Can you predict what AI search will recommend?
- Dane Frederiksen
- May 3
- 3 min read
No. Google personalizes AI search results based on your Gmail, calendar, photos, and YouTube views, so two people running the same query get different brand recommendations.
Quick Answer
Google now personalizes AI search results based on the rest of your Google account.
Personalization data sources include Gmail, calendar, Google Photos, and YouTube views.
Anyone selling AI visibility tracking software is lying, since the same query returns different results for different users.
Why AI visibility tracking is impossible
When you run a Google search today, Google does not just look at the query, it looks at you. Your Gmail. Your calendar. Your Google Photos. The videos you watch on YouTube. All of that data flows into AI Overviews and AI Mode, which means the brand recommendations you see are different from the ones the next person sees.
Christopher Penn points to a quote Google itself confirmed in summer of 2024, "Google does the Googling." The more personalization data the system pulls in, the more distortion enters the recommendation. At SEO Week, Garrett Sussman demonstrated this by setting up synthetic Gmail accounts with different YouTube subscription patterns. The brands Google recommended varied wildly across accounts.
"Anyone who is selling you software saying we can tell you what your AI visibility is, they have zero insight. They're lying. There's no polite way of saying it." — Christopher Penn
The implication is sharp. If you are paying five thousand to ten thousand dollars a month for AI visibility tracking software, cancel it. The tool cannot tell you what any specific buyer will see, because the answer depends on a Gmail account the software cannot access.
This does not mean AI visibility is unmeasurable, it means the measurement happens at your own intake point, not in a third-party dashboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
What data does Google use to personalize AI search?
Gmail content, calendar events, Google Photos, YouTube watch history, and any other Google account signal you have personalization turned on for. Christopher Penn notes that AI Overviews and AI Mode pull these in by default if personalization is enabled.
Does this mean AI visibility cannot be measured at all?
It cannot be measured by third-party software, but it can be measured at your own contact form. Christopher recommends a free-form "How did you hear about us?" field, analyzed monthly with AI, to spot ChatGPT, Claude, Google, and Perplexity as referral sources.
Should I cancel my AI visibility tracking subscription?
If you are paying for software that claims to predict your AI visibility, yes. Christopher Penn says the typical spend is five to ten thousand dollars a month for data that cannot account for personalization, and is therefore not predictive of what any individual searcher actually sees.
Want the full conversation? Watch the full interview with Christopher Penn — or read the full article.
Full Clip Transcript
Christopher: Google is heavily influenced as they increase personalization by the rest of your Google account. So if you have personalization for AI for search turned on with AI Overviews and with AI Mode, it starts pulling from things like your Gmail, your calendar, your Google Photos, your YouTube views, etc. And that influences what shows up in your search results. So this has an important meaning for a lot of people. It means this, you cannot predict what brands are going to get recommended. Period. End of story. Anyone who is selling you software saying we can tell you what your AI visibility is, zero. They have zero insight now because the way language models work is, when you Google something now, Google said this in summer of 24, Google does the Googling, and the more personalization data it brings in, the more distortion is in that.
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