What we are learning about AI answers
Papers and field notes from the Branly research desk. Written from our own measurements, with the method and the sample size on every page.
Indians use ChatGPT less to look things up than the world does
OpenAI's own data shows about one in six ChatGPT messages from India is someone looking something up, against one in five in the US. Advice is India's biggest use. What that means for where Indian brands need to be named.
More research
What does a blog post that AI search cites look like?
Eight parts make a blog post easier for AI search to cite, from a question-style title to letting the AI crawlers in. Each one is backed by a published source, and special AI schema is not one of them.
Reddit says AI Mode sends it no traffic. AI Mode cites it most.
Reddit lost more than 1 million search referrals a week in October and blamed Google's AI Mode. The same AI Mode cites Reddit more than any other site. What a Reddit thread now earns a brand, and what it does not.
Google says AI Mode earns less, and India gets its ads now
Google told investors on 28 October 2026 that a question asked in AI Mode earns less than a classic search, and the same day began scaling ads inside AI Mode in India and nine other countries. What that means for brands whose answers now share the screen with a paid slot.
Google's Search growth slowed. AI is part of the reason.
Alphabet had its worst day on the stock market since 2004. Search still grew 12%, but more slowly than before, while people search more than ever. Google named AI Mode as one reason.
What is AI visibility worth? The evidence at each step
We reviewed every 2025 and 2026 study on the four rates that turn AI visibility into revenue. For the same business, the published figures support a 31-fold range.
Best AI visibility tools for Indian brands, 2026
We read 55 Indian AI visibility tools and 11 global ones from their own websites and graded six features, from where the answers come from to whether a fix moved the AI answer. One tool shows five of six. Seventeen show none.
What AI search sends you, and what it hides
Most people who see a brand in an AI answer never click. Here is what you can measure today, what you are missing, and three ways to estimate the impact.