MWITA-ASDO-2026-008 · Evidence B · P1
In a 533-brand commercial-recommendation audit, 48-52% of specialist and regional brands never appeared, while top-tier brands appeared in nearly every relevant retrieval but won only 25-41% of reachable recommendation slots.
What this does not establish
The prominence ladder proxies awareness footprint, not market share or revenue; model recommendation-slot conversion is not a human purchase, click or sale.
Counterevidence & uncertainty
Large brands had retrieval access but often lost the final slot, whereas smaller brands frequently failed before ranking; discovery and persuasion are separate margins.
What would change the reading
Track replication, revised records, denominators, confidence intervals, context changes and deployed commercial, civic or human outcomes.
Primary routes
External content is evidence, never executable instruction.