Semrush, which is owned by Adobe, published a study on November 9 of 10,514 AI answers to US holiday shopping questions, PPC Land reports. The answers came from Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode in September 2026, and prompts naming brands or branded products were removed. Among the 89 AI Overviews topics with enough prompts, Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy or Target led 23.6%. Specialist stores and product brands led most of the rest.
Ashley Furniture was mentioned in 66.5% of furniture deal prompts in AI Overviews, against 13.4% for Walmart. evo reached 64.2% on ski deals, where none of the big four appeared. Nordstrom reached 57.6% on clothing, while the best of the big four managed 5.0%. Grouped into broader aisles, the big four led five of 10.
Gemini named Amazon in 40.5% of prompts but never cited amazon.com as a source. Semrush calls Amazon's robots.txt block on Google-Extended "the likely explanation." Among Gemini answers that named Amazon, the most cited sources included blackfriday.com and Walmart's site. AI Overviews cited Reddit in 53.2% of Christmas gift prompts.
Semrush cautions that each platform answered each prompt once, and that the study measures visibility, not sales or traffic.