Study reveals which bookstores AI engines recommend to Romanian shoppers

A study tested five AI engines — ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews — by posing 18 purchase-intent questions about books in Romanian, generating 180 analysed responses. Only 42% of answers named any of the 21 major Romanian bookstore brands, while the remaining responses suggested titles or authors without directing users to a specific retailer. Market leader Libris topped brand mentions with 37 appearances, landing in first position 65% of the time, while engines varied dramatically in how often they named brands at all — Gemini averaged 2.2 brands per answer versus Perplexity's 0.8. The research also identified a split between brands whose websites were cited as sources and those actually recommended by name, with some brands like Humanitas being named frequently despite never being cited as a source. The findings suggest that tracking raw mention counts understates position value, and that building strong entity signals — not just crawlable content — is critical for visibility in AI-generated recommendations.