Buyers in Malaysia increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Overviews which brand to choose, yet few companies know how often they actually appear in those answers. Tracking data from Primal Malaysia offers a practical look at this question, based on thousands of AI answers recorded over a single month. The findings cover where brands appear, which sources AI tools rely on and why the numbers need careful reading.
Key Findings at a Glance
A few patterns stood out clearly across the month.
- Each brand’s own website was cited in only about a quarter of the AI answers about that brand.
- A competitor’s website was cited roughly as often as the brand’s own site.
- Marketplaces and comparison sites showed up in the answers for 11 of the 12 brands.
- Facebook was the most cited social platform for 8 brands.
- Google Business Profile and Google Maps results were cited for 7 brands.
- Government registers or regulators were cited for 6 brands.
A second, smaller data set added another angle. It covered 3,693 answers across 66 questions about agencies and search, and the general questions in that group mentioned no agency at all.
Brands Are Rarely Their Own Main Source
The most notable finding is how little AI tools rely on a brand’s own website when describing that brand. In about three out of four answers, the brand’s site was not among the cited sources.
The other sources were mostly places where buyers compare and check before buying. A marketplace listing, a review site, a Facebook page or an official register often carried more weight in the answer than the company’s own pages.
How Visibility Is Measured
AI visibility uses its own set of measures, and they differ from the rankings most marketing teams know. The team at Primal Malaysia reports these figures monthly beside Google rankings and organic leads, and the terms below are the ones that appear most often.
- A mention means the brand name appears in an AI answer.
- A citation means the answer links to the brand’s own website.
- Visibility is the share of tracked answers in which the brand appears at all.
- Share of voice is the brand’s portion of all brand mentions across the tracked answers, compared with competitors.
- Average position shows where the brand usually appears when an answer lists several brands.
Mentions and citations do not always rise together. When mentions grow but citations stay flat, the AI tool knows the brand but is quoting other websites about it. That usually points to work needed on the brand’s own pages.
Google Search Console now includes a Generative AI performance report covering AI Overviews and AI Mode. It shows impressions by page, country, device and date. For tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, prompt tracking remains the main method.
What Brands Can Take From the Data
The research points to two areas of work. A brand’s own pages need clear, checkable facts that AI tools can quote. Its listings on marketplaces, review sites, social pages and registers need to be complete, current and consistent with the main website.
Brands that track only their own website may miss most of the picture. Watching which outside sources keep appearing for their category, month after month, shows where the real gaps are.
