AI VISIBILITY TEARDOWN · MARKETPLACE

Insurance.com: 59th to 153rd, and It Isn't Alone

Insurance.com posted the quarter's steepest decline among entities with reliable evidence in both quarters — 94 rank positions, more than double the next-largest drop in its category. It's also not an isolated story: every marketplace brand Brainpan can measure reliably this quarter moved the same direction. This is the site's first decliner's-eye-view teardown.

The short version: Insurance.com fell 94 ranks in Brainpan's Q2-to-Q3 comparison (59th → 153rd among entities with at least 10 mentions in both quarters), with mention volume down 10 and citation credits down 3. In the full Core 5 Expanded benchmark, Insurance.com finishes 153rd of 226 entities, with zero top-three appearances across 16 mentions. It isn't alone: every one of the six marketplace/aggregator brands with reliable evidence in both quarters declined or stayed flat this quarter — none gained ground. We did not measure why — that's a diagnostic question, not a benchmark one.

RANK: 59 → 153

-94 POSITIONS

-10 MENTIONS

-3 CITATIONS

LARGEST DECLINE, CATEGORY-WIDE

1.THE HEADLINE MOVE

Fifty-nine to one hundred fifty-three, in one quarter

−94

rank positions lost, Q2 2026 to Q3 2026 — the largest decline of any entity in the comparison with at least 10 mentions in both quarters, more than double the next-steepest drop among marketplace brands.

Insurance.com entered Q2 2026 ranked 59th among the study's continuity universe. In Q3, among entities with at least 10 mentions in both quarters — the threshold Brainpan uses to keep single-quarter rank comparisons from being dominated by noise — Insurance.com finishes 153rd. That's a drop of 94 positions, alongside a loss of 10 mentions and 3 citation credits over the same comparison.

Entity	Q2 rank	Q3 rank	Rank change	Mention change	Citation change
Insurance.com	59	153	−94	−10	−3

Source: Brainpan Insurance AIVI™ Q3 2026, "largest rank changes" comparison (≥10 mentions required in both Q2 and Q3).

What we measured, and what we did not

Before the rest of this teardown: this is a visibility-dimension analysis only. Brainpan also scores Sentiment and Accuracy this quarter, but neither is reported here, named to a specific brand, in any public-facing document — that detail is reserved for Brainpan's private brand diagnostic. Nothing below should be read as a statement about Insurance.com's sentiment, claims accuracy, or customer experience; it is a measurement of how often, how prominently, and how authoritatively Insurance.com was named in AI-generated answers to insurance-shopping prompts.

This is also a sample, not a census: one quarter, 300 prompts, six AI surfaces. Brainpan advises treating a single quarter's rank movement as directional until a second comparison cycle confirms it — see the callout on the main benchmark page.

Not one brand's story — every marketplace brand moved the same way

Brainpan's continuity universe includes 17 marketplace and aggregator brands. Most are too thin on mentions in one quarter or the other to compare reliably — but six clear the same 10-mentions-in-both-quarters bar used throughout this study. All six declined or held flat. None gained.

Entity	Q2 rank	Q3 rank	Rank change	Citation change
Insurance.com	59	153	−94	−3
Insureon	58	105	−47	−8
The Zebra	15	37	−22	−24
Policygenius	18	33	−15	−9
Insurify	19	32	−13	−12
Compare.com	83	83	+0	−10

Source: Brainpan Insurance AIVI™ Q3 2026, Q2-to-Q3 comparison, filtered to entity type "Marketplace" with at least 10 mentions in both quarters. Entities below that reliability floor (several other marketplace brands among them) are excluded as too thin to compare.

Insurance.com's drop is the most extreme example of a wider pattern, not an outlier

Every one of the six marketplace brands Brainpan can measure reliably this quarter lost rank or stayed flat, and every one lost citation credits. Insurance.com's 94-position fall is roughly double the next-largest (Insureon, −47) — but the direction is unanimous across the category. That points toward something shifting in how AI engines treat aggregator and marketplace content broadly, not a single brand's problem.

Fewer mentions, and almost none of them prominent

Raw mention count tells you how often a name comes up. It doesn't tell you whether the AI engine is surfacing the brand prominently when it does. In the official Core 5 Expanded benchmark, Insurance.com's 16 mentions include zero top-three appearances — every mention that quarter landed lower in the response than the top three named options.

