Faneros Research · July 2026

The 2026 AI Visibility Report

America's fifty largest personal injury firms, tested against the questions injured people actually ask AI assistants. We ran 600 buyer-intent prompts across six platforms and archived 3,150 responses before scoring a single one.
50 firms · 12 prompts each · 6 AI platforms · 3,150 archived responses
Key statistics
46%of the 50 largest US injury firms are invisible on at least one major AI platform
1 in 5are invisible on ChatGPT, including nationally famous names in their home markets
100%are recognized by AI when asked directly, yet 46% are never recommended
Finding 01

Forty-six percent of the biggest firms in America are invisible somewhere

Twenty-three of the fifty largest personal injury firms in the country are never mentioned, not once across ten buyer-intent questions, on at least one major AI platform. Fifteen are missing from two or more. These are firms with national ad campaigns and market-defining verdicts, absent from the channel where a growing share of their future clients now begin.

Exhibit 1
Every platform draws a different map
Share of top-50 firms named in at least one unbranded response, by platform
PlatformVisibilityShare visible
Gemini
92%
ChatGPT
80%
Claude
80%
Perplexity
72%
Grok
72%
Google AI Overviews
24%
Source: Faneros Research 2026 AI Visibility study; 3,150 archived responses across 50 firms. Google AI Overviews sampled separately on 3 prompts per firm.
Exhibit 2
Barely half hold full coverage across the five chat platforms
Top-50 firms by chat-platform coverage
Named on all five chat platforms
27 firms
Missing from exactly one
8 firms
Missing from two or more
15 firms
Source: Faneros Research 2026 AI Visibility study.
Finding 02

The Recognition Gap

When we asked each platform directly about each firm by name, using the prompt “is [firm] a good law firm?”, the AI knew essentially every single one: histories, practice areas, notable verdicts. Recognition across the five chat platforms was 98 to 100%. Then we compared that against the buyer-intent questions, where a potential client asks who to hire. Across 51 firm-platform pairs, the same AI that can recite a firm's biography never once offered that firm's name to a prospective client. Twenty-three firms sit in this gap on at least one platform.

AI knows who you are. It just doesn't send you clients.
Exhibit 3
Known versus recommended: a 46-point collapse
Share of top-50 firms
Recognized when asked directly
100%
Recommended on every platform
54%
Source: Faneros Research 2026 AI Visibility study. Recognition measured via direct brand questions.
Finding 03

Every platform has its own map of the legal market

If AI platforms all drew from the same picture of the world, a firm visible on one would be visible on all. That is not what the data shows. Twenty percentage points separate the most generous platform (Gemini, 92%) from the stingiest (Perplexity and Grok, 72%). Firms routinely dominate one engine while being absent from another.

A
Gemini sees the most firms, but not all

Even the friendliest platform misses 4 of the 50 biggest firms in the country entirely.

B
ChatGPT, the biggest audience, misses 1 in 5

Ten top-50 firms never appear in ChatGPT answers, including nationally famous names in their home markets.

C
Perplexity and Grok are the hardest rooms

Both lean on live retrieval and citations. 28% of top firms are invisible on each.

D
Even the strongest firms have thin spots

Several firms that appear everywhere show only one or two mentions on their weakest platform.

“We checked ChatGPT and we came up” is not a visibility strategy. Each engine retrieves, verifies, and cites differently.
Finding 04

The Visibility Tiers

We graded each firm by how many of the six platforms mention it at least once. The distribution says the market is wide open: barely half of the biggest firms in the country hold strong visibility across the board, and the rest are exposed. One firm, despite ranking among the largest injury practices in America, never appeared in a single answer on any platform tested.

Exhibit 4
One firm in two holds Tier A visibility; one holds none at all
Top-50 firms by visibility tier
Tier A, visible on 5 to 6 platforms
28 firms
Tier B, visible on 3 to 4 platforms
13 firms
Tier C, visible on 1 to 2 platforms
8 firms
Tier D, visible nowhere
1 firm
Source: Faneros Research 2026 AI Visibility study. Individual firms are not publicly named to tiers.
Platform dashboards

How each platform retrieves

Each of the six AI platforms retrieves, verifies, and cites differently, and each produces a different map of the legal market.

Exhibit 5
The six platforms, side by side
Visibility, model tested, and retrieval behavior
PlatformVisibilityShareRetrieval
ChatGPT
gpt-4o
80%Retrieval plus trained knowledge
Claude
claude-sonnet-4-6
80%Trained knowledge plus retrieval
Gemini
gemini-3.5-flash
92%Google index plus retrieval
Perplexity
sonar
72%Live retrieval plus citations
Grok
grok-4.3
72%Live retrieval plus citations
Google AI Overviews
google-ai-overview
24%Google SERP feature
Source: Faneros Research 2026 AI Visibility study. Model names reflect the versions tested in July 2026.

If AI is writing the shortlist, the only question that matters is: are you on it?

The same test behind this study can be run for your firm: your market, your practice areas, your competitors, across all six platforms.

Get your firm's AI visibility scorecard
Methodology

How we ran the study

In July 2026, Faneros tested the 50 largest US personal injury firms, selected from public rankings, against 12 questions per firm: 10 unbranded buyer-intent questions localized to each firm's home market and 2 direct brand questions. Every question ran on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok; Google AI Overviews were sampled on 3 questions per firm and reported separately. All 3,150 raw responses were archived before scoring. A firm counts as visible on a platform if any unbranded response names it, matched against punctuation and formatting variants and verified against false positives, and recognized if the platform answers direct brand questions substantively. Scoring definitions were locked before any scan ran. Full methodology and scoring code are available on request at research@faneros.ai.

Reference

Glossary

AI visibility
Whether an AI assistant names a firm in response to an unbranded, buyer-intent question. Distinct from recognition.
Recognition
Whether an AI can describe a firm when asked about it directly by name. Nearly universal in this study, even for invisible firms.
Recognition Gap
The distance between recognition (100%) and recommendation (54%): firms the AI knows but never surfaces to a prospective client.
Unbranded prompt
A buyer-intent question that names no firm, such as “best car accident lawyer in Dallas.” The ten unbranded prompts decide visibility.
Visibility tier
A firm's grade, from A to D, by how many of the six platforms name it at least once.
Study conducted July 2026 by Faneros Research, Chicago. 50 firms selected from public rankings. 600 unique prompts, 3,150 AI responses archived prior to scoring. Figures reflect the July 2026 test window; AI platform outputs vary over time. The complete report is available as a free PDF. © 2026 Faneros Research.