Share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AIO — measured across 8 shopper prompts and 30 brands.
Different AI models weight different sources. A brand that wins ChatGPT may lag in Google AIO if its retail footprint is weak.
The Farmer's Dog is named in 19.6% of prompts in this study, making it the most frequently cited brand across the 60 prompts and 240 engine calls. Among the top five brands by share of voice, it also holds the strongest average position (1.9), meaning when it is mentioned, it is rarely buried. No other brand clears 18%. Four brands clear 12%, and two more sit just below that threshold at 11.7% and 11.3% — the concentration at the top is real but not as cliff-edged as a top-four framing suggests.
The competitive dynamic is bifurcated. A top tier of four premium DTC dog food brands — The Farmer's Dog, Ollie, Nom Nom (all fresh), and Sundays for Dogs (air-dried) — collectively captures 63.4% of share of voice and dominates comparison-style prompts ("X vs Y," "alternatives to X"). Below them sits a broader middle tier: Open Farm (11.7%), Spot & Tango (11.3%), Chewy (9.6%), and Native Pet (8.8%), each with a distinct strategic profile. A long tail of supplement, gear, and adjacent-category brands follows, appearing only when the query narrows to a specific use case. Six tracked brands registered zero mentions across all four engines, though the tracked set intentionally spans adjacent pet categories, so the zero-mention count reflects taxonomy breadth as much as visibility failure.
A brand sitting in the 10–30% SoV band in this category should not try to unseat The Farmer's Dog on head terms. The higher-ROI move over the next quarter is to claim underserved territory: use-case queries around puppies, joint support, post-surgery recovery, and multi-pet households show materially weaker branded citation than head terms in our prompt sample. The cost of becoming the default citation for a thinly contested prompt is materially lower than displacing an incumbent on a contested one.
Pet-wellness is a research-heavy purchase. Owners transferring food, introducing supplements, or managing a diagnosed condition ask questions before they buy: "is this safe for a senior dog," "what do vets recommend for sensitive stomachs," "is Ollie or Nom Nom better for picky eaters." Historically these queries flowed through Google's ten blue links, Reddit threads, and a handful of review aggregators. They are now increasingly answered in a single synthesized paragraph by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google's AI Overview. The brand named in that paragraph captures disproportionate consideration; the brand omitted is effectively invisible at the top of the funnel.
This shift is still early, and the four engines behave differently. Gemini is the most generous citer in our sample, returning the highest brand-mention rates for most category leaders (e.g., The Farmer's Dog at 26.7%, Ollie at 21.7%, Petco at 11.7%). ChatGPT rewards a narrower set of brands heavily — most notably Native Pet at 25%. Perplexity's distribution tracks closest to the food-brand-heavy aggregate leaderboard. Google AIO over-surfaces retailers relative to the other engines, with Chewy appearing at 13.3%. The implication for founders is that "AI search optimization" is not yet one discipline — it is four, and the brand-set each engine favors is materially different.
| Brand | SoV % | Avg Position |
|---|---|---|
| The Farmer's Dog | 19.6 | 1.9 |
| Ollie | 17.1 | 2.4 |
| Nom Nom | 13.8 | 2.2 |
| Sundays for Dogs | 12.9 | 2.5 |
| Open Farm | 11.7 | 3.5 |
| Spot & Tango | 11.3 | 3.3 |
| Chewy | 9.6 | 2.0 |
| Native Pet | 8.8 | 1.5 |
| Fi | 6.3 | 1.6 |
| Jinx | 5.0 | 1.4 |
| Wild One | 4.6 | 1.4 |
| Petco | 3.8 | 3.7 |
| Pupford | 2.5 | 1.7 |
| BarkBox | 2.5 | 2.2 |
| Honest Paws | 2.5 | 2.0 |
| ElleVet Sciences | 2.5 | 2.0 |
| Maev | 2.1 | 1.8 |
| Just Food For Dogs | 0.8 | 2.0 |
| Wild Earth | 0.8 | 2.5 |
| Rover | 0.8 | 2.0 |
| West Paw | 0.8 | 1.5 |
| Kradle | 0.8 | 1.0 |
| Raised Right | 0.4 | 6.0 |
| Pure and Natural Pet | 0.4 | 1.0 |
| Hungry Bark | 0 | — |
| Chom Chom Roller | 0 | — |
| Animalhouse Fitness | 0 | — |
| Cuddly | 0 | — |
| Modern Beast | 0 | — |
| Max & Neo | 0 | — |
The gap between #1 and #5 is 7.9 points, but the gap between #6 (Spot & Tango, 11.3%) and #13 (Pupford, 2.5%) is 8.8 points, with Chewy and Native Pet bridging the middle. That mid-tier is the real structural feature of the leaderboard: the top six are premium dog food brands, then a retailer and a supplement brand hold the middle, and everything below #8 requires a use-case cue to surface.
The Farmer's Dog leads for two compounding reasons visible in the prompt data: it is the most common reference point in versus-queries (competitors define themselves against it), and its average position of 1.9 suggests it is typically listed first or second when named. This most likely reflects citation momentum rather than a clear product-quality signal — engines that encounter a brand repeatedly in comparison contexts tend to surface it by default.
Native Pet is the clearest example of a brand punching above its weight. At 8.8% SoV it sits eighth overall, but its average position of 1.5 is the strongest of any brand with non-trivial volume, and on ChatGPT specifically it leads the category at 25% — ahead of The Farmer's Dog at 18.3%. Native Pet is a supplement brand competing against food brands on the overall leaderboard. Within supplement-oriented visibility in this prompt set, it appears to lead, though Honest Paws (6.7% on ChatGPT) and ElleVet Sciences (5% on ChatGPT) are also present. Fi, Jinx, and Wild One show a similar pattern: narrow category, strong position when cited.
