Mortgage: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which mortgage lender led the October 2026 AI recommendation benchmark, and by how much?
• Which brands saw the largest coverage gains and declines since the July 2026 baseline?

Rocket Mortgage led the Mortgage AI Visibility Market Discovery Index in October 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 72.5%, a gap of 26.9 points over the next brand, Veterans United Home Loans at 45.6%. The largest coverage increase came from loanDepot, rising from 26.7% in July 2026 to 35.4% in October 2026, up 8.7 points. The largest coverage decline came from New American Funding, down 13.9 points.

October 2026 was a mixed month. loanDepot moved up beyond normal month-to-month variation, continuing a two-month uptrend. New American Funding has declined in each of the three months measured since the July 2026 baseline, a decline beyond normal variation over that full period, though its most recent single-month move was within normal range. Rocket Mortgage also rose sharply from September 2026 to October 2026, up 9.7 points from 62.8% to 72.5%, though its coverage since the July 2026 baseline is effectively unchanged at 72.7% to 72.5%. Rocket Mortgage's lead over Veterans United widened from 25.8 points in July 2026 to 26.9 points in October 2026. Freedom Mortgage, PennyMac, Rocket Mortgage, and Veterans United Home Loans all held within normal month-to-month variation since baseline.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 619 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the canonical AI/search surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. August 2026 and September 2026 sat between the baseline and current months, with 625 qualified observations in August 2026 and 642 in September 2026.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Mortgage

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many observations qualified for the public mortgage benchmark, and what happened to the rest?
• What is the difference between the raw collection volume and the qualified denominator used for brand percentages?

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. The funnel below shows how observations were qualified.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• How did each tracked mortgage brand perform on presence, recommendation coverage, top-three placement, and rank-one rate?
• Which brands convert a mention into an actual recommendation most often?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned at all.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations where the brand receives a valid recommendation.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears in the first three recommended positions.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative sentiment among brand mentions, on a scale from negative to positive.

For formulas and denominator rules, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions.

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which mortgage brands moved beyond normal variation since the July 2026 baseline?
• What drove loanDepot's coverage increase and New American Funding's decline?

Largest Increase: loanDepot

loanDepot's valid recommendation coverage rose 8.7 points since the baseline, beyond normal variation. The brand rose in each of the last two months measured, climbing from 26.3% in September 2026 to 35.4% in October 2026, up 9.1 points from the prior month. Presence rate also rose from 36.3% in July 2026 to 42.3% in October 2026, up 6.0 points. Top-three placement rose from 11.7% in July 2026 to 16.8% in October 2026, up 5.1 points. Rank-one rate rose from 1.6% in July 2026 to 2.1% in October 2026. Net sentiment held at 0.8 in both months. The brand was recommended in 219 of 619 qualified observations in October 2026, compared with 181 of 678 in July 2026.

Largest Decline: New American Funding

New American Funding's valid recommendation coverage fell 13.9 points since the baseline, declining in each of the three months measured. Presence rate also declined from 30.8% in July 2026 to 16.8% in October 2026, down 14.0 points. Top-three placement fell from 6.9% in July 2026 to 4.5% in October 2026, down 2.4 points. Rank-one rate fell from 1.2% in July 2026 to 0.3% in October 2026, down 0.9 points. Net sentiment remained high at 0.9 in October 2026, compared with 1.0 in July 2026. The brand was recommended in 92 of 619 qualified observations in October 2026, compared with 195 of 678 in July 2026. The gap between loanDepot and New American Funding widened in every month of the series, from -2.1 points in July 2026 to 20.5 points in October 2026.

Category Leader: Rocket Mortgage

Rocket Mortgage remained the category leader in October 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 72.5%, a 26.9-point lead over Veterans United Home Loans at 45.6%. The lead widened from 20.6 points in September 2026. The brand's coverage since the July 2026 baseline is effectively unchanged, but the September 2026 to October 2026 move was up 9.7 points. Top-three placement rose from 51.6% in July 2026 to 62.7% in October 2026, up 11.1 points. Rank-one rate rose from 31.1% in July 2026 to 38.1% in October 2026, up 7.0 points. The brand was recommended in 449 of 619 qualified observations in October 2026, compared with 493 of 678 in July 2026.

