AEO INDEX OCTOBER 2026 USA: Three brands won every TV question in AI answers, yet ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews agreed on the top brand only twice
LG won five questions, Samsung four and Hisense one. Sony was ranked first six times and won none, and LG took small TVs without a single first-place pick.
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ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews named the same first brand on only 2 of the 10 TV questions we asked on 21 October 2026: outdoor TVs and best TV brands overall. Even so, every question went to one of three brands. LG won five, Samsung four and Hisense one.
Samsung leads the October 2026 AEO Index for TVs. It was named in 97% of the 30 answers, which we collected from one U.S. location, and first in 13. The catch is that the first brand depends heavily on which engine you ask, and in one case the question winner was a brand no engine ranked first. The tables are in the full October 2026 report.
Who wins the TV questions?
The AI Rank Score weights each mention by its position in the answer and runs from 0 to 100; a brand named first by all three engines on every question would get 100. Samsung scores 75.0 and LG 55.7. Sony (49.3), TCL (40.7) and Hisense (40.3) come next, and then the scores drop away to 11.0 for Roku.
LG won OLED (93), gaming (93), 75-inch (80), small TVs (80) and best TV brands overall (100). Samsung won QLED (93), outdoor (100), bright rooms (80) and sports (87). Hisense took budget TVs at 93, with TCL close behind at 87.
On 75-inch TVs, LG edged Sony 80 to 77 even though Gemini and AI Overviews both put Sony first. Small TVs are stranger. LG won 80 to 77 over Samsung without being any engine’s first pick: ChatGPT chose Sony, and Gemini and AI Overviews chose Samsung. The score also counts second and third places, which is how that happens.
Sony is the reverse case. It was ranked first six times and won no question.
How far apart are the engines?
Here is how each engine spread its ten first places:
- ChatGPT: Samsung 4, LG 4, Sony 1, TCL 1.
- Gemini: Samsung 4, LG 3, Sony 2, Hisense 1.
- AI Overviews: Samsung 5, Sony 3, LG 1, Hisense 1.
AI Overviews gave LG the fewest first places. It picked Samsung for OLED, where both other engines chose LG, and Sony for QLED, where both chose Samsung.
TCL and Hisense were each named in 77% of answers, the same as Sony. TCL was first once and Hisense twice, all on budget TVs. Vizio was named in 17% of answers and was missing from five of the eight questions where it was expected, QLED, gaming and sports among them.
What are the engines reading?
The engines cited 140 sources from 53 websites, and just 5 (3.6%) were brand sites. The biggest single source was Google Shopping cards, with 20 citations, all in AI Overviews (25.6% of its citations). youtube.com was cited 14 times and rtings.com 13, mostly by AI Overviews. techradar.com went the other way, with 9 of its 12 citations coming from ChatGPT.
Gemini cited sources in just one of its ten answers, and those answers averaged about 1,267 words. ChatGPT cited auchan.fr, a French domain, and factorybrandsdirect.ca, a Canadian one, twice each, for questions asked in the U.S. We can’t tell from the data why those pages were picked.
Panasonic was mentioned on 30% of the cited pages we could read but named in only 7% of answers. We read 46 of the 93 cited pages that could be opened, so treat that as a partial view.
What does this mean for TV brands?
In TVs, I’d say getting named is close to settled for the top five brands. All of them are in at least 73% of answers. The contest is for first place, and that gets decided engine by engine. Track one blended number and you will miss that AI Overviews and ChatGPT disagree on OLED and QLED.
The Shopping cards matter too. A quarter of AI Overviews’ TV citations are product listings. In my view that makes the product feed part of how a brand shows up on that engine, and I’d treat it as an AEO channel.
What to watch next
The two closest questions, small TVs and 75-inch TVs, were each decided by three points. The November edition will show whether LG holds both, and whether the engines agree on more than two questions. Analysis is powered by markaeo.com, with full data in the full October 2026 report.
How we measured: we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews 10 buying questions, 30 answers in all, collected on 21 October 2026 from a single U.S. location. AI answers vary by time, place and user. The full method and notice are in the report.
Sources
- Answer Engine Daily AEO Index: TVs, October 2026
