The Shortlist · United States
Shoppers now ask assistants for buying advice, and the reply is a list of brand names. Each window we put the same shopper questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini and log every Shopify brand they name, where it sits in the answer, and which brands they skip. The scores are tallies, nothing more.
See the index by industryHow we measure it
Indexes
Each index asks the same fixed questions on every platform, window after window. Pick yours.
Indie SPF, serums and the DTC labels that built themselves on Shopify.
The Inkey List leads at 19.8Protein, greens, electrolytes and the daily-stack brands.
Momentous leads at 17.9Leggings, training kit and running labels — the DTC names versus the giants.
Vuori leads at 41.4Roasters, subscriptions and the pod alternatives.
Counter Culture leads at 52.4Fresh food, treats and the gear brands the fastest-growing DTC category runs on.
Stella & Chewy's leads at 12.5Sheets, duvets and the sleep brands that made linen a category.
Brooklinen leads at 46.1Bond repair, curl care and the salon brands that went direct.
Olaplex leads at 47.1Demi-fine, everyday gold and the lab-grown challengers.
Mejuri leads at 54.7Leaders this window
Patterns in the data
Top of one index
The bedding & home brands the assistants mention most, out of every one we track. Further down the full list sit the brands nobody mentions.
Platform split
Boll & Branch scores 45.7 points apart between its best and worst assistant in bedding & home. Winning on one says little about the other two.
One answer, a handful of names
An assistant replies with five or six brands and stops. There are no results pages to scroll and no paid slot to buy. A brand left out of the reply is out of the running.
ShopperWhat are the best skincare brands right now?
Zero mentions
50of 175
689 answers in the current windows, and these stores appeared in none of them, on any assistant. Every industry page names its own.
See what the assistants cannot readMethod
No weighting, no modelling, no estimates for brands we did not measure. Every figure on these pages traces back to a saved answer.
30 questions per industry, phrased the way shoppers type them into search and chat tools. No brand is named in any of them.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini each receive the identical set through their APIs, with live search available, in every window.
A brand is ranked only after its storefront passes a Shopify check. Brands that fail it are shown on the page but never scored.
Each mention is logged with its place in the answer and the assistant that gave it. Mentions over answers gives the score.
Frequently asked questions
ForgeCRO’s own running record of which Shopify brands AI assistants put forward when American shoppers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for buying advice, and which ones they leave out. A brand is only scored once its store has been confirmed as Shopify.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Each is asked the same fixed set of shopper questions per industry, through its API with web search or search grounding on, so the answers reflect the live web rather than training data.
Take the answers in a window that mention the brand, divide by every answer in that window, multiply by 100. Mentioned in 40 of 90 answers means 44.4. There is no weighting or modelling on top. Average position records how far down each answer the brand came when it did appear.
No. Each industry’s brand list is locked before scanning starts and stays fixed until it ends, and the score is a tally of mentions. ForgeCRO sells audits and fixes, never placement.
Every scan window is dated on the page. The index is rescanned on a rolling basis; movement shows the change in rank against the previous window for that industry.
Not one answer in the window, on any assistant, for any question, put it forward. That usually means the assistants cannot read the store well enough to have a reason to. The free AI visibility audit shows which part is missing.
Because that is who ForgeCRO works with, and because a verified population makes the index useful. Brands that got named but do not run on Shopify are listed on each industry page so nothing is hidden; they are just not ranked.
Send the store URL through the contact page with “Add my brand to the Shortlist” selected. If the store runs on Shopify and sells in the United States it joins the population for the next scan window.
Want to move up
AI recommends what it can read. The free audit shows which part of your store the assistants cannot use, and the fixed-price team repairs it at the source.
