What is the recommendation funnel?

The rungs a brand climbs before an AI engine chooses it: Exists, Retrieved, Cited, Named, Recommended, Transacted.

The funnel decomposes how an engine selects a brand. A brand must exist where the engine looks, be retrieved for the question, be cited as a source, be named in the answer, be recommended over the alternatives, and finally be chosen by the buyer.

It is an analytic ladder, not a journey a buyer walks. Its use is diagnosis: find the rung where a brand stops, and fix that rung first, because effort spent above it moves nothing.

See it at work

• Listed is not recommended
• The AI search guide

Other terms: Share of Recommendation · Entity (in AI search)