What ChatGPT and Gemini actually say when buyers ask about candles, which sources they read to build those answers, and the specific articles Pott needs to be on.
Across six months and 6,631 AI answers about candles, Pott was named 38 times. That is 0.57%. For practical purposes Pott does not exist in AI answers today.
The important part is the direction. Pott went from zero mentions across Feb, Mar, Apr and May to 4.2% in August. Something started working in June. The job now is to identify it and pour fuel on it.
Share of tracked AI answers that name Pott, both engines combined.
The inflection is real, not noise. August is a partial month (to the 12th) and already carries 20 mentions against 480 answers, more than the whole of July. Pott crossed from "never mentioned" to "occasionally recommended" somewhere in June.
Every one of the 20 tracked prompts, best performing first. Two topics are tracked: Refillable Candles and Luxury Candles.
| Topic | Prompt | Answers | Mentions | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refillable Candles | What are the best refillable candle brands in the UK right now? | 337 | 22 | 6.5% |
| Refillable Candles | Luxury refillable candles that are worth keeping | 334 | 7 | 2.1% |
| Refillable Candles | Best seasonal scents in refillable candles | 336 | 5 | 1.5% |
| Refillable Candles | Why do people switch to refillable candles? | 334 | 2 | 0.60% |
| Luxury Candles | Luxury candles with beautiful reusable vessels | 328 | 2 | 0.60% |
| Refillable Candles | How can I reuse or refill an empty candle jar? | 332 | 0 | 0% |
| Refillable Candles | What is a refillable candle and how does it work? | 336 | 0 | 0% |
| Refillable Candles | Are refillable candles actually more sustainable? | 335 | 0 | 0% |
| Refillable Candles | Are refillable candles more cost effective over time? | 334 | 0 | 0% |
| Refillable Candles | Are refillable candles a good gift? | 335 | 0 | 0% |
| Refillable Candles | Refillable candles vs regular candles: which is better? | 333 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | How long should a luxury candle last? | 327 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | What makes a candle a luxury candle? | 328 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | What are the best luxury candle brands in the UK right now? | 333 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | Which luxury candles have the strongest scent throw? | 330 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | What are the most iconic luxury candle brands? | 332 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | Are luxury candles worth the money? | 326 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | Luxury candles vs high street candles: what’s the difference? | 323 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | Luxury candles that are handmade in the UK | 327 | 0 | 0% |
| Luxury Candles | What is a good luxury candle gift? | 331 | 0 | 0% |
Pott scores 0.0% on all ten Luxury Candles prompts. Not one mention in 3,285 answers. Every mention Pott has ever earned came from the refillable side.
That is a positioning finding, not just a PR one. When a buyer asks AI about luxury candles, the answer is Diptyque, Trudon, Jo Malone. Pott is not in that conversation at all, despite competing on price and craft. Pott has one foot in the door on refillable and no foot in the door on luxury.
26,850 citations across the top 120 domains, grouped by whether PR can realistically get Pott onto them.
59.5% of everything AI cites is a competitor's own website. Rival brands ranking their own blog posts and product pages. No PR agency can place Pott there, and no amount of outreach changes it.
Only 23.2% is editorial that a PR effort can actually target, and 1.9% is pottcandles.com. That split should drive the budget: roughly a quarter of this problem is a PR job, over half of it is a content job that Pott does on its own domain.
Ranked by how often AI actually pulls from them. Competitor-owned domains are excluded because they cannot be placed. Position is where the source lands in the citation order, lower is more influential.
