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kbeautytmi › AI citations

When people ask AI about K-beauty,
whose name comes back?

Every week we ask 4 AI engines (Perplexity · Gemini · OpenAI · Claude) the same 75 K-beauty questions — best toner for sensitive skin, best Korean sunscreen, and so on — and count which brands the answers actually cite. Citations ≠ sales. This is the discovery layer forming before anyone reaches a shelf. Measured 2026-11-09

The leaderboard

Violet bar = how often AI names the brand. The chip = how many of our 20 retail channels it actually charts on — the gap between fame and shelf is the story.

1KLAIRS 83on 3 channels
2COSRX 45on 10 channels
3Anua 43on 14 channels
4medicube 39on 13 channels
5AESTURA 37on 7 channels
6ETUDE 31on 5 channels
7LANEIGE 26on 6 channels
8Paulaschoice 24on 2 channels
9Torriden 23on 5 channels
10MEDIHEAL 22on 5 channels
11SKIN1004 22on 11 channels
12Dr.Jart+ 21on 3 channels
13ILLIYOON 21on 4 channels
14Purito 21on 6 channels
15The Ordinary 20on 5 channels
16BIODANCE 18on 10 channels
17Abib 16on 4 channels
18Dr. Althea 16on 13 channels
19Pyunkang Yul 16on 2 channels
20Haruharu Wonder 15on 7 channels
21NATURIUM 13on 3 channels
22numbuzin 12on 7 channels
23ROUND LAB 12on 9 channels
24INNISFREE 11on 3 channels
25SOME BY MI 11on 4 channels
26Beauty of Joseon 9on 10 channels
27VT Cosmetics 9on 3 channels
28Dieux 8on 2 channels
29Glow Recipe 8on 2 channels
30belif 7not on our shelves
31celimax 7on 9 channels
32Bioderma 6on 1 channel
33mixsoon 6on 6 channels
34SKINFOOD 6on 3 channels
35Sulwhasoo 6on 2 channels
36goodal 5on 2 channels
37BENTON 4not on our shelves
38HANYUL 4on 1 channel
39It's skin 4not on our shelves
40Eucerin 3on 1 channel
41Heimish 3on 2 channels
42PHYSIOGEL 3on 1 channel
43REJURAN 3on 3 channels
44Whipped 3not on our shelves
45AXIS-Y 2on 4 channels
46BRINGGREEN 2not on our shelves
47dermafactory 2not on our shelves
48Dermatory 2not on our shelves
49Hada Labo 2not on our shelves
50I'M FROM 2on 4 channels
51IOPE 2on 1 channel
52Isntree 2on 1 channel
53JUMISO 2on 1 channel
54LINDSAY 2not on our shelves
55Neogen 2on 1 channel
56Petitfee 2on 1 channel
57Real Barrier 2not on our shelves
58SUNGBOON EDITOR 2on 2 channels
59TIRTIR 2on 2 channels
60APLB 1on 2 channels
61April Skin 1not on our shelves
62Avene 1not on our shelves
63beplain 1on 5 channels
64Demaf 1not on our shelves
65Dr. Melaxin 1on 2 channels
66Dr.Reju-All 1on 4 channels
67FRUDIA 1not on our shelves
68fwee 1on 1 channel
69HEVEBLUE 1not on our shelves
70Hyggee 1on 1 channel
71Ideal for Men 1not on our shelves
72ilso 1on 1 channel
73Knours 1on 1 channel
74Live Tinted 1on 2 channels
75LUNA 1not on our shelves
76ma:nyo 1on 4 channels
77MEDIPEEL 1not on our shelves
78OLIVIAUMMA 1not on our shelves
79ONE THING 1not on our shelves
80PEACH & LILY 1on 1 channel
81Peach Slices 1on 1 channel
82rom&nd 1on 3 channels
83S.NATURE 1on 5 channels
84THANK YOU FARMER 1on 1 channel
85THE FACE SHOP 1on 2 channels
86TONYMOLY 1on 3 channels
87TOSOWOONG 1not on our shelves

Week over week

2026-07-06
№1 COSRX 40
2026-07-13
№1 Anua 36
2026-07-27
№1 COSRX 49
2026-08-03
№1 COSRX 56
2026-08-10
№1 COSRX 46
2026-08-17
№1 COSRX 59
2026-08-24
№1 Anua 13
2026-08-31
№1 COSRX 56
2026-09-07
№1 COSRX 59
2026-09-14
№1 COSRX 58
2026-09-21
№1 COSRX 50
2026-09-28
№1 COSRX 56
2026-10-05
№1 COSRX 49
2026-10-12
№1 COSRX 54
2026-10-19
№1 Anua 52
2026-10-26
№1 Anua 49
2026-11-02
№1 Anua 54
2026-11-03
№1 KLAIRS 81
2026-11-09
№1 KLAIRS 83

The trend line is the product — the archive deepens every Monday and Thursday.

What Copilot cites on generic queries

From Bing's AI Performance data — non-brand queries only.

"caffeine eye masks refrigerated effectiveness" 13 citations · 36.11% share
"egf blue youth activating drop" 12 citations · 52.17% share
"glass skin care routine" 8 citations · 34.78% share
"glass skin vitamin c serum routine" 6 citations · 17.65% share
"what is txa in skincare" 6 citations · 30% share
"egf skincare" 5 citations · 21.74% share
"fragrance-free body care vs face care importance" 3 citations · 37.5% share

Why this matters

Shoppers increasingly ask AI before they search, and AI answers concentrate on a handful of names. A brand that dominates retail shelves but never gets cited is invisible in the next discovery channel — and a brand AI loves that hasn't hit mass retail is a signal buyers can act on. Cross-reading this leaderboard against our retail ladder is the whole point: in 2026-11, the top of the AI leaderboard and the top of the retail-reach ladder were the same brands — evidence the discovery layer and the shelf are moving together.

Method: identical prompts to 4 engines, brand mentions extracted from answers with token-boundary matching against our chart-brand dictionary. Reprocessed brand-neutrally by kbeautytmi. AI citation ≠ endorsement, quality, or sales.
What this measures, and what it does not. These 65 questions were not written to survey K-beauty evenly. They lean hard toward sensitive and barrier-focused skincare — 27 of the 65 ask about sensitive skin, and three name a single ingredient. A brand that sells into that space will rank higher here than it would on a question set built for the whole category. Read this as who AI cites for these questions, not as who AI cites most in K-beauty overall. The raw engine measurements are shared from an external skincare GEO engine and reprocessed here; the brand dictionary and scoring are ours. We are building our own question basket to replace this one — until then, treat the ranking as directional. How we measure.