How AI Search Is Recommending Pet Retail Pet Supplies: Monthly Trends

Executive Summary

Chewy leads the Pet Retail Pet Supplies category in September 2026 with 21.3% valid recommendation coverage, narrowly ahead of PetSmart at 20.8% and Petco at 20.6%. Valid recommendation coverage measures the share of qualified AI search responses in which the brand appears as a viable recommendation, not just a mention. The gap between the top three is 0.7 points, meaning AI systems are weighing the national retailers nearly equally in recommendation output this month.

The category was volatile month over month. The August surge that carried all four large retailers above 30% coverage reversed sharply in September, with all four posting significant declines from August levels. Chewy fell 9.4 points, PetSmart fell 9.7 points, Petco fell 10.3 points, and Tractor Supply fell 6.8 points. Each of these prior-to-current moves is classified as significant.

Against the July baseline, however, the September picture is one of stability. No brand moved beyond normal variation from July to September: Chewy is up 0.4 points, Hollywood Feed up 0.6, Pet Supplies Plus up 0.9, Tractor Supply up 0.5, while Petco is down 3.4, PetSmart down 1.7, and Petsense down 0.5. The benchmark classifies the month as one of movement at the category level, driven by the sharp August-to-September reversal, while the category returns to roughly its July shape.

Each monthly run begins with 800 prompt-surface observations (648 unique questions in July, 645 in August, 645 in September) across the benchmark's defined AI/search surface universe. Of those, all 800 mentioned a tracked brand or competitor in every month; 767 were relevant and 33 were irrelevant in July, 770 relevant and 30 irrelevant in August, 772 relevant and 28 irrelevant in September. The public metrics use the 516 qualified observations in July, 570 in August, and 563 in September that survive both qualification stages.

Key Findings

Benchmark Context

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

Both months returned qualified observations across all six AI surface families, keeping the measurement instrument consistent between July and September. The August intermediate month qualified 570 observations with the same six-surface footprint. The following table summarizes benchmark-wide metrics for the baseline and current months.

Benchmark-Level Metrics

The September run qualified 47 more observations than July, but the share of recommendation-shaped answers fell 13.0 points from 34.5% to 21.5%. That shift explains much of the decline in brand-level coverage between the baseline and current months: a larger qualified set contained proportionally fewer recommendation-shaped responses. August's intermediate spike in brand coverage at 30% or higher was the outlier, and September returned to a distribution closer to July.

AI Recommendation Trend

Questions This Section Answers

• Which pet retailer leads valid recommendation coverage in September 2026, and how far ahead are the top three?
• How did the August surge in coverage for the four large retailers reverse in September, and what does that mean against the July baseline?
• Which brands moved beyond normal month-to-month variation between July and September?

The three national leaders returned to a tight cluster below 22% coverage, with Chewy on top and the category stable against the July baseline.

No brand moved beyond what the benchmark treats as normal month-to-month variation between July and September. The headline movement is the August-to-September reversal: all four large retailers spiked above 30% in August and then fell back to July-like levels in September, with each of those prior-to-current declines classified as significant. The stable July-to-September comparison indicates the category returned to its prior structure rather than reordering.

What Changed This Month

Questions This Section Answers

• What separates Chewy's category leadership from its recommendation coverage in September?
• Why does Petco's near-saturated presence convert into fewer recommendations than its top competitors?
• How did PetSmart improve its first-position rate while its overall coverage declined?

Chewy

Chewy's valid recommendation coverage rose 0.4 points from 20.9% in July to 21.3% in September, a move that is not classified as significant and leaves the brand at the top of the category. The sharper story is the prior-to-current move: Chewy fell 9.4 points from 30.7% in August, a decline the benchmark classifies as significant.

Chewy's rank-one recommendation rate of 11.2% in September (63 of 563 observations) was more than triple the next brand, PetSmart at 3.4% (19 observations), and more than four times Petco's 2.7% (15 observations). Raw presence was 83.3% in September, down 2.4 points from 85.7% in July but well within normal variation.

