Public AI Market Strategy Report - Online Stock Brokers

Answer Capsule

Public is visible in AI-generated broker recommendations but is not being chosen at the shortlist stage. The September 2026 LLM Authority Index Online Stock Brokers benchmark shows Public with a 26.84% raw mention presence rate but only 19.94% valid recommendation coverage, meaning the brand appears in roughly one in four qualified AI answers but converts to a valid recommendation in fewer than one in five. Public's top-three recommendation rate is 1.07% and its rank-one rate is 0.15%, the weakest placement profile among the ten tracked brokers outside of Merrill Edge. The clearest opportunity is to convert existing presence into shortlist eligibility inside the Brand Recommendation cluster, where all 652 qualified September 2026 observations were recorded.

Who This Report Is For

This report is for Public's growth, brand, and digital strategy leaders, and for category analysts tracking how AI-led discovery is reshaping the online brokerage buyer shortlist.

Report Card

Executive Summary

Public holds a visible but under-recommended position in the September 2026 Online Stock Brokers benchmark. The brand was mentioned in 175 of 652 qualified observations, a 26.84% raw mention presence rate, but received a valid recommendation in only 130 of those observations, a 19.94% valid recommendation coverage rate. That gap between presence and recommendation is the central finding for Public this month.

The benchmark classifies Public as stable rather than declining. Its valid recommendation coverage moved from 19.3% in July 2026 to 19.9% in September 2026, a 0.6-point gain that sits inside the range the benchmark treats as normal monthly variation. Public is one of only two tracked brands, alongside Webull, that did not record a significant decline from the July 2026 baseline.

Placement is where Public separates from the category leaders. Public's top-three recommendation rate is 1.07%, and its rank-one rate is 0.15%, meaning the brand earned a single first-position recommendation across 652 qualified observations. Fidelity, by comparison, holds a 68.10% top-three rate and a 46.93% rank-one rate. Charles Schwab holds a 62.88% top-three rate and a 17.48% rank-one rate. Public is present in the conversation but is rarely placed inside the shortlist that AI systems present to buyers.

Sentiment is not the constraint. Public's net sentiment score is 0.7657, with 138 positive mentions, 33 neutral mentions, and 4 negative mentions. The brand is framed positively when it appears. The problem is not how Public is described, it is how often Public is selected.

The strongest platform signal for Public is Google AI Mode, where the brand recorded a 22.16% raw mention presence rate and an 18.04% valid recommendation coverage rate across 194 observations. Google AI Overviews follows at a 29.21% presence rate and a 26.40% recommendation coverage rate across 178 observations. The weakest platform signal is Copilot, where Public recorded a 37.18% presence rate but only a 12.82% valid recommendation coverage rate, and where the brand's net sentiment score fell to 0.2414, the lowest of any platform for Public.

The clearest cluster gap is structural. All 652 qualified September 2026 observations fell into the Brand Recommendation buyer-intent class. The benchmark's Pricing & Value and Multi-Brand Comparison classes recorded zero qualified observations in both July 2026 and September 2026, so Public's performance in fee, cost, and head-to-head comparison prompts is not yet measurable in the public series.

What Public Is Winning

Questions This Section Answers

• What does Public's stable recommendation coverage look like compared with the July 2026 baseline?
• How is Public framed in AI answers when sentiment is positive?
• Which platform gave Public its highest valid recommendation coverage?

Public's wins in September 2026 are narrow but real, and they should be read as a stable base rather than a growth story.

Public is one of only two tracked brands that did not record a significant decline from the July 2026 baseline. Its valid recommendation coverage moved from 19.3% to 19.9%, a 0.6-point gain within normal monthly variation. The benchmark classifies Public as stable, and stability in a month when five of ten tracked brands declined is a meaningful position.

Public's sentiment profile is clean. The brand recorded 138 positive mentions, 33 neutral mentions, and 4 negative mentions, producing a net sentiment score of 0.7657. Only 4 of 175 mentions carried negative framing. There is no evidence in the September 2026 dataset that AI systems are describing Public unfavorably.

Public's strongest platform is Google AI Overviews, where the brand recorded a 26.40% valid recommendation coverage rate across 178 observations, its highest coverage rate on any tracked platform. Google AI Mode produced the largest absolute volume of Public recommendations, with 35 valid recommendations across 194 observations.

Public also holds a small but measurable rank-one pocket. The brand earned one rank-one recommendation in September 2026, recorded on Copilot. That is a single observation and should not be treated as a trend, but it confirms that first-position placement is not structurally closed to Public.

Where Public Has the Clearest AI Visibility Gaps

Questions This Section Answers

• Why does Public's mention presence fail to convert into valid recommendations?
• How large is Public's top-three and rank-one gap compared with Fidelity and Charles Schwab?
• Which competitors convert a similar presence rate into first-position placement more effectively than Public?

The gap for Public is not presence. It is selection.

Public was mentioned in 175 of 652 qualified observations but received a valid recommendation in only 130. That means 45 observations, roughly one in four of Public's mentions, surfaced the brand without converting it into a recommendation. Across the full benchmark, Public's valid recommendation coverage of 19.94% sits 61.66 points behind Charles Schwab at 81.60% and 61.19 points behind Fidelity at 81.11%.

