How AI Search Is Recommending Outdoor Retail and Gear Marketplaces: Monthly Trends

Executive Summary

REI extended its lead in October 2026, and the category moved with it. REI reached 44.4% valid recommendation coverage in October 2026, up 12.0 points from 32.4% in August 2026 and up 11.6 points from 32.8% in September 2026. Its gap to second-place Bass Pro Shops stands at 11.1 points, and three of the ten tracked brands now sit above 25%.

Bass Pro Shops was the largest single-month riser, up 12.3 points to 33.3% from 21.0% in September 2026 and up 11.3 points from 22.0% in August 2026. Academy Sports + Outdoors climbed from sixth to fourth place, the only ranking change in the category this month, up 8.3 points to 19.0% from 10.7% in September 2026 and up 7.8 points from 11.2% in August 2026.

No tracked brand declined beyond normal month-to-month variation in October 2026. October 2026 is the first month in the tracked series with no significant decliner, and it reverses September 2026's quiet pattern, when every brand was classified as stable. Five brands were classified as stable this month: CampSaver, evo, Public Lands, Scheels, and Sierra.

Each monthly run begins with 800 prompt-surface observations (645 unique questions in October 2026, 647 in September 2026 and 682 in August 2026) across the benchmark's defined AI/search surface universe. Of those, all 800 in each month mentioned a tracked brand or competitor; 749 were relevant and 51 were irrelevant in October 2026, against 740 relevant and 60 irrelevant in September 2026 and 730 relevant and 70 irrelevant in August 2026. The public metrics use the 484 qualified observations in October 2026, against 534 in September 2026 and 519 in August 2026 that survive both qualification stages.

Key Findings

AI Response Inconsistency Alerts

One critical factual inconsistency was detected in October 2026, spanning two AI platforms.

Academy Sports + Outdoors

AI platforms provided conflicting information about Academy Sports + Outdoors' price matching policy for firearms. When asked "Does Academy price match firearms?", Gemini stated that Academy generally price matches firearms, as well as ammunition and other items, provided standard policy requirements are met, citing a Reddit discussion thread and the company's own price match guarantee page. Copilot stated the opposite, that Academy does not price match firearms because firearms are explicitly excluded from the policy, referencing the same Academy price match guarantee page alongside a third-party store policy aggregator and a price match comparison site.

The two claims are mutually exclusive eligibility rules, which is why the conflict is classified as critical severity at full confidence. Both platforms reached for the retailer's own policy page as part of their sourcing, yet arrived at opposite conclusions. For shoppers comparing retailer policies before a firearms purchase, the answer they receive depends on which AI surface they ask.

Benchmark Context

Questions This Section Answers

• How many prompts qualified for the benchmark, and how does that compare with the raw collection universe?
• What separates the raw prompt-surface observations from the qualified set used for brand percentages?

The report separates the raw collection universe from the qualified analysis set. Brand-level recommendation percentages are calculated within the qualified benchmark set.

The following core metrics summarize category-wide behavior across the tracked months, independent of any single brand's performance.

Benchmark-Level Metrics

The qualified set contracted to 484 observations in October 2026 from 519 in August 2026, so the higher recommendation-intensity captured this month is drawn from a smaller, more tightly qualified pool than in August 2026.

AI Recommendation Trend

Questions This Section Answers

• Who leads the category in AI recommendation coverage, and how wide is the gap to second place?
• Which brand was the only one to change rank this month?
• Which brands moved beyond normal month-to-month variation?

REI Extends Its Lead as Academy Sports + Outdoors Climbs

REI, Bass Pro Shops, and Cabela's hold the same top three positions they held in August 2026. Academy Sports + Outdoors is the only brand to change rank this month, climbing from sixth to fourth place and swapping positions with Scheels, which fell from fourth to sixth. Academy Sports + Outdoors, REI, Backcountry, Bass Pro Shops, and Cabela's all moved beyond normal month-to-month variation against the baseline; the remaining five brands held within normal variation, so the category-level gain came from a combination of five larger movements rather than one brand's shift alone.

