If you have checked how one AI assistant describes your brand and assumed the others are much the same, this post is worth a few minutes. They are not the same. They pull from different places, in different ways, and being recommended by one tells you very little about whether you appear in the rest. Understanding why is the first step to being visible across all of them.
You do not need to be technical to follow this. The point is not how these systems are built, it is where each one gets its answer from, because that is what decides whether your brand is in it.
The one idea that explains all of them
Every AI assistant does two things when it answers a travel question. It draws on what it learned when it was trained, a large but fixed snapshot of the web from some point in the past, and, increasingly, it searches the live web in the moment to supplement that. The balance between those two, how much each assistant relies on old training versus fresh search, is the single biggest reason they give different answers.
A brand that is strongly represented in the training data may appear even without live search. A brand that is not can still appear if it is clearly present on the live web the assistant searches. This is why a well-known operator and a small newcomer can each be visible or invisible depending on which assistant, and which mode, is being used.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the most used, and its behaviour depends heavily on whether web search is switched on. Asked a question without searching, it answers from its training, which means it tends to name established, widely-referenced brands and may miss anyone who has grown recently. With web search enabled, which is now common, it looks at live results and can surface brands it would otherwise not know, weighing what it finds across current web sources.
The practical implication: to be recommended by ChatGPT you need to be both well-referenced across the web over time, which helps in its training-based answers, and clearly present in live search results, which helps when it searches. Being strong in only one of those leaves you visible in some conversations and absent in others.
Gemini
Gemini is Google's assistant, and its great advantage is its connection to Google's live search and the wider Google ecosystem, including Maps and the vast index Google already holds. When Gemini grounds an answer in Google Search, it is drawing on the same infrastructure that decides who ranks and who appears in Google's own results.
For a travel brand, this has a clear consequence: your presence in the Google ecosystem, your Google Business Profile, your Maps presence, your standing in Google's index, feeds into how Gemini sees you. Gemini is also the engine behind Google's AI answers inside Search itself, which are a separate and enormous surface covered in its own article. Being visible to Gemini is closely tied to being visible to Google, though, as always, ranking well is not the same as being recommended.
Perplexity
Perplexity is built around live search from the ground up. It was designed as an answer engine that searches the web for every query and cites its sources, so it leans heavily on what is currently findable and credible online, right now, rather than on old training.
This makes Perplexity one of the more meritocratic assistants for a smaller or newer brand. Because it searches live and cites sources, a brand that is clearly present and well-referenced on the current web can appear even without years of established reputation. It also means Perplexity rewards brands that are cited by other credible sources, since those citations are exactly what it surfaces and links to. If you are strong on the live web but weak in older training data, Perplexity is often where you will see that strength first.
Claude
Claude, made by Anthropic, answers thoughtfully from its training and, when web search is enabled, from live results with citations, much like the others. In practice it tends to be careful and measured in how it describes brands, and it draws on a broad reading of the web rather than any single platform's ecosystem. As with ChatGPT, being both well-referenced over time and clearly present in current search results is what makes you visible to it.
Why one is not a proxy for the rest
Put these together and the reason to check all of them becomes obvious. ChatGPT leans on a mix of training and live search. Gemini is tied to the Google ecosystem. Perplexity is almost entirely live and citation-driven. Claude reads broadly and carefully. A brand can easily be named confidently by one and completely absent from another, simply because of where each looks.
This is not a small effect. It is common to find a travel brand that appears well in one assistant and not at all in another, and the brand has no idea, because it only ever checked one. Assuming they behave alike is how brands get a false sense of security, or miss an easy opportunity, in the assistants they never looked at.
What to do about it
The good news is that the underlying work overlaps. Being clearly present and accurately described across the web, well-referenced by other credible sources, and strong in the Google ecosystem helps you across all of these assistants at once, even though each weights those things differently. The goal is to be unmistakably the right answer no matter where the assistant looks.
The starting point is to see where you actually stand in each, rather than guessing from one. The free AI Visibility Check runs your brand through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude together, so you can see exactly where you appear, where you do not, and how differently they treat you.
Run your free AI Visibility Check →
Note: AI assistants change how they work often, and the balance between training and live search shifts with each update. The principles here, that each draws from different places and that being clearly and accurately present across the web helps everywhere, hold regardless of the specifics on any given day.
