The data: AI search favors dermatological or clinically positioned beauty brands, which accounted for four of the top five spots in 5W and Everything-PR’s AI Beauty Authority Index 2026.

• CeraVe, The Ordinary, and Drunk Elephant topped the index, with luxury skincare brand Augustinus Bader coming in at number 5.
• Established brands like MAC Cosmetics, NARS, Bobbi Brown, La Mer, and Tom Ford Beauty were the lowest-ranked, indicating a potential discovery divide between legacy players and newer labels.

What it means: The brands that are performing well on AI search are not necessarily the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. Instead, their positioning is being influenced by several factors:

• Endorsements from authorities like dermatologists, trade publications, and review sites such as The New York Times’ Wirecutter
• Partnerships with major retailers like Ulta, Sephora, Amazon, and Walmart
• How often they’re mentioned by beauty enthusiasts on Reddit and other platforms

The advantage goes to mass brands that sell on multiple channels—giving LLMs a wealth of review data to pull from—as well as brands with hero products, like Charlotte Tilbury’s Flawless Filter foundation and Pillow Talk lipstick, that are frequently referenced as category benchmarks.

Implications for the beauty industry: AI tools are playing a greater role in how beauty consumers shop, raising the stakes for companies to invest in generative engine optimization (GEO) now or risk losing ground to brands that are better represented. Over 1 in 3 beauty consumers (35.1%) now use general-purpose AI search tools to explore products, according to EMARKETER data.

Companies have time to experiment: Just 6.3% of US beauty buyers say they have discovered a product through a genAI tool, compared with 20.3% through search engines and 38.6% for social media, per our June 2025 Path to Purchase survey. But given the speed of AI adoption, companies have to move quickly to ensure that their content and messaging are consistent across channels and easily digestible for LLMs.

Go further: Check out our AI Visibility Index: Personal Care and Beauty Quarterly Insights.