The shortlist gap is sharper than the coverage gap. Public's top-three recommendation rate is 1.07%, against Fidelity at 68.10%, Charles Schwab at 62.88%, and Interactive Brokers at 46.17%. Even Robinhood, which declined 5.0 points from the July 2026 baseline, holds a 24.08% top-three rate. Public is not losing a close race for the shortlist. It is largely absent from it.

The rank-one gap is the widest of all. Public's rank-one rate is 0.15%, representing one first-position recommendation across 652 qualified observations. Fidelity holds 306 rank-one recommendations, Charles Schwab holds 114, and Interactive Brokers holds 41. Tastytrade, with a 27.15% presence rate that is nearly identical to Public's 26.84%, earned 30 rank-one recommendations against Public's one. Tastytrade converts a similar presence footprint into first-position placement at a materially higher rate.

Platform-level gaps reinforce the pattern. On Copilot, Public recorded a 37.18% presence rate but only a 12.82% valid recommendation coverage rate, and its net sentiment score on that platform fell to 0.2414, driven by 16 neutral mentions and 3 negative mentions against 10 positive mentions. Copilot is the one platform where Public's framing is not clearly positive. On Gemini, Public recorded a 20.59% presence rate and a 14.71% coverage rate across 68 observations, its lowest coverage rate on any platform.

The competitive displacement is concentrated. Fidelity and Charles Schwab together hold the top two positions on valid recommendation coverage, top-three rate, and rank-one rate. Interactive Brokers and Robinhood occupy the next tier. Public sits in the fifth tier by coverage and the ninth tier by top-three placement, below Webull, E*TRADE, Vanguard, and Tastytrade on shortlist eligibility despite holding a higher presence rate than E*TRADE, Vanguard, Tastytrade, and Merrill Edge.

Biggest Opportunity

Questions This Section Answers

• Which prompt cluster offers Public the clearest path from mention to recommendation?
• What does Tastytrade's conversion pattern reveal about Public's opportunity?

Public's clearest opportunity is converting existing presence into shortlist eligibility inside the Brand Recommendation cluster.

Public already appears in 26.84% of qualified AI answers about broker recommendations. The brand does not need to earn awareness in AI systems. It needs to earn selection. The 45 observations where Public was mentioned but not recommended represent the most direct conversion path in the dataset, because the brand was already retrieved and surfaced in those answers.

The prompt evidence points to a specific pattern. Public appears in broad category prompts such as "best brokerage accounts," "best trading platform," and "online stock trading," where the competitive set is wide and the recommendation bar is high. The brand's presence in these prompts is real, but its placement is not. The opportunity is to build the owned answer layer and citation support that moves Public from a mentioned option to a named recommendation in the same prompt set where it already appears.

Tastytrade offers the clearest comparable. Tastytrade holds a 27.15% presence rate, nearly identical to Public's 26.84%, but converts that presence into a 25.61% valid recommendation coverage rate and 30 rank-one recommendations. The difference between the two brands is not visibility. It is recommendation conversion inside the same prompt environment.

Competitive Landscape

Questions This Section Answers

• Where does Public rank among tracked brokers on top-three and rank-one recommendation rates?
• How far behind Fidelity and Charles Schwab is Public on recommendation-stage strength?

Fidelity and Charles Schwab hold recommendation-stage strength in the Online Stock Brokers category, with Interactive Brokers and Robinhood forming a clear second tier. Public sits in the lower tier by coverage and near the bottom of the field by shortlist placement, despite holding a presence rate above four of the brands ranked ahead of it on recommendation metrics.

Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only.

Public ranks ninth of ten on top-three rate and ninth of ten on rank-one rate. Its average recommended rank of 6.3656 is the second-lowest in the field, ahead of only Merrill Edge at 6.5238. The table shows a brand that is present in AI answers but is placed near the bottom of the recommendation set when it appears at all.

Prompt Evidence

Questions This Section Answers

• Which specific prompts show Public being mentioned but not recommended?
• On which prompts does Public receive a valid recommendation but miss top-three placement?

Google AI Mode / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "best brokerage accounts" Result: Public was mentioned in the answer but did not receive a top-three or rank-one placement, consistent with its 1.07% top-three rate on this platform.

Google AI Overviews / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "online stock trading" Result: Public received a valid recommendation, contributing to its 26.40% coverage rate on Google AI Overviews, its strongest platform by recommendation coverage.

Copilot / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "best trading app" Result: Public was mentioned but not recommended, and the answer carried neutral or negative framing, consistent with Public's 0.2414 net sentiment score on Copilot.

ChatGPT / Brand Recommendation Prompt: "where to buy stocks" Result: Public received a valid recommendation but no top-three placement, reflecting its 6.38% coverage rate and 0.00% top-three rate on ChatGPT.

What CiteWorks Studio Would Do Next

Phase 1: AI Market Discovery Audit Map every prompt where Public is mentioned but not recommended, and identify which competitors take the recommendation in those same answers.

Phase 2: Recommendation Readiness Plan Prioritize the Brand Recommendation prompts where Public already appears, and define the answer-layer changes needed to move from mention to shortlist placement.

