Following the cosmetics, supplements, home appliances, and apparel industries, the fifth installment of this investigation focuses on the food and beverage industry. For 30 industry-specific queries, we compared the top 10 Google search results with the URLs cited by ChatGPT and Gemini.
Two Queries Where the Differences Were Particularly Large
Here are two queries where the top SEO results and AI citation sources diverged.
Example 1: "Is there a nutritional difference between frozen and fresh vegetables?"
Actual sites appearing per source for "Is there a nutritional difference between frozen and fresh vegetables?"
For this query, 8 of Gemini's 10 citations matched the SEO top 10. ChatGPT also had 2 matches. The Japan Frozen Food Association, Morinaga & Co., and Nihon Yakuken all appeared in the SEO top 10 and were also cited by ChatGPT and Gemini.
Example 2: "How long can you eat food after its best-before date has passed?"
Actual sites appearing per source for "How long can you eat food after its best-before date has passed?"
Source
Sites that actually appeared
SEO Top 10
Yomiuri Shimbun / Karada ni Iikoto / Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries / SEI SHOP / Japan Mottainai Food Center / ELLE gourmet / Women’s Health Magazine / Sankyu! / Yahoo! Chiebukuro / Japan Canners Association
ChatGPT citations (2)
myarcsign.com / olive-hitomawashi.com
Gemini citations (31)
housefoods.jp / SEI SHOP / Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries / housecom.jp / Japan Mottainai Food Center / Sankyu! / numerous discounted-food e-commerce sites (Loss Help, Furunavi, Kuradashi, etc.) / Japan Canners Association, and others
Gemini returned 31 citations for this query—the highest citation count across all industries in this study—but only 5 matched the SEO top 10. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, SEI SHOP, Sankyu!, the Japan Mottainai Food Center, and the Japan Canners Association overlapped. ChatGPT, however, had zero matches with the SEO top 10. The two sites cited by ChatGPT (myarcsign.com and olive-hitomawashi.com) appeared in neither the SEO top 10 nor Gemini's citation sources.
Concrete Examples: Overlap, SEO Only, and GEO Only
We grouped the two queries above into sites that appeared in both SEO and AI, SEO only, and AI only.
Real examples of domains that overlapped, appeared in SEO only, or appeared in GEO (ChatGPT/Gemini) only
Pattern
Query
Domain
Note
1. Overlap
Nutritional difference between frozen and fresh vegetables
kuradashi.jp, losshelp.jp, and other discounted-food e-commerce sites (Gemini only; more than 20 citations)
Gemini cited more than 20 discounted-food e-commerce sites that did not appear in the SEO top 10
For Gemini, some sources overlapped with the SEO top 10, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, while many others—especially discounted-food e-commerce sites—did not appear in the SEO top 10 at all.
Aggregate Results Across All 30 Queries
ChatGPT × SEO Top 10 overlap rate
13.0
%
22 of 169 total citations
Gemini × SEO Top 10 overlap rate
35.0
%
121 of 346 total citations
Total citations, matches with the SEO top 10, and overlap rates for ChatGPT and Gemini
Metric
ChatGPT
Gemini
Total citations (across all 30 queries)
169
346
Matches with the SEO top 10
22
121
Overlap rate
13.0%
35.0%
Queries with zero citations
2 (difference between low-carb and reduced-carb foods; difference between domestically produced and made in Japan)
0
Gemini's 35.0% was the highest among the five industries investigated so far. Apparel stood at 23.0% / 31.3%, home appliances at 11.8% / 24.1%, supplements at 13.6% / 25.2%, and cosmetics at 15.0% / 29.9%.
Food & Beverage Had the Highest Gemini Overlap Rate Among the Five Industries
In the food and beverage industry, Gemini's overlap rate reached 35.0%, the highest among the five industries. ChatGPT was 13.0%, roughly in line with home appliances and supplements. Within the same industry, the gap between ChatGPT at 13.0% and Gemini at 35.0% was substantial. Across the five industries studied so far, ChatGPT ranged from 11.8% to 23.0%, while Gemini ranged from 24.1% to 35.0%.
Optimization for generative AI is also referred to by terms such as “GEO,” “AIO,” and “LLMO.” Although the definitions of these terms vary, Genview uses GEO to describe efforts aimed at helping AI systems correctly understand a brand and appropriately mention or recommend it in their responses.
Genview provides a
“Query Improvement” feature
that tracks mentions and citations in AI responses separately from Google search rankings. Rather than relying on a proprietary score, it continuously tracks actual mention and citation counts across multiple AI systems, primarily ChatGPT and Gemini. Query Improvement corresponds to what the industry commonly calls “citation tracking” and “brand mention tracking,” but it does not use sentiment analysis or a proprietary visibility score; it continuously tracks only actual mention and citation counts. It also automatically detects misrecognition in AI responses—cases where a brand is described inaccurately—and helps connect those findings to improvement actions.
We have conducted the same investigation across other industries as well.
SEO vs. GEO Results Across 15 Industries
See the results from all 15 industries analyzed under the same conditions.
We do not publicly disclose the full details of this study. If you would like to review the individual data for all 30 queries, please
contact us here
.