The seven answer engines

There is no official ranking or citation API for AI answers, and every engine grounds its response on a different index with a different retrieval strategy. Lokrix models seven distinct answer engines — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok and Claude — because being surfaced in one tells you little about the others.

How each answer engine grounds its answersSeven answer engines on the left connect to their grounding sources on the right: ChatGPT to the Bing index; Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini to the Google index and Search; Perplexity, Grok and Claude to live web search.ChatGPTGoogle AI OverviewsGoogle AI ModePerplexityGeminiGrok (xAI)ClaudeBing indexGoogle index / SearchLive web search

Why they are separate engines

Each engine draws citations from a different source of truth. ChatGPT retrieves through the Bing index — roughly 87% of its citations match a Bing top-10 result. Copilot also grounds on Bing. Gemini grounds on Google Search. Perplexity runs its own live search across Google and Bing and heavily over-weights Reddit (about 47% of its top citations) and freshness. Claude and Grok both use live web search.

Google is the clearest case for keeping engines apart: AI Overviews and AI Mode both synthesise from Google's own index, yet they cite the same URL only about 14% of the time. Optimising for one does not carry over to the other, so Lokrix scores them independently.

How each engine grounds

  • ChatGPT — retrieves via the Bing index; Bing rank and freshness dominate.
  • Google AI Overviews — synthesised from Google's own index, shown above the classic SERP.
  • Google AI Mode — Google's conversational surface; cites different URLs than AI Overviews.
  • Perplexity — live Google+Bing search, over-weighting Reddit and freshness.
  • Gemini — grounds on Google Search.
  • Grok (xAI) — live search, with a real-time signal from X.
  • Claude — answers with web search when the question needs current information.

What runs live by default

Five engines run live out of the box: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok and Gemini. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode have no direct API — they are observed through a SERP provider (Serper or SerpAPI), so they only run once a search-provider key is configured for the workspace.

The answer engines Lokrix AI measuresA horizontal strip of engine cards — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok and Claude — each marked as a measured surface, above a caption noting each is sampled K times.ChatGPTAI OverviewsAI ModePerplexityGeminiGrokClaude7 answer engines · each sampled K times

Reading per-engine results

Because answers are non-deterministic, every engine result is a Monte-Carlo estimate: each prompt is run K times across temperature, persona and locale to produce a presence probability with a 95% confidence interval — never a single-run yes/no. Per engine you get a component score, presence, share-of-voice and citations, which roll up into the overall Lokrix AI Score. See sampling & confidence intervals for the method.