Top-three appearances

Of 16 total mentions

Strong recommendations

Of 16 total mentions

62.5%

Recommendation rate

Strong + moderate, of 16 mentions

The recommendation rate on the mentions that remain is actually solid at 62.5% — when an AI engine does name Insurance.com, it's often naming it favorably. The decline here is almost entirely a visibility and prominence story, not a tone story: fewer mentions, and none of them near the top of a response.

The supplementary panel softens the picture, slightly

Unlike this quarter's biggest risers, where the official five-engine benchmark and the Meta AI-inclusive view tend to move together, Insurance.com's rank is meaningfully better once Meta AI is added: 142nd in the Expanded 6 view versus 153rd in the Core 5 Expanded benchmark. That's still a steep decline from the Q2 baseline of 59th either way, but it means the drop is concentrated in the five core engines rather than spread evenly across every surface.

Reporting view	Rank of 226	Mentions	Rec. rate	Citations	AIVI™
Core 5 Expanded	153	16	62.5%	9	5.3
Expanded 6 (+ Meta AI)	142	24	66.7%	20	6.8
Meta AI standalone	92	8	75.0%	11	11.6

Source: Brainpan Insurance AIVI™ Q3 2026, official Core 5 Expanded benchmark, Expanded 6 view, and Meta AI supplementary panel. Each view is normalized independently to its own leading entity and should not be arithmetically combined.

Strategic diagnostic priorities

What this teardown can tell a marketplace brand in Insurance.com's position to go look at — not conclusions, starting points for a diagnostic.

Separate the category effect from anything brand-specific. Every reliably-measured marketplace brand declined or held flat this quarter. The first diagnostic question isn't "what did we do wrong," it's how much of this decline is shared with the category and how much, if any, is specific to Insurance.com.
Investigate why top-three placement dropped to zero. Recommendation rate held up at 62.5%, but prominence collapsed entirely. Those are different problems with different fixes — one is about whether AI engines trust the brand, the other is about whether they surface it near the top of an answer at all.
Check which surfaces are driving the gap. The five core engines show a steeper decline than the Meta AI-inclusive view. Worth confirming whether that's concentrated in one or two of the five, or spread evenly.
Confirm the move is structural, not seasonal. A single quarter's data, even a sharp one, isn't proof of a durable shift. The next edition's comparison will tell us whether this is a new baseline or a one-quarter dip across the category.

Data, method, and corrections

Primary source: Brainpan's Insurance AIVI™ Q3 2026 Benchmark: 226 entities (of 229 tracked brand candidates; 226 met the bar for canonical resolution with scoreable Q3 data), 300 stratified prompts, 1,800 responses, six AI surfaces. Insurance.com-specific figures come from three distinct, independently-sourced views within that dataset: the official Q2-to-Q3 rank comparison (Section 1), the marketplace-category comparison (Section 3), and the Core 5 Expanded / Expanded 6 / Meta AI standalone comparison (Section 5). These views use different denominators and should not be arithmetically combined.
Category filter: Section 3's marketplace comparison includes all entities classified as type "Marketplace" in Brainpan's entity universe with at least 10 mentions in both Q2 and Q3. Marketplace brands below that threshold in either quarter are excluded as too thin to compare reliably, not because they moved differently.
Scope: Public model outputs only. No advertising data, analytics access, or carrier-internal reporting.
Independence: Insurance.com was not contacted, did not participate, and did not review this page before publication.
Attribution: Organic-only, first-mention attribution. Sponsored placements are excluded from all scoring.
Sample limits: A sample, not a census — one quarter, 300 prompts, 1,800 responses across the full study. Treat quarter-over-quarter movement as directional until a second comparison cycle confirms it.
Corrections: Submit corrections to kwalsh@brainpan.ai. Acknowledged within two business days, resolved within ten, applied as a dated correction note.

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Written and reviewed by

Kevin Walsh

Kevin Walsh is the founder and lead engineer of Brainpan.AI, which builds the Visibility Engine, the measurement platform behind the AIVI™ benchmarks. Brainpan.AI independently measures how brands are mentioned, recommended, cited and described across AI answer engines, and has no client relationship with any brand named in this report.