The distinction is that Chewy's leadership rests on first-position preference, not on breadth of recommendation coverage. The brand leads the category on valid recommendation coverage by a thin margin while holding an outsized lead on rank-one recommendations. That combination suggests AI systems surface Chewy as the default answer in a meaningful share of queries despite overall recommendation rates that are close across the three leaders.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompt families or product categories are driving Chewy's rank-one placements, and did the August-to-September decline concentrate in specific AI surfaces or query types?

Petco

Petco's valid recommendation coverage fell 3.4 points from 24.0% in July to 20.6% in September, a move that is not classified as significant against the baseline but is the largest absolute baseline-to-current decline in the category. The prior-to-current move was sharper: Petco fell 10.3 points from 30.9% in August, the largest single-brand decline in the month and one classified as significant.

Petco's raw presence was 95.2% in September, essentially unchanged from 94.6% in July, meaning the brand remained near-saturated in AI responses. Its top-three rate fell 2.5 points to 15.1%, and its rank-one rate ticked up 0.2 points to 2.7%; neither secondary move is significant.

The distinction for Petco is that it retains the highest presence of any tracked brand but converts a smaller share of that presence into recommendations than it did earlier in the series. The brand is discussed almost everywhere but recommended less often than Chewy or PetSmart in September. With no significant movement against the July baseline, Petco's position is stable in this month's measurement, and the August spike appears to have been the exception rather than a new level.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Where in the recommendation list does Petco typically appear, and which competitor takes the first position when Petco is recommended?

PetSmart

PetSmart's valid recommendation coverage fell 1.7 points from 22.5% in July to 20.8% in September, a move that is not classified as significant and leaves the brand in second position, just 0.5 points behind Chewy. The prior-to-current move showed a 9.7-point decline from 30.5% in August, a significant move.

PetSmart's presence was 94.1% in September versus 93.8% in July, essentially saturated. Its top-three rate fell 1.3 points to 14.2%, while its rank-one rate rose 0.5 points to 3.4%, the second-highest rank-one rate in the category.

The distinction for PetSmart is that it improved its first-position recommendation rate modestly while overall coverage declined, pointing to a shift toward higher-priority slots in a thinner recommendation environment. The brand sits within a point of the category lead, making the September ranking a genuinely contested position rather than a settled one.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which query types are producing PetSmart's rank-one placements, and are they concentrated in specific product categories or store-availability questions?

Tractor Supply

Tractor Supply's valid recommendation coverage rose 0.5 points from 11.6% in July to 12.1% in September, a move that is not classified as significant and holds the brand in fourth position. The prior-to-current move was a 6.8-point decline from 18.9% in August, a significant drop.

Tractor Supply's top-three recommendation rate rose 1.6 points from 2.7% to 4.3% against the July baseline, and its rank-one rate rose 0.3 points to 1.1%; neither secondary move is significant on its own. Presence rose 3.6 points to 60.0% over the same span.

The distinction for Tractor Supply is that its presence and top-three recommendation rate improved against the July baseline even as its overall coverage returned from the August spike. The brand is being mentioned in more responses and placed in top-three slots more often, but the absolute numbers remain small: 6 rank-one observations and 24 top-three observations in September, against 563 qualified total.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompts are fueling Tractor Supply's top-three placements, and what evidence sources are AI systems citing when they elevate the brand?

Petsense

Petsense's valid recommendation coverage fell 0.5 points from 2.1% in July to 1.6% in September, a move that is not classified as significant. The brand recorded 9 valid recommendations in September out of 563 qualified observations, down from 11 in July out of 516.

The more pronounced signal is in raw presence: Petsense's presence rate fell 10.4 points from 20.5% to 10.1%, a much larger shift than its recommendation-coverage movement over the same period. That drop was already visible in August, when presence fell to 9.5%, and September continued the pattern.

The distinction for Petsense is that its recommendation coverage is holding on a much smaller base of mentions. The brand is being discussed in roughly half the responses it was in July, but when discussed, it is recommended at a similar rate, a resilience signal in a small-count context. The absolute numbers are tiny, so these movements carry limited weight individually.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompt families stopped mentioning Petsense between July and September, and does that reflect a shift in query mix or a change in AI sources?

