contract. Nobody’s beating them on that. But guests still ask each other: “Which sweet shop does the best kaju katli here?” Nobody answers with the famous caterer. They answer with the little shop their aunt swears by. **You won’t win the contract question. You can win the “which one do you actually like” question.** ## A second data point: small pages do get cited One study isn’t enough, so here’s another. In October 2026, TJ Robertson, whose agency sells SEO and AI search services, published an analysis of 193,507 answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, for buyer questions tracked for 78 of his clients. Like BrightEdge, it shows associations, not proof of cause. What it found, in plain words: - **A few sites take most citations, but the tail is long.** The top 10% of domains got 81% of all citations. Yet 55% of cited links were cited only once. - **Business websites got most citations.** Company websites took 67%. Product pages alone took 28%. - **Cited Reddit threads and YouTube videos were small.** The typical cited thread had 6 upvotes and 18 comments. The typical cited video had about 2,500 views on a channel with about 12,000 subscribers. - **Experience helped.** Pages describing first-hand experience had 45% higher odds of being cited, after allowing for site authority and page type. “Best of” lists that explained how the picks were made had 51% higher odds, though the study says that number is less certain. - **Location matters.** When a question didn’t name a place, ChatGPT added a location to at least one of its searches in 30% of answers. - **Prices helped too.** Pages that showed prices had 28% higher odds of being cited. **You don’t need to be huge. You need to be the clearest, most honest answer to a specific question.** ## Five openings for a smaller site **Where to put your effort** 1. **Answer the “help me decide” questions.** Write the page a friend would want: which option suits whom, what you’d pick and why. A homestay owner in Coorg can answer “is Coorg good in December with kids?” better than any big chain. 2. **Show your own experience.** Say what you’ve actually done, seen or tested. Photos you took. Mistakes customers make. If you recommend options, say how you chose them. 3. **Say where you work, clearly.** Put your city, area and the places you serve on your key pages. AI tools often add a location to the search even when the customer didn’t. 4. **Put prices and facts on the page.** Prices, timings, what’s included. Vague pages are hard to quote. If prices change, give a range and the date you updated it. 5. **Be useful where the conversation already happens.** Answer honestly in the forums and video comments your customers read. Say who you are. Small threads get cited too. ## Where not to fight **Pick your battles** - **If** The question is “cheapest X” or “last-minute deal on X” **→ then** Big booking platforms dominate these in the BrightEdge data. Spending months on “cheap hotel Goa” content is probably not where you win. - **If** The question is “book X” and a big brand owns the category **→ then** Make sure you’re listed properly on the platforms people use, then move on. - **If** The question is “which is better for…” or “is it worth…” **→ then** This is your ground. Experience and honest comparison count here. - **If** The question names your area or your speciality **→ then** Your ground too. Local detail is something a giant can’t fake well. ## Do this today - [ ] Write down five questions customers ask you before they buy. Mark each one: inspiration, comparison, booking, or budget. - [ ] Ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI two of the inspiration or comparison questions. Note who gets mentioned. - [ ] Pick one of those questions and write or improve a page that answers it in the first lines, from your own experience. - [ ] Add your city, area and prices (or a price range with a date) to your most important page. - [ ] Check the same questions again in two weeks. AI answers change often, so one screenshot means little. ## Not-so-frequently asked questions ### Does this apply outside travel? The BrightEdge data is US holiday travel only. TJ Robertson’s study covers 78 businesses across nine business models. The pattern is similar, but test your own questions before betting on it. ### Do I need to be on Reddit? Not necessarily. In TJ Robertson’s data, Reddit showed up mostly in Google’s AI answers and hardly at all in ChatGPT. Check what AI actually cites when your customers ask their questions. ### Why do Google and ChatGPT pick different leaders? They use different sources and methods, and BrightEdge tested them with different question sets. That’s why it’s worth checking both. ### Can I pay to be in AI answers? Ads are starting to appear in some AI search results, labelled as sponsored. Anyone promising a guaranteed unpaid mention is guessing. ## Things your agency won’t say - “We’ll get you ranked in ChatGPT for ‘best hotel in India’” is bullsh#t for a small business. The data says big names own those. Go after the questions they don’t. - Both studies here come from companies that sell AI search services. The direction is useful. The decimals aren’t gospel. - The cheapest AI strategy: answer your customers’ real questions on your own site, with your own experience, in plain words. ## Jargon Jail **Locked up: “Share of voice”** In AI search, **how often your brand appears in AI answers compared with your competitors, across a set of tracked questions.** There are no positions 1 to 10 like in Google, so tools count appearances instead. Useful for spotting trends. Meaningless if the questions tracked aren’t the ones your customers ask. ## Where to go next - What “answer first” looks like, and this week’s other Google news: [This week in Google: report dates, answer-first pages, and AI Mode ads in India](/blog/search-console-dates-answer-first-pages-ai-mode-ads) - The basics of being quoted by AI: [Does SEO still matter now that Google answers with AI?](/blog/seo-in-the-age-of-ai-answers) - See which topics Bing’s AI already cites you for: [Bing’s Topics Portfolio](/blog/bing-topics-portfolio-ai-performance) - Before you pay anyone to “get you into ChatGPT”: [Scam watch](/scam-watch#guaranteed-ai-answers) ## Sources 1. BrightEdge, [“Holiday Travel in AI Search: The Travel Brands AI Puts on Its List”](https://www.brightedge.com/resources/research-reports/holiday-travel-ai-search). Category leaders, hotel and Expedia/Kayak figures, booking platforms by question type, budget answers, and methodology notes. 2. Search Engine Journal, [“Big Brands Dominate AI Search But Leave Openings For Smaller Sites”](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/big-brands-dominate-ai-search-but-leave-openings-for-smaller-sites/595397/), Roger Montti, 31 October 2026. Quotes from the full BrightEdge report (airline and cruise figures, ChatGPT gap, 9% booking intent, 44% Expedia budget share, inspiration-question sources) and Montti’s opinion. 3. TJ Robertson, [AI citation study](https://tjrobertson.com/ai-citation-study/), 25 October 2026. Citation concentration, page types, Reddit and YouTube details, experience, location and price findings, and limits. ## Related notes - [Anyone can pretend to be Googlebot. Here’s how to check who’s really visiting](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/fake-googlebot-how-to-check): Any script can call itself Googlebot by changing one line, so never trust the name alone. Real Googlebot passes a two-way DNS check or matches Google’s IP lists. Most small sites don’t have a problem. If you do, use Cloudflare or your security plugin, never block Google by name. - [This week in Google: report dates, answer-first pages, and AI Mode ads in India](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/search-console-dates-answer-first-pages-ai-mode-ads): Three things worth your time this week. Check the date on Search Console reports before you panic. Put the answer in the first lines of your pages. And expect “Sponsored” ads inside Google’s AI Mode in India, now that Google says AI Mode’s lower monetisation weighed on its search growth. - [Restaurants can now switch off delivery apps on their Google profile](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/google-business-profile-ordering-providers): Delivery and pickup apps used to show on your Google listing until you chased each one to remove you. Now you can switch a provider off yourself from your Business Profile, separately for pickup and delivery. Check which apps your customers see today. --- From [DumbCMO](https://dumbcmo.com): The marketing notes you were too embarrassed to take.