Share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AIO — measured across 9.231 shopper prompts and 26 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. Among the top five brands by SoV, it also has the best average position at 1.9 — meaning when it is mentioned, it is rarely buried. Several smaller-volume brands post stronger average positions on thinner mention counts (Native Pet at 1.5, Jinx and Wild One at 1.4, Fi at 1.6). On aggregate SoV, only The Farmer's Dog is above 18%, though engine-level rates exceed that threshold for other brands (notably Ollie at 21.7% on Gemini and Native Pet at 25% on ChatGPT). Four brands clear 12%, and two more sit just below that threshold at 11.7% and 11.3% — concentration at the top is real but not as cliff-edged as a top-four framing suggests.
The competitive dynamic is top-heavy but with a meaningful middle tier. Four premium dog food-led brands — The Farmer's Dog (19.6%), Ollie (17.1%), Nom Nom (13.8%, all fresh), and Sundays for Dogs (12.9%, air-dried) — each surface in 12.9% to 19.6% of engine responses and clearly dominate the top of the leaderboard. (Because multiple brands are routinely co-cited in the same AI answer, these SoV figures cannot be summed into a single concentration statistic.) Below them sits a broader middle tier: Open Farm (11.7%, omnichannel rather than pure-DTC), Spot & Tango (11.3%), Chewy (9.6%, retailer), and Native Pet (8.8%, supplements), each with a distinct strategic profile. A long tail of supplement, gear, and adjacent-category brands follows. Six tracked brands registered zero mentions across all four engines; several of these are adjacent or non-core wellness brands (toys, grooming accessories, adoption platforms), so zero mentions is not equivalent to underperformance within core pet wellness. The tracked universe was intentionally broad, and the category-level conclusions should be read against that loose definition of "pet-wellness."
A brand sitting in the 10–30% SoV band in this category should not focus exclusively on head terms against The Farmer's Dog. The higher-ROI move over the next quarter is likely to pair any head-term effort with a deliberate claim on underserved territory — use-case queries around puppies, joint support, post-surgery recovery, and multi-pet households are the natural candidates, though prioritization should be validated against the operator's own prompt-level data. 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." As industry context (not a finding in this dataset), these queries have historically 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 often the highest for several top food brands (The Farmer's Dog at 26.7%, Ollie at 21.7%) and also for major retailers (Petco at 11.7%), though the "most generous" label does not hold uniformly — Native Pet and Honest Paws peak on ChatGPT, and Chewy peaks on Google AIO. ChatGPT appears especially differentiated, rewarding a narrower set of brands heavily, most notably Native Pet at 25%. Perplexity's distribution appears directionally closer to the food-brand-heavy aggregate mix. Google AIO shows at least one major retailer — Chewy at 13.3% — over-indexing relative to the other engines; the retailer pattern is not broad (Petco is only 1.7% on AIO) but the Chewy signal is notable. 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 largely premium dog-food-led brands (with Open Farm distinct as an omnichannel player rather than a pure DTC subscription brand), 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 on SoV, and its average position of 1.9 indicates it is typically listed first or second when named. One plausible explanation is citation momentum — engines that encounter a brand repeatedly in comparison contexts may default to surfacing it first — but our data does not include source-ingestion or comparison-frequency signals, so this remains hypothesis rather than finding.
Native Pet is the clearest example of a brand punching above its weight. It combines 8.8% SoV with a 1.5 average position — one of the strongest position/volume combinations in the dataset — 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. Among tracked supplement brands in this prompt set, it leads, though Honest Paws (6.7% on ChatGPT) and ElleVet Sciences (5% on ChatGPT) also register. 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 appears especially differentiated among 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 directionally 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 for several of the top food brands. 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 among the food leaders: more of them 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% aggregate SoV and its 6.7% on ChatGPT. This is the strongest retailer-specific signal in the dataset, though it is concentrated in Chewy rather than retailers generally (Petco is only 1.7% on AIO). The causal driver (source weighting, structured retailer data, etc.) is not directly observable in our data, but the pattern is stable enough to act on.
The 60-prompt set was constructed to span category-definition, comparison, price-substitute, attribute-specific, and use-case queries, but the aggregated dataset used in this report does not include prompt-level mention breakdowns. The following cluster dynamics are therefore framed as hypotheses drawn from prompt design and aggregate brand patterns, not as empirical findings. Operators should validate these against prompt-level data before acting on any single cluster.
Category-definition queries ("best pet wellness brands," "best pet wellness products without fillers"). The aggregate leaderboard's premium-DTC concentration is consistent with large, well-funded brands dominating these high-funnel queries, likely via editorial roundups — but this mechanism is a hypothesis, not a measured finding in our data.
Head-to-head comparison queries ("The Farmer's Dog vs Ollie," "Nom Nom vs The Farmer's Dog"). The Farmer's Dog's SoV lead and prominence in competitor positioning suggest it is the anchor in most comparisons; this would create a structural moat in which even losing comparisons generate mentions. Worth testing directly on the prompt-level data.
Price-substitute queries ("brands like Nom Nom but cheaper," "alternative to The Farmer's Dog"). A recognized pattern in AI search is that engines echo the branded entity in the query back in the answer, which would give incumbents an unearned presence in their own substitute queries. If confirmed on the prompt-level data, 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"). These queries typically reward brands that publish granular ingredient and formulation content. Which of the top-four brands over-indexes here is not resolvable from the aggregate data alone.
Picky-eater and behavioral queries. A narrower cluster where brands with published feeding-behavior content tend to surface; specific winners require prompt-level inspection.
The prompt sample was designed to include use-case queries with commercial intent, and the strategic logic is straightforward regardless of which specific cluster a brand targets: displacing The Farmer's Dog on "best pet wellness brands" requires rewriting the editorial consensus across dozens of roundup articles. Becoming the first brand cited on a narrower use-case query requires ranking one well-structured piece of content on one authoritative source. The cost curves are not comparable.
Five prompt areas stand out as plausible candidates for challenger-brand investment, based on commercial intent and the structural logic above rather than on measured prompt-level citation density in this dataset. Each should be validated against prompt-level evidence before committing content budget:
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. A well-structured comparison page, syndicated to one or two review sites, can improve the odds, though durable shifts in AI citation typically require repetition across multiple authoritative sources over time.
Move 3 (Days 60–90): Close the Google AIO gap via Chewy. Chewy is cited more often on Google AIO (13.3%) than in the aggregate SoV measure (9.6%), a ~39% relative difference, and it is the single clearest retailer signal in the dataset. The mechanism is not proven in our data, but the pattern is stable enough that retailer presence on AIO deserves testing. For a DTC brand, this means evaluating a Chewy listing with complete structured data (ingredients, feeding guidelines, certifications) as a visibility investment, even where marketplace unit economics are weaker than direct. (Petco at 1.7% on AIO does not carry the same signal and should not be assumed to offer equivalent lift.) 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, grooming accessories, and retail — a deliberately broad taxonomy that includes several adjacent non-wellness categories, which is why some tracked brands registered zero mentions and why the zero-mention count is not a pure category-performance signal. Share of voice is computed as the percentage of the 240 total engine calls in which a brand was named (equivalently, the average of the four engine-specific mention rates). Average position is the mean ordinal rank of the brand within each engine's response, averaged across all mentions. Because multiple brands are routinely co-cited in a single AI response, individual brand SoV figures are non-exclusive and cannot be summed into category concentration metrics. Prompt-cluster interpretations in this report are framed as hypotheses where they depend on prompt-level breakdowns not included in the aggregate dataset.
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