Profound finds Black Friday AI search shortlists shift in a year

Profound’s Black Friday AI search index shows AT&T and Wayfair gaining in a year, so retailers can’t count on last year’s place in AI answers.

What changed

Black Friday AI search answers changed sharply in a year for several US retailers, according to Profound’s Black Friday in AI Search 2026 index, published on 13 November 2026. Profound recorded 279,741 responses and more than 1.2 million citation events from ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews across 25 retail categories in the US, the UK, Germany and France, from 27 October to 9 November 2026.

The year-over-year comparison covers US answers only: the same 1,250 prompts on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews in the weeks of 4 to 10 November 2025 and 3 to 9 November 2026. Visibility, as Profound measures it, is the share of eligible answers naming brands in a category that mention a given brand. AT&T’s visibility in US phone answers grew 645%, lifting it from 14th to sixth, while Boost Mobile’s fell 82% and OnePlus’s 76%. Three US category leaders held first place over the same weeks:

Wayfair rose from 64.4% to 85.0% of eligible furniture answers, Chewy from 78.8% to 87.1% in pets and Ulta from 84.1% to 85.4% in beauty. Macy’s furniture visibility fell 53% and Kohl’s 77%.

Across all four markets, Amazon leads Profound’s combined leaderboard at 48.4% visibility, which fits Ahrefs’ finding that stores lead the brands ChatGPT mentions most. Within single countries and categories, local specialists lead:

Currys holds 71.3% in UK appliances, Ocarat 45.8% in French jewelry and watches and Bergfreunde 43.7% in German outdoors, across four engines weighted equally.

Why it happened

Profound ties the index to its own finding that commercial conversations in ChatGPT spike around Black Friday. Profound’s 13 August 2026 analysis of 7.5 million ChatGPT conversations found the share with commercial intent rose from 13.9% to 19.2% between June 2025 and June 2026, with spikes in late November 2025 for Black Friday and late December for Christmas.

Profound’s earlier research also shows how briefly a citation lasts. Its 30 September 2026 study of 883,000 pages on seven AI engines over twelve months found that the median page had lost half its peak citation share 11 days after the peak, and that pages about a dated event lost citations fastest. New pages enter quickly too: the guide for CMOs Profound published with VaynerX on 23 June 2026 reports a median of 6.8 days from publication to citation.

What it changes for GEO

The Black Friday recommendation is the most valuable moment in a purchase, and Profound shows it changing hands in a year. Boost Mobile fell from 11th to 19th in US phone answers, and a brand an answer leaves out loses the sale. Ulta and Chewy kept first place and the same hub URL, because engines keep recommending the brand they learned is the answer.

A brand’s own site is the one source it controls, and the pages that gained answer the buyer’s question. AT&T’s hub, which lists named offers, monthly prices and trade-in requirements, was cited in 11.7% of monitored answers, up from 0.7%, within a wider AT&T gain. Ocarat’s jewelry and watch pages took 7.00% of citations in French jewelry and watches against 0.44% for its general sale page, so one generic sale page loses to a page per buying decision.

AI engines judge a brand by who else mentions it. A Forbes Black Friday furniture guide was the most cited US furniture page in the 2026 comparison week, with an 8.32% citation share, and 90.9% of answers citing it named Wayfair. Retailers missing from the guides an engine cites lose those answers.

A new page can be cited within days or weeks, as the data on how long a new page takes to reach ChatGPT answers shows. A Times Union sale calendar was first cited on its publication date, 28 October 2026, and became the second-ranked page in Profound’s four-market snapshot.

Profound averages the engines equally, yet each answers from its own sources, so a brand reads its position engine by engine. Agenzy’s 2026 study measured a median 5.1x visibility gap between a brand’s best and worst AI engine, and 30% of visible brands were completely invisible on at least one engine (n=86 brands visible somewhere, 2026-04 to 2026-08).

What to do

The head of e-commerce should have the Black Friday hub reworked this week, while new pages can still enter AI answers before the sale. Davis McCain, a researcher at Profound, advises retailers to “put the conditions beside the headline offer and answer the questions that determine whether someone can buy.” That means prices, eligibility, trade-in terms and in-store availability beside each offer, at last year’s URL.

The team then gives each priority category its own page built around the choices buyers make, and sends confirmed prices and conditions to the publishers AI answers cite in the category. The check is how often AI answers mention the brand, counted on each engine every few days, with Profound’s free Black Friday Index as a category reference. After the sale, the team asks buyers how they found the brand, since analytics undercount those who met it in an AI answer.