A new report iPullRank examines how Google’s Personal Intelligence feature influences how brands appear in AI mode.
The SEO agency analyzed 1,922 responses in AI mode and found a 46 percentage point increase in brand mentions from a survey. Personal intelligence-connected account.
What they found
In accounts connected to Personal Intelligence, tested brands appear more frequently, with mentions increasing from 23.9% to 66.8%.
These brands also rose to higher positions, with their top 3 ranking increasing from 4.5% to 24.9%.
Gmail has the greatest influence on the brands mentioned. Brands added via email appeared in 53.6% of relevant responses, compared to 10.5% for brands added via Photos.
Results for consumer product categories like coffee machines, hoodies, and running shoes were easier to influence than trusted categories, like banks and SEO agencies.
Personalization has not replaced web sources
Even when personal context seemed to influence how brands appeared, AI Fashion still based many recommendations on web sources.
Other brand sites accounted for approximately 49% of sources. Brand sites from accounts connected to Personal Intelligence were also frequently cited, as well as their Google Shopping listings. Completely uncited mentions are the least common type of result.
How the test worked
The team worked with three Google accounts. One of them was a blank checking account with no personal information. A second blank account was linked to Personal Intelligence and received brand-related signals through Gmail and Google Photos. The third was the personal account of author Garrett Sussman, who had years of history on Google.
The test covered eight categories, including coffee machines, running shoes, banks and streaming services. Each category was tested on Gmail messages and Google Photos images, with six types of prompts per category.
What the analysis doesn’t show
iPullRank’s report does not reveal Google’s internal ranking logic for accounts connected to Personal Intelligence.
The team did not have access to retrieval processes, model weights, or the Personal Intelligence decision layer. The test also used three counts over 17 days, which limits the scope of the results.
Email was the strongest signal tested, but the report does not prove that Gmail is a universal AI mode ranking factor. He tested a membership condition that is not enabled by default.
Why it matters
The iPullRank analysis is one of the first published attempts to measure the impact of Google’s Personal Intelligence feature on brand recommendations. Results are from a small controlled test and apply only to opt-in accounts.
The two main takeaways are that email content appears to have a stronger effect than photos and that personal context has not replaced web anchoring. Personal relevance signals appear to function as additional factors, rather than supplanting web results.
Looking to the future
iPullRank says it plans to test signal degradation, email behavior variations such as opened and unopened messages, as well as more product categories.
Prompt wording is another variable to monitor, as different question formats produced different levels of brand visibility in this analysis.
Featured image: Screenshot from gemini.google/overview/personal-intelligence/, May 2026.
