📈 AI Recommending Sri Lankan Brands by Name: Key Takeaways

A new BrandRadar study tracked 198 Sri Lankan brands across 18 segments and 6 industries (including banking, insurance, hospitality, and retail) on ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity from March to May 2026, revealing massive shifts in how AI handles brand discovery. • Overall AI Visibility Trends: AI systems surfaced 980 Sri Lankan brands over three months. However, visibility is highly volatile; only 67 brands maintained their position all three months, while 94 appeared just once and vanished. AI visibility metrics do not appear in traditional web analytics or Google search rankings. • Key Insights & Sector Highlights: • Insurance & Hospitality Volatility: Ceylinco General Insurance recorded a massive 55-point AI visibility score surge (from 28.5 to 83.6) in April alone. Conversely, Shangri-La Colombo ranked #1 among hotels in March, vanished completely in April, and returned in May at a third of its former standing. • Platform Discrepancies: Brands can dominate one LLM and be absent on others. Wellness resort Santani surfaced on ChatGPT in April but scored zero on Gemini and Perplexity. • Accumulated Content Advantage: Legacy brands win on deep content archives. Toyota (automotive) and Galle Face Hotel (hospitality) leverage decades of media coverage and review ecosystems to maintain high citation mass. • Category Dynamics: Consolidated, high-scoring categories like ICE vehicles (average score 88.6) see the same brands locked in order. Low-scoring categories like villa stays (average 14.8) are highly fluid, with entirely new brands rotating into the top five monthly. • National Context & Takeaway: Experts note AI is becoming the primary touchpoint for customer discovery. Winning brands are successfully converting traditional media spend into AI recommendations by investing in high-quality editorial coverage, structured product data, and trusted digital assets.