Hollywood Feed

Hollywood Feed's valid recommendation coverage rose 0.6 points from 4.5% in July to 5.1% in September, a move that is not classified as significant. The brand ranks seventh of the seven tracked companies in September, the lowest position in the category on the benchmark's primary recommendation metric, with 29 valid recommendations out of 563 qualified observations.

Hollywood Feed stands at 5.1% valid recommendation coverage against Chewy's 21.3% — a material gap on the category's primary commercial metric, not a rounding difference. Against the closest smaller peer, Pet Supplies Plus at 10.0%, Hollywood Feed's coverage is roughly half, and the brand's 0.6-point gain since July has not closed any part of that distance. Hollywood Feed would need to more than quadruple its current coverage to reach Chewy's level. Left unexamined, the gap represents an unresolved competitive question about why AI systems name national retailers far more often than Hollywood Feed in response to the same shopping prompts.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompt types or product categories exclude Hollywood Feed from AI recommendations that name Chewy, Petco, or Pet Supplies Plus instead, and is the shortfall a content-visibility gap or a recommendation-preference gap?

Pet Supplies Plus

Pet Supplies Plus's valid recommendation coverage rose 0.9 points from 9.1% in July to 10.0% in September, the largest baseline-to-current gain among the seven tracked brands though still not classified as significant. The brand ranks fifth in the category.

Pet Supplies Plus recorded 56 valid recommendations in September out of 563 qualified observations, up from 47 in July out of 516. Its presence rose 0.9 points to 35.2%, while its top-three rate fell 1.7 points to 3.5%; the top-three decline is not significant.

The distinction for Pet Supplies Plus is that it gained overall recommendation coverage while losing share in higher-priority slots. The brand is recommended more often in total but less often in the top three positions than it was in July, a pattern worth watching in subsequent months.

Highest-priority diagnostic: Which prompt families produced Pet Supplies Plus's additional recommendations, and are they lower-priority positions that the brand should seek to convert?

Buyer-Intent Interpretation

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent clusters did the qualified set capture in September, and which commercial questions remain unmeasurable?
• What does the concentration on brand-naming responses mean for comparing retailers on pricing or head-to-head value?

In September, all 563 qualified observations fell into the Brand Recommendation cluster, consistent with July's 516 and August's 570. The benchmark did not record qualified observations in the Pricing & Value or Multi-Brand Comparison clusters this month, so the buyer-intent distribution in this vertical remains concentrated on direct brand-naming responses.

The implication is that the public benchmark can describe which retailer AI systems name in response to shopping questions, but it cannot yet answer which brand wins when the shopper asks about price or value, or which brand wins in an explicit head-to-head comparison. Those conversations are where differentiators like assortment depth, delivery speed, and price positioning would surface, and they are not measurable in the current qualified set.

Brand Opportunity Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brands show the largest gap between their recommendation coverage and their presence or rank-one rate?
• What is the most important diagnostic for Hollywood Feed's position relative to the national retailers?

The benchmark identifies where attention is warranted across the category; a company-level analysis is needed to explain why these patterns emerged.

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 CiteWorks Studio's AI Market Discovery research program.

• AI Industry Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Industry Market Discovery Metrics
• AI Industry Market Discovery Standards

Report-Specific Interpretation Notes

• Small-count movement: Petsense and Hollywood Feed operate on small absolute counts (9 and 29 valid recommendations in September respectively). Their percentage movements carry limited weight individually and should be read with the counts beside them.
• Qualified denominator vs raw collection: Brand-level rates are calculated within the 563 qualified observations, not the 800 raw prompt-surface observations. The funnel describes the difference.
• Directional analysis: Month-over-month movement identifies changes worth investigating; it does not by itself establish the cause of those changes. The August spike and September reversal across all four large brands may reflect a shared driver in the prompt set or AI output mix, which the aggregate data cannot isolate.

Next Step

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

The percentages in this report describe the aggregate output of AI search systems across a shared set of prompts. They do not explain which product categories, geographies, or content sources are driving a brand's coverage rate, or why a competitor is winning the recommendation slot in a specific query.

A company-level audit maps a brand's AI visibility against its own catalog, store locations, and published content, showing which specific prompts produce recommendations, mentions, or omissions — the detail beneath the aggregate percentage.

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