Why Half the Field Is Invisible to AI: This Week's Readiness Readings

What do this week's numbers actually show?

The AI Visibility Index this week tracks 11 brands, with an average readiness score of 59 out of 100. That figure sits just above the halfway mark — a reminder that being present on the open web is not the same as being visible to the AI assistants that increasingly answer buyers' questions.

Readiness measures how well a brand's site is built to be found and cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. An average of 59 tells a clear story: most brands in this cohort are legible enough to be discovered, but far from optimised to be quoted. The distance between those two states is where AI visibility is won or lost.

Who leads the field?

At the top sits The AI Visibility Index itself with a readiness of 87 — the benchmark against which the rest of the field is measured. Among trading brands, The Whisky Shop leads with a score of 76, comfortably clear of the pack and the only retailer in the cohort above the 70 threshold.

Behind it, EGM Cigars scores 66, the strongest performer among the cigar specialists. That is a meaningful lead: EGM Cigars sits a full nine points above the next brand, Hard To Find Whisky, on 57. In a category where several brands are separated by a point or two, EGM Cigars has built a genuine structural advantage.

What separates the leaders from the middle is rarely a single feature. It is the accumulation of small, machine-readable signals — clear product data, consistent naming, structured content and answerable copy — that let an assistant reconstruct and cite a brand with confidence.

Where does the field bunch up?

The most striking feature of this week's readings is the crowd in the middle. Hard To Find Whisky (57), C.Gars Ltd (56) and City Cigars (50) sit within seven points of one another, with The Drink Shop close behind on 48. Four brands, effectively tied, all hovering around the halfway line.

This is the danger zone of AI visibility. When several competitors read as roughly equivalent to an assistant, none of them stands out as the obvious source to cite. The brand that breaks from the pack does so by making itself the easiest to quote — not merely the easiest to find. In a tie, the assistant defaults to whichever source it can parse and trust most cleanly, and a handful of readiness points can decide who that is.

Which brands are at risk of being left out entirely?

At the foot of the table, Turmeaus Cigars scores 32 — 55 points below the top of the Index and 27 below the cohort average. A score in the thirties suggests an assistant will struggle to reliably identify, summarise or recommend the brand when a buyer asks. In practice, that means the brand is largely absent from the AI conversations happening about its own category.

The gap between Turmeaus Cigars and The Drink Shop — the next brand up — is 16 points, the single largest step anywhere in the lower half of the table. That is not noise. It marks the difference between a brand that is on the map, however faintly, and one that risks being omitted from AI answers altogether.

What does a 55-point spread tell us?

The range from 87 at the top to 32 at the bottom is the real headline. A 55-point spread across 11 brands shows that AI visibility is not evenly distributed and is not accidental. It is the product of choices — how a site is structured, how clearly it describes what it sells, and how well it answers the questions real buyers ask.

Critically, the drinks and cigar retailers in this cohort span almost the entire range, from The Whisky Shop on 76 down to Turmeaus Cigars on 32. Category is not destiny. Two brands selling comparable products can present themselves to an assistant in radically different ways, and the readings prove it. The winners have decided to be quotable; the laggards have not yet.

What should brands take from this week?

Three lessons stand out. First, the middle is fragile: a cluster of brands around 50 are one improvement away from separating themselves, and one act of neglect away from slipping back. Second, leadership is defensible — The Whisky Shop and EGM Cigars have built margins that will not be closed overnight. Third, the bottom of the table is a warning that being online is no guarantee of being visible.

An average of 59 across the field means the opportunity is still open. No brand outside the benchmark has yet reached the levels of readiness that make citation near-automatic. The brands that move now — before their competitors close the gap — will own the AI answers in their category.

Explore the full field in the Index, see how scores are built in our methodology, and read the wider trends in the State of AI Visibility report.

Run a scan to see where your brand sits against this week's readings.