What Changed This Month

Questions This Section Answers

• How did REI convert its existing presence into recommendation credit in October 2026?
• Why did Bass Pro Shops rise while its raw mention presence fell?
• Which prompt families drove Academy Sports + Outdoors' climb from sixth to fourth place?

REI: Coverage Leadership Widens Alongside Placement Strength

REI's valid recommendation coverage rose to 44.4% in October 2026, up 12.0 points from 32.4% in August 2026 and up 11.6 points from 32.8% in September 2026. The month-over-month move was the sharpest of the three tracked months, following a near-flat September 2026.

The gain came with 215 valid recommendations out of 484 qualified observations in October 2026, up from 168 out of 519 in August 2026. REI's top-three rate rose 16.0 points to 38.0%, and its rank-one rate rose 11.3 points to 27.9% from 16.6%, representing 135 rank-one placements in October 2026 against 86 in August 2026.

Raw mention presence rose 4.4 points to 85.5% from 81.1% in August 2026, a smaller move than the recommendation-coverage gain. Recommendation credit grew faster than raw presence this month, a sharper divergence than the near-flat change in coverage recorded between August and September.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompt families converted REI's existing presence into recommendation credit in October 2026 when the same presence produced little coverage movement in September 2026?

Bass Pro Shops: Largest Single-Month Riser on Falling Presence

Bass Pro Shops posted the largest single-month gain in the category, up 12.3 points to 33.3% in October 2026 from 21.0% in September 2026, and up 11.3 points from 22.0% in August 2026.

The rise came with 161 valid recommendations out of 484 qualified observations in October 2026, up from 114 out of 519 in August 2026. Its top-three rate rose 14.2 points to 27.7% from 13.5% in August 2026, and its rank-one rate rose 4.1 points to 6.2% from 2.1%, representing 30 rank-one placements in October 2026 against 11 in August 2026.

Raw mention presence moved the other way, down 4.4 points to 74.8% from 79.2% in August 2026. The brand was mentioned less often while being recommended more often.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompts were Bass Pro Shops absent from in October 2026, and on which of the remaining prompts did it gain top-three and rank-one placement?

Academy Sports + Outdoors: Only Brand to Change Rank This Month

Academy Sports + Outdoors rose 8.3 points to 19.0% in October 2026 from 10.7% in September 2026, and up 7.8 points from 11.2% in August 2026. The brand moved from sixth place in August 2026 to fourth place in October 2026, the only rank change in the category this month.

The gain came with 92 valid recommendations out of 484 qualified observations in October 2026, up from 58 out of 519 in August 2026. Its top-three rate rose 7.0 points to 12.0% from 5.0% in August 2026, and its rank-one rate rose 0.5 points to 1.5% from 1.0%, representing 7 rank-one placements against 5 in August 2026.

Raw mention presence was essentially flat, down 1.1 points to 47.3% from 48.4% in August 2026. Coverage rose while presence did not, and the brand also appears in the inconsistency data above, where Gemini and Copilot gave conflicting answers about its firearms price matching policy.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Whether the placement gain is concentrated in prompts where the brand was already present in August 2026, and whether the conflicting policy answers appear in any of those same prompt families.

Cabela's: Coverage Rises While Presence Falls Most in the Category

Cabela's coverage rose 8.0 points to 26.7% in October 2026 from 18.7% in August 2026, and 10.6 points from 16.1% in September 2026. The brand held third place across all three tracked months.

The rise came with 129 valid recommendations out of 484 qualified observations in October 2026, up from 97 out of 519 in August 2026. Its top-three rate rose 12.6 points to 21.5% from 8.9% in August 2026, and its rank-one rate rose 1.9 points to 2.7% from 0.8%.

