Legacy Beauty Brands Falter in AI Search Rankings

The Ordinary currently holds the top spot with a 7% share of AI citations, followed closely by CeraVe at 6% and Sephora at 5.5%. This shift marks a departure from traditional brand recognition; while giants like Estée Lauder and Chanel retain high commercial scale, they fail to crack the top 10 for skincare-specific inquiries. Instead, AI engines are surfacing brands like La Roche-Posay and Drunk Elephant, which together contribute to a 22% slice of the skincare citation market.

Data suggests that celebrity-backed lines are capitalizing on this transition with unprecedented speed. Rare Beauty, for instance, secured a 3.5% citation share on Claude in under five years—a pace legacy competitors have struggled to match for a decade. Ronn Torossian, founder of 5W, notes that the current landscape rewards brands that publish specific, concern-based content rather than those relying on heritage marketing. With Sephora-house brands and ingredient-led independents now capturing the majority of AI-driven consumer interest, the gap between traditional prestige and modern digital visibility continues to widen every quarter.