How often is ASICS recommended by AI?

ASICS appeared 11 times across all agent responses in our latest running shoes benchmark.

What's the best budget running shoes according to AI?

Under budget-constrained prompts, AI models most frequently recommend Brooks.

Are running shoes AI recommendations biased?

We classify AI models by commercial interest: Claude (independent), Perplexity (search-grounded), ChatGPT and Gemini (commerce-influenced). Commerce-influenced models may weight products with advertising or shopping integrations differently.

How does RecoScope track running shoes recommendations?

We run three standardized prompts through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, then parse every response for brand mentions, rank position, and frequency. Evergreen categories are benchmarked monthly.

Mar 26 Apr 10 Apr 22 May 2 May 12 May 23 Jul 16 Jul 26

Evergreen monthly benchmark — Jul 26

Running Shoes

Jul 26

Rank Trend

How top brands moved week over week. Rank 1 is the top position.

The single overall leader disappeared this month. ASICS, Brooks and Nike all finished at eleven mentions out of twelve responses. Last month ASICS led outright, eleven to eight over Brooks. ASICS still takes the top slot on the explicit brand-ranking prompt in all four engines. What changed is underneath that. Brooks and Nike closed the frequency gap without winning a single prompt in a single engine. Nike is named in eleven of twelve responses and ranked first in none of them. The sharper move is at the value end. Adidas took the number-one slot on the under-150-dollar prompt in three of four engines, after placing outside every engine top three last month.

Top Brands by AI Mention Frequency

Mention frequency counts how many times a brand appeared across all AI responses. This differs from top-pick rank, which reflects each model’s #1 choice.

Overall Leader = most total mentionsTied #1 = tied for most mentionsHigh Consensus = top 3 in 3+ modelsTop in [Model] = #1 pick by that model onlyNever Top-Picked = high mentions but not in any model’s top 3

1ASICSTied #111

2BrooksTied #111

3NikeTied #111

4HOKATop in Claude10

5New Balance7

Opportunity for Brands

New Balance is the clearest loss this month: seven mentions, down from ten, with the entire drop traceable to one engine.
It appears in zero of three Gemini responses after holding a top-three Gemini position last month.
A brand that disappears from a single engine loses roughly a quarter of its AI shelf space in one move.
That is the concentration risk in this category stated plainly.
Adidas is the mirror image.
Six mentions is a small numerical gain.
Adidas still owns the number-one slot on the price-constrained prompt in three engines.
One model did it: the Adizero Evo SL.
Nike shows a third pattern: near-total presence with no leadership at all.
It is named in eleven of twelve responses and ranked first in none of them.

Cross-Agent Comparison

How 4 AI models rank the same category. Hover a brand to trace it across models.

4 agents · top 3 each

Agent	#1	#2	#3
chatgpt	ASICS	Brooks	Nike
claude	HOKA	ASICS	Adidas
gemini	ASICS	Adidas	Brooks
perplexity	ASICS	Adidas	Brooks

What This Means

The cross-agent table above ranks the top three for each engine across all three prompts.
Read prompt by prompt the picture is sharper.
On the explicit brand-ranking prompt all four engines put ASICS first - unanimous for the second consecutive month.
Three of the four then place Brooks second; Claude is the holdout there, ranking HOKA second.
On the open discovery prompt three of four open with ASICS.
Claude is again the exception, leading with the HOKA Mach 7.
That is a narrowing from last month, when two engines opened with something other than ASICS.
The budget prompt is where the engines genuinely disagree.
Claude, Gemini and Perplexity all lead with the Adidas Adizero Evo SL.
ChatGPT leads with the Brooks Ghost 18 instead.
Breadth varies by nearly a factor of two.
Perplexity names twenty-one brand positions across its three answers.
It is the only engine to surface Reebok, Mizuno or Topo Athletic.
Gemini names thirteen and stays inside a six-brand core.

Why These Brands Win

Every engine converges on one product shape for this persona: a neutral daily trainer with energetic foam.
None of them recommends a rotation or a carbon-plated racer.
All four steer explicitly away from race-day shoes.
All four name a hero model per brand: ASICS Novablast, Brooks Ghost 18, HOKA Mach 7, Nike Pegasus.
Each recommendation is really a model with a brand attached.
Three of four volunteer a fit caveat without being asked.
Toe gap, heel lockdown and a gait check matter more than where a brand lands on any list.
The brands that win share two things: a current trainer priced between 130 and 150 dollars plus a model name that review sites repeat.
Visibility in this category tracks review-roundup consensus far more closely than it tracks retail shelf space.

Frequently Asked Questions

What running shoes does AI recommend most?▾

ASICS leads with 11 total mentions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity in our latest benchmark.

Which running shoes brand ranks #1 across all AI models?▾

No single brand dominates across all models. ASICS leads in total mentions but different models have different #1 picks.

Why does ChatGPT recommend different running shoes than Claude?▾

The cross-agent table above ranks the top three for each engine across all three prompts. Read prompt by prompt the picture is sharper. On the explicit brand-ranking prompt all four engines put ASICS first - unanimous for the second consecutive month. Three of the four then place Brooks second; Claude is the holdout there, ranking HOKA second. On the open discovery prompt three of four open with ASICS. Claude is again the exception, leading with the HOKA Mach 7. That is a narrowing from last month, when two engines opened with something other than ASICS. The budget prompt is where the engines genuinely disagree. Claude, Gemini and Perplexity all lead with the Adidas Adizero Evo SL. ChatGPT leads with the Brooks Ghost 18 instead. Breadth varies by nearly a factor of two. Perplexity names twenty-one brand positions across its three answers. It is the only engine to surface Reebok, Mizuno or Topo Athletic. Gemini names thirteen and stays inside a six-brand core.

What running shoes brands are invisible to AI?

How we measure this

Each benchmark runs the same standardized prompts across multiple leading AI systems, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. We use consistent, category-specific questions designed to surface genuine product recommendations — not sponsored results.

Responses are parsed to extract brand mentions, rank position, and frequency. We then analyze cross-model agreement, identify which brands consistently appear in top positions, and flag where AI outputs diverge from marketplace trends.

Evergreen categories are benchmarked monthly. Results reflect organic AI behavior at the time of testing. Read the full methodology

How this report was produced

Evaluation period: Jul 26
Cadence: Monthly
Prompts evaluated: 3
Review status: Published after human review
Models included: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity

Full details of how prompts are run, parsed, normalized, and scored are in the methodology, and the platform page explains how the system is built and operated.

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