Updated August 2026. The brand search table below is unchanged from the original 2024 study. What is new is the second half: we now measure how often Google’s AI answers name each of these brands, and how often it credits them as a source. Those turn out to be very different rankings.
Brand search volume measures how many people go looking for a company by name. It is the closest thing search data offers to a brand awareness score, and until recently it was the whole picture.
Top 40 by monthly brand searches
| # | Brand | Monthly searches |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Progressive | 823,000 |
| 2 | Farmers | 550,000 |
| 3 | Nationwide | 301,000 |
| 4 | GEICO | 301,000 |
| 5 | Erie | 301,000 |
| 6 | State Farm | 301,000 |
| 7 | Travelers | 301,000 |
| 8 | AAA | 246,000 |
| 9 | Allstate | 201,000 |
| 10 | American Family | 201,000 |
| 11 | USAA | 165,000 |
| 12 | Freeway | 165,000 |
| 13 | National General | 165,000 |
| 14 | Direct Auto | 135,000 |
| 15 | Nationwide Pet | 135,000 |
| 16 | The Hartford | 110,000 |
| 17 | Acceptance | 110,000 |
| 18 | Mercury | 110,000 |
| 19 | Delta Dental | 110,000 |
| 20 | The General | 90,500 |
| 21 | GEICO Car Insurance | 90,500 |
| 22 | Root | 90,500 |
| 23 | Aetna | 90,500 |
| 24 | Hugo | 90,500 |
| 25 | Dairyland | 90,500 |
| 26 | Allianz Travel | 90,500 |
| 27 | Otto | 74,000 |
| 28 | Nationwide Mutual | 74,000 |
| 29 | General Insurance | 74,000 |
| 30 | The General Car Insurance | 74,000 |
| 31 | AAA Auto | 74,000 |
| 32 | USAA Car Insurance | 74,000 |
| 33 | Marketplace Insurance | 74,000 |
| 34 | Elephant | 74,000 |
| 35 | Safeco | 74,000 |
| 36 | Lemonade | 74,000 |
| 37 | Shelter | 74,000 |
| 38 | NEXT Insurance | 60,500 |
| 39 | Fred Loya | 60,500 |
| 40 | Ambetter | 60,500 |
Volumes are monthly US brand-name searches. Product-modified terms such as travel, group and life insurance were excluded so the list reflects brand demand rather than category demand.
The second scoreboard: who AI names
Brand searches tell you who people already know. They do not tell you who Google recommends to somebody who does not.
In August 2026 we captured car insurance and business insurance searches across all 50 states and 6 Canadian provinces and recorded which brands Google named inside its written answers. Across those captures, 38 brands were named a total of 5,322 times.
| # | Brand | Times named in an AI answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | GEICO | 1,005 |
| 2 | Progressive | 833 |
| 3 | Allstate | 417 |
| 4 | Travelers | 387 |
| 5 | Nationwide | 360 |
| 6 | The Hartford | 336 |
| 7 | State Farm | 308 |
| 8 | USAA | 279 |
| 9 | NEXT Insurance | 262 |
| 10 | Hiscox | 262 |
| 11 | Farmers | 187 |
| 12 | Liberty Mutual | 118 |
| 13 | AAA | 83 |
| 14 | biBERK | 64 |
| 15 | Erie | 59 |
Compare the two lists and the differences are the interesting part.
GEICO leads AI answers but is fourth on brand search. Progressive has more than twice GEICO’s brand search volume and is named less often.
Hiscox and biBERK appear on the AI list and not on the brand search list at all. Neither has the brand awareness to place in the top 40 by name searches. Both are named regularly in business insurance answers, which suggests Google is recommending them on the merits of what it can read rather than on public familiarity.
Erie is fifth on brand search and fifteenth on AI mentions, at 59 against 301,000 monthly brand searches. That is one of the widest gaps in the dataset.
The third scoreboard: who gets credited
Underneath each answer, Google lists the sources it used. Being named in the text and being credited underneath are different things, and they diverge sharply.
| Brand | Named | Credited | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Progressive | 833 | 377 | +456 |
| GEICO | 1,005 | 601 | +404 |
| USAA | 279 | 46 | +233 |
| Travelers | 387 | 167 | +220 |
| State Farm | 308 | 136 | +172 |
| Allstate | 417 | 406 | +11 |
| NEXT Insurance | 262 | 472 | -210 |
| Liberty Mutual | 118 | 460 | -342 |
| The Hartford | 336 | 940 | -604 |
Three patterns sit in that table.
Brands talked about more than they are read. Progressive, GEICO, USAA, Travelers and State Farm are all described far more often than their own pages are used as source material. Google is explaining these companies using somebody else’s writing.
Brands read more than they are talked about. The Hartford supplies 940 sources and is named 336 times. Liberty Mutual supplies 460 and is named 118. Their pages are the raw material Google builds insurance answers from, while the answers frequently discuss other companies.
One brand roughly in balance. Allstate is named 417 times and credited 406.
What to do with this
If you are on the first list and not the second, your brand is known and your content is not being used. That is a content and structure problem, not an awareness problem, and it is the cheaper of the two to fix.
If you are on the second list and not the first, you are supplying the explanation while somebody else gets the recommendation.
And if you are on neither, note that Hiscox and biBERK are on the AI list without the brand awareness to place in the top 40. Being named does not appear to require being famous.
Method
Brand search volumes are monthly US figures from the original October 2024 study, unchanged.
AI mention and citation figures come from our August 2026 capture: car insurance and business insurance searches geo-targeted to all 50 US states and 6 Canadian provinces. A mention is the brand appearing in the answer text. A citation is Google crediting a page as a source beneath the answer. The two are counted separately and never combined.
August 2026 is a single capture. Three-capture medians with a published spread begin in September. The full method is published, and the Insurance Visibility Index reports these boards per state and province every month.