| # | Type | Source & article | Citations | Prompts | Avg pos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Editorial | idealhome.co.uk | 448 | 11/20 | 3.7 |
| 2 | Retailer | candledelirium.com | 332 | 8/20 | 6.3 |
| 3 | Editorial | candlesbrands.com | 308 | 9/20 | 8.7 |
| 4 | Editorial | idealhome.co.uk | 283 | 12/20 | 4.3 |
| 5 | Editorial | vogue.co.uk | 271 | 11/20 | 3.1 |
| 6 | Editorial | whowhatwear.com | 263 | 8/20 | 9.3 |
| 7 | Editorial | marieclaire.com | 256 | 10/20 | 3.7 |
| 8 | Editorial | marieclaire.co.uk | 221 | 10/20 | 8 |
| 9 | Retailer | candledelirium.com | 144 | 5/20 | 5.3 |
| 10 | Retailer | nicandlesupplies.co.uk | 143 | 8/20 | 5.8 |
| 11 | Editorial | vogue.com | 141 | 10/20 | 6.4 |
| 12 | Editorial | marieclaire.co.uk | 122 | 3/20 | 4 |
| 13 | Editorial | strongestcandles.com | 121 | 6/20 | 12.2 |
| 14 | Editorial | vogue.com | 117 | 8/20 | 6.8 |
| 15 | Editorial | harpersbazaar.com | 108 | 3/20 | 4.8 |
| 16 | Editorial | strongestcandles.com | 104 | 8/20 | 9.8 |
| 17 | Editorial | womanandhome.com | 91 | 8/20 | 3.1 |
| 18 | Retailer | candledelirium.com | 89 | 4/20 | 6.6 |
| 19 | Editorial | lovescottish.scot | 89 | 5/20 | 3.6 |
| 20 | Community | reddit.com | 87 | 6/20 | 4.7 |
Ideal Home is the single most valuable non-competitor source in the category, cited 1,179 times across 18 of the 20 prompts. Two of its articles sit at the top of this list.
Verified against the live page on 13 Aug 2026.
AI engines cite this exact sentence from idealhome.co.uk/all-rooms/where-to-buy-refillable-candles using a text fragment, meaning the model is anchoring on that specific line. It has been cited 110 times across 6 months, first appearing in February.
That Ideal Home citation has been live and quoted since February, through four straight months of zero mentions. Meanwhile citations of pottcandles.com jumped sharply in July, and that is when the mention rate took off.
The honest read: getting into an article is not the same as getting recommended. One placement gives AI a fact about Pott. It takes repeated, corroborating sources before an engine will actually put a brand on a list. This is the argument against paying a PR retainer to chase single placements.
| # | Domain | Type | Citations | Prompts | Avg pos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | recandlecompany.com | Competitor brand | 1,964 | 13/20 | 5.88 |
| 2 | reddit.com | Community | 1,621 | 20/20 | 5.21 |
| 3 | idealhome.co.uk | Editorial | 1,179 | 18/20 | 4.75 |
| 4 | vesselandessence.co.uk | Competitor brand | 1,161 | 11/20 | 7.67 |
| 5 | willowandfinn.co.uk | Competitor brand | 939 | 14/20 | 6.81 |
| 6 | affinatiliving.com | Competitor brand | 887 | 12/20 | 6.38 |
| 7 | candledelirium.com | Retailer | 838 | 10/20 | 6.03 |
| 8 | whowhatwear.com | Editorial | 614 | 12/20 | 8.09 |
| 9 | marieclaire.co.uk | Editorial | 595 | 11/20 | 6.13 |
| 10 | pourable.co.uk | Competitor brand | 509 | 10/20 | 8.83 |
| 11 | pottcandles.com | Owned | 500 | 11/20 | 4.6 |
| 12 | circehome.com | Competitor brand | 474 | 11/20 | 7.53 |
| 13 | therefillablecandleco.co.uk | Competitor brand | 444 | 10/20 | 8.7 |
| 14 | aromaparadise.com | Competitor brand | 436 | 10/20 | 5.79 |
| 15 | homecourt.co | Competitor brand | 430 | 5/20 | 5.88 |
| 16 | chaseandwonder.com | Competitor brand | 429 | 8/20 | 4.3 |
| 17 | serocandles.com | Competitor brand | 405 | 11/20 | 5.9 |
| 18 | candlesbrands.com | Editorial | 399 | 10/20 | 9.77 |
| 19 | lovescottish.scot | Editorial | 376 | 13/20 | 4.2 |
| 20 | foxwoodbramble.co.uk | Competitor brand | 375 | 9/20 | 5.5 |
| 21 | aroma-quartz.com | Competitor brand | 366 | 12/20 | 6.04 |
| 22 | greathousefarmstores.co.uk | Retailer | 350 | 14/20 | 6.48 |
| 23 | soulfulcandlesuk.com | Competitor brand | 338 | 9/20 | 6.3 |
| 24 | thatcandlecompany.co.uk | Competitor brand | 334 | 12/20 | 7.72 |
| 25 | vogue.com | Editorial | 334 | 14/20 | 6.85 |
Reddit is the second most cited source in the entire category, appearing on all 20 of 20 prompts. It is the only source with total prompt coverage. Nobody can buy a placement there, but r/luxurycandles and r/candles are where the models go for opinion, and Pott is absent from those threads.
ai_visibility_table, 2026-02-13 to 2026-08-12 · Built 13 Aug 2026