Raw mention presence fell 7.7 points to 62.6% from 70.3% in August 2026, the steepest presence decline in the category. Cabela's lost the widest amount of raw visibility while gaining recommendation credit.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompt families dropped Cabela's from mention entirely, and whether the prompts where it remains mentioned are the ones now producing its top-three placements.

Category Repositioning: The Gaps to the Leader Are Widening

The gaps around REI widened on every side over the three tracked months. CampSaver's deficit to REI moved from 29.9 points in August 2026 to 41.7 points in October 2026, widening every month. evo's deficit moved from 28.5 points to 39.9 points over the same span. REI's lead over Scheels moved from 17.4 points to 28.7 points, also widening every month.

The sharpest of these, REI against Scheels, widened as Scheels' coverage moved only 0.7 points, within normal month-to-month variation, while REI rose 12.0 points. Backcountry, by contrast, narrowed its position with a 4.7-point baseline gain to 18.8%.

These are course-of-category observations about competitive repositioning rather than any single brand's problem. The pattern is that brands sitting still were moved further from the leader by the leader's own advance, not by losing recommendation credit of their own.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Whether the gap widening is driven by a shared set of high-intent prompts where the leader is the only brand surfaced.

Buyer-Intent Interpretation

Questions This Section Answers

• What kinds of buyer questions can the benchmark currently answer, and which commercial questions remain out of reach?
• Why does the lack of Pricing & Value and Multi-Brand Comparison observations matter for interpreting the October 2026 results?

The benchmark classifies each qualified observation into one of three buyer-intent clusters to help distinguish what kind of question AI systems are actually answering.

In October 2026, all 484 qualified observations fell into the Brand Recommendation cluster. The benchmark universe again contained no qualified observations mapping to Pricing & Value or Multi-Brand Comparison intent.

The public benchmark can say which retailers AI systems recommend for outdoor gear, and October 2026 shows that answer shifting substantially. It cannot yet say which brands win when price is the deciding factor or which brand AI systems position as the better choice head to head. Those commercial questions require a deeper, prompt-level read of the underlying data. The concurrent pricing-related inconsistency found in the conflict data is a reminder that policy and value claims are also being answered inconsistently across surfaces.

Brand Opportunity Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brands show the clearest signal for investigation, and what diagnostic question should each start with?

The benchmark identifies where attention is warranted; a company-level analysis is needed to explain why.

Evidence Behind the Benchmark

The aggregate metrics are built from prompt-level observations (query, surface, recommendation outcome, rank, sentiment, and citations where exposed). Company-level analysis can go deeper into prompt, competitor, surface, and evidence patterns. Source presence is not automatically treated as proof of causation.

About This Benchmark

This report is part of the LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery research program.

• AI Visibility Industry Market Methodology
• AI Visibility Industry Market Metrics
• AI Visibility Industry Market Standards

Report-Specific Interpretation Notes

• Movement between months is directional analysis. It identifies changes worth investigating, but does not by itself establish the cause of those changes.
• Several brands in this category (Public Lands, evo, CampSaver) have low valid recommendation counts. Their coverage rates are more sensitive to small absolute changes and should be read with that caveat in mind.
• The qualified denominator (484 observations in October 2026) differs from the raw collection universe (800 prompts). All brand-level percentages are calculated within the qualified set only.
• The qualified set contracted from 534 observations in September 2026 to 484 in October 2026, so month-over-month percentage comparisons rest on a smaller pool in the current month.

Next Step

The Public Benchmark Shows Where a Brand Is Winning or Losing. A Company-Level Audit Shows Why.

The aggregate percentages in this report raise questions the benchmark alone cannot answer. Which high-intent prompts is a brand winning, and which is it losing? When a competitor takes the recommendation, which one is it and what attributes does the AI cite? What external sources are shaping those answers, and are they consistent across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode?

A company-specific AI visibility audit maps those prompt, surface, competitor, ranking, sentiment, and evidence-source patterns into a prioritized visibility strategy. It turns the benchmark's directional signals into specific, actionable intelligence for a single brand.

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