SEMPITE Research
Original Research on AI Search Visibility
We run live studies against the AI systems people actually use — Google’s AI Overview, ChatGPT and the assistants behind them — and publish what we find. Real queries, recorded answers, named sources. All studies are released under CC BY 4.0 and free to cite.
Playbook · August 2026How to Get Cited by the 3 Publishers That Control Supplement AI Answers
Forbes Health, Healthline and Garage Gym Reviews carry 77% of Google’s AI supplement answers — and all three publish how they choose. We read the criteria. They want the same eight things, and none of them is buyable.
77%of AI answers via these 3 publishers 3/3publish their scoring criteria $0you can pay to be ranked Cross-Study · August 2026The Brands With llms.txt Files Are the Ones AI Ignores
We crossed our two studies: who publishes an llms.txt against who Google’s AI actually cites in sports nutrition. It’s backwards — the sources AI reads skip the file, and the brands it ignores all auto-serve the same commerce template.
1/10top publishers publish any llms.txt 0/17brands with a real content map 7brands serving the same template Ecosystem Audit, Part 2 · August 20261 in 8 llms.txt Files Is Empty. The Biggest Has 11,137 Links.
We opened all 1,318 working llms.txt files and counted what’s inside. The format meant to be a curated map is, in practice, either empty, a tidy list, or a full-site firehose — with nothing enforcing the difference.
13%of working files are empty 30links in the median file 11,137links in the largest Ecosystem Audit · August 2026We Audited 1,563 llms.txt Files. One in Six Is Already Broken.
Every llms.txt file listed in the ecosystem’s public directories, fetched and classified — then 19,039 of the links inside them validated. The web’s instruction manual for AI is quietly rotting.
15.7%of files broken at file level 18.2%of sites link to a dead page 54sites bot-block their own bot file Category Study · August 2026Who Google’s AI Recommends in Sports Nutrition
40 buying-intent queries across energy drinks, pre-workout, creatine and protein. 30 brands scored against every AI Overview answer, every cited source logged.
95%of answers cite the same 10 domains 5.1%of citations go to brand-owned sites 8/30brands never mentioned Monthly Index · Updated August 2026AI Visibility Index
Month-over-month tracking of how often businesses ranking in Google’s top three local results are recommended — or ignored — by ChatGPT.
43%of Google top-3 businesses never mentioned by ChatGPT +11ptsvs July — the gap is widening