Phase 3: Owned Answer Layer Buildout Build the comparison, eligibility, and category pages that AI systems can retrieve when forming broker recommendation answers, focused on the prompts where Public already has presence.

Phase 4: Citation / Authority Layer Development Strengthen the public evidence layer around Public's account features, pricing structure, and category positioning so AI systems have attributable sources to cite when recommending the brand.

Phase 5: Monthly AI Visibility and Recommendation Tracking Track Public's valid recommendation coverage, top-three rate, and rank-one rate month over month, with platform-level breakouts for Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot.

Why This Matters

AI systems are now forming the broker shortlist before a buyer ever visits a comparison site. Public appears in roughly one in four qualified AI answers about broker recommendations, but it is selected in fewer than one in five, and it is placed in the top three in roughly one in a hundred. Presence without recommendation conversion does not produce shortlist eligibility.

The next move is not more visibility. It is targeted correction of the prompt, page, and citation layers that determine whether Public is named as a recommendation or merely mentioned as an option. The benchmark shows where Public stands. The work is in closing the gap between being seen and being chosen.

Core Metrics

Sentiment Score

Questions This Section Answers

• How is Public's net sentiment score calculated from its mention breakdown?
• What does Public's sentiment score reveal about the gap between being mentioned and being recommended?

Sentiment Score = (positive mentions × 1 + neutral mentions × 0 + negative mentions × -1) / total mentions

For Public in September 2026, that is (138 × 1 + 33 × 0 + 4 × -1) / 175, which produces a net sentiment score of 0.7657.

This matters because unclassified mention counts are misleading. A brand mentioned 175 times sounds strong until the mentions are separated into positive recommendations, neutral references, cautionary notes, and competitor-displaced appearances. Public's 175 mentions include 138 positive, 33 neutral, and 4 negative, and only 130 of those mentions converted into a valid recommendation.

Share of voice is a diagnostic metric, not a business KPI. A positive recommendation, a neutral reference, a cautionary mention, and a mention that appears only as a comparison anchor are not equal outcomes. Counting all mentions as wins is bad measurement. Classified sentiment is required before interpreting AI visibility, because it separates how a brand is framed from whether it is chosen.

Sentiment by Platform

Questions This Section Answers

• On which platform does Public's sentiment score drop most sharply?
• Which platforms show Public present as context rather than recommendation?

Methodology

Questions This Section Answers

• What was measured in the September 2026 benchmark, and how were qualified observations defined?
• Which buyer-intent classes recorded zero qualified observations, and what does that limit?

1. This report is a benchmark-based analysis of Public's position in the September 2026 LLM Authority Index Online Stock Brokers AI Market Discovery Index. It is not a client implementation case study and does not describe work performed by CiteWorks Studio on Public's behalf.
2. The reporting window is September 2026, with baseline comparison to July 2026 and month-over-month comparison to August 2026 where the benchmark provides it.
3. Six AI and search surface families were tracked: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. All six produced at least one qualified observation in September 2026.
4. The September 2026 benchmark produced 652 qualified observations from a raw collection of 800 prompt-surface observations, 593 unique questions, and 713 relevant prompts. The August 2026 benchmark produced 675 qualified observations, and the July 2026 benchmark produced 715.
5. Ten brands were tracked: Charles Schwab, E*TRADE, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, Merrill Edge, Public, Robinhood, Tastytrade, Vanguard, and Webull.
6. All 652 qualified September 2026 observations fell into the Brand Recommendation buyer-intent class. The Pricing & Value and Multi-Brand Comparison classes recorded zero qualified observations in both July 2026 and September 2026, so Public's performance in fee, cost, and head-to-head comparison prompts is not measurable in the current public series.
7. A mention is counted when Public appears in a qualified AI answer, whether or not it is recommended. A valid recommendation is counted when Public receives a non-placeholder recommendation from the AI system. Top-three rate and rank-one rate are calculated within the qualified observation set.
8. Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only. Public's average recommended rank of 6.3656 is based on its rank-eligible recommendations in September 2026.
9. Net sentiment score is calculated as (positive mentions × 1 + neutral mentions × 0 + negative mentions × -1) / total mentions. It measures framing quality within mentions, not customer sentiment.
10. The benchmark records which sources appeared alongside AI answers, not whether those sources caused the recommendation. Source presence is evidence about the information environment and is not treated as proof of causation.
11. The benchmark does not measure market share, sales, revenue, attributable conversions, organic search rankings, social media sentiment, or private AI channels. Metric movement identifies changes worth investigating and does not by itself establish the cause of those changes.
12. Percentages reflect the 652 qualified observations in September 2026, not the 800 raw prompt-surface observations collected. Brands with fewer qualified appearances, such as Merrill Edge with 49 qualifying recommendations, can show percentage movement from a small number of underlying changes.

See How AI Is Recommending Your Brand

The public benchmark shows where Public is mentioned and where it is recommended. A company-level AI visibility audit maps the specific prompts, platforms, competitors, and citation sources behind those numbers, and identifies which high-intent questions Public is losing and which brands are winning them instead.