Native Pet leads at 25%, ahead of The Farmer's Dog at 18.3%, with Ollie and Open Farm tied at 16.7%. ChatGPT's distribution is the most differentiated of the four engines, elevating supplement and non-subscription brands well above their aggregate rank. Chewy, by contrast, is only 6.7% on ChatGPT — its weakest engine.
The Farmer's Dog (18.3%) and Ollie (15%) lead, with Nom Nom and Sundays for Dogs tied at 13.3%. Perplexity broadly mirrors the food-brand-heavy top of the aggregate leaderboard, though it diverges sharply for some mid-tier brands: Native Pet falls to 3.3% (vs. 8.8% overall), Open Farm to 8.3%, and Petco to zero.
Gemini returns the highest brand-citation rates in the study. The Farmer's Dog reaches 26.7%, Ollie 21.7%, and Nom Nom, Sundays for Dogs, Open Farm, and Spot & Tango all cluster at 15%. Notably, Petco hits 11.7% on Gemini versus 1.7% or less on every other engine — by far its strongest surface. Gemini rewards breadth: more brands get cited, and the top gets more crowded.
The Farmer's Dog and Ollie tie at 15%, with Chewy surfacing at 13.3% — notably higher than its 9.6% overall and its 6.7% on ChatGPT. This is the strongest retailer signal in the dataset. The causal driver (source weighting, structured retailer data, etc.) is not directly observable in our data, but the pattern is robust enough to act on.
Five prompt clusters emerge from the query set, with different brands leading each.
Category-definition queries ("best pet wellness brands 2026," "best pet wellness products without fillers"). The Farmer's Dog and Ollie co-lead this cluster. These are the highest-funnel queries and the hardest to dislodge because they are driven by editorial roundups that cite the largest, most-funded brands.
Head-to-head comparison queries ("The Farmer's Dog vs Ollie," "Nom Nom vs The Farmer's Dog"). The Farmer's Dog is the anchor in nearly every comparison, which is a structural moat: even losing comparisons generate mentions.
Price-substitute queries ("brands like Nom Nom but cheaper," "cheapest alternative to Nom Nom," "best alternative to The Farmer's Dog"). Nom Nom and The Farmer's Dog paradoxically surface in their own substitute queries, because AI engines pattern-match the brand name in the query and echo it in the answer. This is a meaningful opening for challenger brands willing to directly target these terms with owned content.
Attribute-specific queries ("grain-free," "without artificial preservatives," "sensitive stomach"). Ollie is over-indexed here, and The Farmer's Dog shares sensitive-stomach specifically. These queries reward brands that publish granular ingredient and formulation content.
Picky-eater and behavioral queries ("Ollie vs Sundays for Dogs for picky dogs"). A narrower cluster where Ollie and Sundays for Dogs compete directly, suggesting both have invested in behavioral-use-case content.
The prompt sample reveals an asymmetry founders should exploit. Displacing The Farmer's Dog on "best pet wellness brands 2026" requires rewriting the editorial consensus across dozens of roundup articles. Becoming the first brand cited on "best pet wellness for joint support" requires ranking one well-structured piece of content on one authoritative source. The cost curves are not comparable.
Five prompt areas stand out as strategically valuable based on observed low branded-citation density and commercial intent:
For a brand currently sitting at 10–30% SoV — the range that includes Nom Nom, Sundays for Dogs, Open Farm, and Spot & Tango — three moves over the next 90 days.
Move 1 (Days 1–30): Own one underserved prompt cluster end-to-end. Pick joint support or puppies. Commission one long-form vet-authored guide (genuinely useful content, not SEO filler), publish it on the brand domain, and seed derivative versions into the source types AI engines most consistently draw from in pet categories: veterinary-reviewed owned content, reputable editorial reviews, and active community discussion sites. Native Pet's 25% on ChatGPT demonstrates that a smaller brand can outperform the subscription leaders on at least one engine; the mechanism behind that result is not directly observable in our data, but the outcome is.
Move 2 (Days 30–60): Hijack the substitute queries. Build a comparison hub on-domain with honest, data-rich pages titled "[Your brand] vs The Farmer's Dog" and "[Your brand] vs Ollie." The goal is not to win the comparison — it is to be the brand AI engines cite when a user asks for an alternative. Currently those queries echo the incumbent's name back. A single well-structured comparison page, syndicated to one review site, changes that.
Move 3 (Days 60–90): Close the Google AIO gap. Chewy surfaces at 13.3% on AIO versus 9.6% overall — roughly 40% uplift on that engine relative to its baseline. The mechanism is not proven in our data, but the observed pattern is stable enough that retailer presence on AIO deserves testing. For a DTC brand, this means evaluating a Chewy or Petco listing with complete structured data (ingredients, feeding guidelines, certifications) as a visibility investment, even where marketplace unit economics are weaker than direct. The tradeoff — AI mention value vs. margin compression — should be modeled against the brand's CAC/LTV, not assumed.
This study is based on 240 engine calls across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overview, run against 60 shopper prompts designed to mirror real D2C query distributions in pet-wellness — a mix of category-definition, comparison, substitute, attribute, and use-case queries. Thirty brands were tracked, spanning fresh and air-dried food, supplements, gear, training, and retail — a deliberately broad taxonomy, which is why some tracked brands registered zero mentions. Share of voice is computed as the percentage of the 60 prompts in which a brand was named by at least one engine. Average position is the mean ordinal rank of the brand within each engine's response, averaged across all mentions. Empty prompts are those where no tracked brand was named by any engine.
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