Freedom Mortgage: Competitive Position

Freedom Mortgage recorded a presence rate of 29.2% in October 2026, meaning the brand was mentioned in roughly three of every ten qualified AI responses. That presence converted into valid recommendation coverage of just 14.1%, the second-lowest coverage figure in the category, with a top-three rate of 4.7% and a rank-one rate of 0.3%. Net sentiment stood at 0.5, the lowest among all six tracked brands. Coverage has moved from 17.5% in July 2026 to 14.1% in October 2026, a decline that is within normal month-to-month variation but has not reversed across the series.

Rocket Mortgage records 72.5% on valid recommendation coverage, while Freedom Mortgage stands at 14.1%, a gap of 58.4 points. Rocket Mortgage also converts presence into a rank-one recommendation 38.1% of the time, compared with 0.3% for Freedom Mortgage. The more important issue is what that gap means for Freedom Mortgage's recommendation position: its presence rate is not translating into proportional recommendation coverage, and its rank-one rate places it among the least likely brands in the category to be named first. Left unexamined, this recommendation gap determines whether Freedom Mortgage is seen as a genuine option or a passing mention in AI-generated mortgage guidance.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Why is Freedom Mortgage's 29.2% presence rate converting into only 14.1% valid recommendation coverage and a 0.3% rank-one rate, while category leaders convert comparable or lower presence into substantially higher recommendation and first-position outcomes?

Other Stable Brands

PennyMac and Veterans United Home Loans each held within normal month-to-month variation across the series. PennyMac declined from 29.3% in July 2026 to 24.6% in October 2026, down 4.7 points, then rose 0.9 points from September 2026 to October 2026. PennyMac's presence rate fell from 45.1% in July 2026 to 35.2% in October 2026, down 9.9 points. Veterans United Home Loans declined from 46.9% in July 2026 to 45.6% in October 2026, down 1.3 points, and rose in each of the last two months measured.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Where do mortgage brands actually appear within AI recommended lists?
• Which brands get recommended often but rarely land in the first position?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Among the leading brands, Rocket Mortgage was recommended in the top three in 62.7% of observations in October 2026 and as the first recommendation in 38.1%. Veterans United Home Loans followed at 31.3% for top-three placement and 17.0% for first position. loanDepot recorded a 16.8% top-three rate and a 2.1% rank-one rate.

Close coverage can still hide different first-position rates, as seen with loanDepot, whose top-three rate came with a rank-one rate of just 2.1%.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

All qualified observations in both months fell into the Brand Recommendation class. The current public series measures brand-recommendation discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the other buyer-intent classes.

Historical Measurement Record

This is an evergreen benchmark URL. New measurements are added to the same report.

Evidence and Source Layer

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, AI/search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources. Source presence is evidence about the information environment. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

This public benchmark does not measure:

• Market share or sales attribution
• Every possible AI response, only the sampled surfaces and prompts
• Organic-search ranking performance
• Social mention volume
• Private or sponsored channels
• Causality from a metric movement alone

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains do AI platforms cite most when recommending mortgage lenders?
• Which mortgage brands' own domains appear among the most-cited sources?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, the benchmark observed 6,262 citations drawn from 826 unique domains. The table below lists the ten most-cited domains, their citation counts, share of all citations, and the AI platforms that cited each domain.

Citations are broadly distributed across the 826 unique domains observed, with the top ten accounting for just under 40% of the total. Two tracked brands' own domains appear in the top ten: rocketmortgage.com at rank 7 with 175 citations and veteransunited.com at rank 9 with 135 citations. Review and comparison sites dominate the upper ranks, with bankrate.com, nerdwallet.com, and money.com together accounting for 1,019 citations, while financial news outlets such as cnbc.com, finance.yahoo.com, forbes.com, and wsj.com also feature prominently. One general search domain, google.com, appears at rank 6 with 186 citations, all of which came from the AI Mode and AI Overviews surfaces.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how often tracked brands are mentioned, recommended, and ranked across major AI and search surfaces each month. It is a neutral, industry-level benchmark built from prompt-level observations.

• AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Research Standards
• Modeled AI Visibility Authority Value

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