Edited on Jun 24, 2026.
Citation Audit Family · Vertical Application
Methodology anchor: Six-Step Methodology · Other audits: Wire Services · IR Pages · 100 Consumer Brands · Full research index
The Vertical Citation Audit
Modeled Citation Share across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — by industry.
The Vertical Citation Audit is EPR's cross-industry research line measuring how brands appear in AI engine answers. Seven consumer and B2B verticals. Twenty-plus brands per audit. Sixty-plus category-leadership prompts. Five engines. Modeled Citation Share, retrieval anchor identification, and the structural pattern that decides which brands the engines name and which ones the engines skip.
The series exists because AI-engine answers have replaced search engine results pages as the discovery surface buyers reach first. The brands cited inside the answer compound. The brands absent from the answer pay paid media to compensate. The audits document who currently holds Citation Share in each category, which retrieval anchors the engines depend on, and what closes the gap for brands that under-index.
Each audit ships with a tier-band leaderboard, a retrieval anchor map, an engine-by-engine variation read, and an operational read on what moves Citation Share in the category over the next 12–24 months. Audit links below. Methodology note at the bottom of the page.
The Seven Verticals
Luxury Hotels
Forbes Travel Guide has overtaken Condé Nast Traveler as the dominant retrieval anchor. Four Seasons wins volume. Aman wins exclusivity. AI compresses luxury differentiation below the top five.
Read the audit →Universities
Harvard, Stanford, and MIT anchor Tier 1 of the higher-education answer layer. Public flagships under-index against actual market position. Regional and second-tier privates compress below the top fifteen.
Read the audit →Fashion Brands
Vogue and Business of Fashion anchor the editorial retrieval layer. LVMH, Kering, and Richemont houses dominate Tier 1. Independent and contemporary brands fight for the slots below the conglomerate top.
Read the audit →Hospitals & Health Systems
U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals rankings remain the retrieval anchor the engines cannot let go of. Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Mass General dominate. Regional systems compress below the named-by-press tier.
Read the audit →Restaurants
Michelin, James Beard, and the World's 50 Best are the validator triangle. Eater, Resy editorial, and The Infatuation anchor city-level retrieval. Independent fine dining wins above its weight. Hotel restaurants under-index.
Read the audit →Law Firms
Chambers, Vault, and Am Law 100 rankings anchor the retrieval layer. Cravath, Wachtell, Sullivan & Cromwell, Skadden, and Kirkland sit at Tier 1 across most category-leadership prompts. Mid-market and regional firms compress.
Read the audit →Financial Advisors & RIAs
Barron's, Forbes, and the Financial Times rankings anchor the advisor retrieval layer. Edelman Financial Engines, Creative Planning, Mariner, and Mercer Advisors hold Tier 1 on RIA-specific prompts. Independent advisors with strong earned media outperform their AUM weight.
Read the audit →Methodology Note
Each Vertical Citation Audit assesses 20–25 brands across the five frontier AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews) using a prompt library of 60+ category-leadership, product-specific, and comparative-with-global-peer questions. Tier-band assignment uses the locked Citation Audit weighting: Citation Frequency 40%, Cross-Engine Breadth 20%, Query-Type Breadth 20%, Extractability 15%, Crawl Access 5%. Full methodology in the Six-Step GEO Citation Audit Methodology.
The audits are editorial benchmarks and do not rely on private client data. Brand lists are compiled from public market-cap, revenue, ranking, and category-leadership sources (S&P Capital IQ, industry rankings, regulatory filings, Statista, official company disclosures). All assessment is observation of publicly accessible AI engine outputs.
The series is part of EPR's broader Citation Share Index framework — the operating measurement for brand presence inside AI engine answers. See the full EPR Research Index for all studies.
