Indian Brands Are Named in Half of AI Search Answers
India leads generative AI adoption, yet the playbooks are US-centric. Here's how CMOs can win when Gemini names brands but rarely sends the click.
Search used to end with a click. In India’s fastest-growing AI discovery market, it increasingly ends with a name — and the click may never arrive. That gap, between being cited and being chosen, is the new battleground for CMOs.
01 · India is early, not catching up
India became the world’s largest market for generative AI app downloads in 2025, reports Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch. Indian users make up close to a fifth of the global base for leading AI assistants, roughly double the US share. OpenAI now counts more than 100 million weekly users in India, its second-largest market.
Google has responded with India-first launches. Search Live arrived here before anywhere else outside the US, and AI Mode now runs in nine Indian languages.
02 · Your buyers meet Gemini first
The engine order matters. In India, Gemini accounts for around half of AI chatbot downloads, while ChatGPT takes roughly a third — nearly the reverse of the American picture. Most AI visibility tools and playbooks still default to ChatGPT, which is the engine Indian buyers use least.
03 · A link without a name is not a win
Research by Semrush and Kevin Indig, across four AI engines, found that in close to two-thirds of cases the model used a brand’s page as a source and linked to it without ever naming the brand. Prashant Puri, co-founder and CEO of AdLift, calls these “ghost citations.” Only about one appearance in eight was both linked and named.
India is the exception that flips the problem. Brands appeared by name in roughly half of Indian AI answers, level with Sweden and far ahead of Italy, Brazil and the Netherlands at 18 to 22 per cent.
04 · Measure mentions, not just referral traffic
Gemini usually names brands and rarely links. Since Gemini leads in India, a marketer watching only analytics for AI referral traffic could conclude nothing is happening while the assistant recommends the brand thousands of times a week.
Adobe’s US retail data shows AI-driven visitors now convert better, stay longer and view more pages than a year ago. Traffic volume may still look small, but it is no longer the full story — especially in a market where the link often does not appear.
05 · Five things to do this quarter
- Build a prompt list, not a keyword list. Twenty to fifty real buying questions in the languages customers actually use.
- Test on Gemini and AI Mode first. That is the order Indian buyers use, and it is the reverse of what most tools default to.
- Track mentions, not only clicks. Being named is the win on the engine that leads here.
- Earn Indian third-party coverage. Trade press, review platforms and industry bodies shape what AI systems read.
- Write comparison content for Indian conditions. GST, EMI options, price points and local availability, not generic comparisons.
SEO still provides the foundation: fast, crawlable pages with something worth reading. The harder test is whether an AI system can understand your category in this market. Brands that earn credible Indian coverage and answer real buying questions in local languages will be in the data when the assistant shortlists. Those that don’t will watch from outside the answer.
Source: Afaqs!
