Which Franchise Brands Does AI Actually Recommend in Australia?

I’ve been working with big franchise brands at Optimising for years, including one of the biggest in the country. They are a unique business type, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how prospective franchisees find and evaluate brands before they invest in one.

Increasingly, those searches are starting with AI. Not just ChatGPT, but through Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, which are now answering questions like "best franchise to buy in Australia" directly in search results.

I wanted to see which brands are actually showing up in those answers, and what's driving the recommendations? Some of these results were expected, but others were more surprising.

We used Ahrefs' Brand Radar tool to track how nine major Australian franchise brands appeared in AI-generated responses across four platforms:Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.. Credit to Ahrefs for building something that lets you actually measure this stuff rather than just speculate about it.

We filtered the data specifically to franchise-related queries, focusing on high-intent searches like "best franchise to buy", "most profitable franchises Australia", and "franchise opportunities Melbourne".

Brand Radar gives us several metrics, but the two that matter most here are share of voice (how much of the AI conversation a brand owns) and cited sources (which websites AI is pulling its information from to form those recommendations).

Here's what we found.

Share of voice (SoV) tells you how much of the AI recommendation space a brand owns relative to competitors. On Google AI Overviews, the share of voice for franchise-related queries looks like this:

Jim's Group leads, but the real surprise is at the bottom. McDonald's, arguably the most recognisable franchise brand on the planet, holds just 4% share of voice across franchise-related AI responses.

When someone asks Google's AI what the best franchise to buy in Australia is, McDonald's barely gets a mention. That's a significant finding for any franchise brand assuming that brand recognition and market dominance alone will carry them into the AI era..

This was one of the most interesting findings. 

We pulled the share of voice data across four platforms, and the results are wildly different depending on where someone asks the question.

• Google AI Overviews: Jim's Group 38%, Anytime Fitness 32%, GyG 25%, Poolwerx 22%, Boost Juice 19%
• Google AI Mode: Anytime Fitness 57%, Jim's Group 40%, Poolwerx 35%, Boost Juice 13%, GyG 0%
• ChatGPT: Anytime Fitness 54%, Laser Clinics 41%, Jim's Group 11%, Boost Juice 7%, GyG 0%
• Perplexity: Laser Clinics 53%, Anytime Fitness 28%, Jim's Group 19%, Poolwerx 11%, GyG 0%

A few things stand out.

1. GyG holds 25% share of voice on Google AI Overviews but drops to zero on every other platform. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and even Google's own AI Mode don't recommend it at all for franchise queries. That's a significant blind spot for a brand that's investing heavily in franchise growth.
2. Anytime Fitness is the most consistently strong performer across all platforms. It shows up near the top everywhere, not just in one channel.
3. Jim's Group is the only brand that appears on every single platform we checked. That kind of cross-platform consistency matters when prospective franchisees are researching across multiple tools.
4. And McDonald's? Zero share of voice on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for franchise queries. The world's most famous franchise is essentially invisible to AI when it comes to franchise recruitment.

So why are some brands showing up and others aren't? The answer is in the sources AI is citing.

When AI answers a question about which franchise to buy, it pulls that information from specific authority sites. In this case, franchise directories are the dominant ranking source right now.

Most cited sources in Google AI Mode (In order of importance):

1. seekbusiness.com.au
2. franchisebusiness.com.au
3. topfranchise.com.au
4. franchisedirect.com.au
5. jims.net
6. franchises-for-sale.au

Most cited sources in Google AI Overviews:

• franchisedirect.com.au
• topfranchise.com
• franchises-for-sale.au
• seekbusiness.com.au
• reddit.com

Franchise directories like Seek Business, TopFranchise, Franchise Direct, and Franchise Business are essentially deciding which brands AI recommends. If your franchise isn’t well-represented on these platforms, AI simply can’t find you and recommend you. Doesn't matter how big your brand is.

The only brand website breaking into the top cited sources is jims.net, with 17 citations in AI Mode and 6 in AI Overviews. Every other brand is relying entirely on third-party sites to represent them in AI responses.

Reddit also appears in both datasets. Real conversations from franchisees and prospective buyers in subreddits like r/AusFinance are directly influencing what AI recommends to prospective buyers.

Drilling into cited pages, two stand out: TopFranchise's "Top 100 Australian Franchises" and Franchise Direct's "/top-franchises/". TopFranchise had 14 AI Overview and 9 AI Mode citations, while Franchise Direct had13 and 9 citations respectively.

These two pages alone shape a significant chunk of what AI tells prospective franchise buyers. If your brand isn't featured well on these specific pages, you're missing out on a growing source of qualified leads.

Jim's Group has three of their own pages getting cited regularly:

• Their /own-a-franchise/ page (9 citations in AI Mode)
• Their FAQ page (4 citations)
• A blog post titled "Which franchise makes the most money in Australia" (4 citations)

That blog post is a great example effective AI visibility. Jim's created content that directly answers the exact question AI is trying to answer. When someone asks "most profitable franchise in Australia", AI finds Jim's own analysis and cites it. That's their content influencing the recommendation, not a third-party directory.

GyG's franchise info pack PDF is also getting cited (3 times in AI Overviews), which shows that even downloadable PDFs are fair game for AI sourcing.

The queries triggering these AI responses give a useful window into what people are researching. Here are the top franchise-related searches by estimated monthly volume in Australia:

• "what is a franchise", "franchise business for sale" 
• Brand-specific: "test and tag franchise", "mcdonald's franchise”, "jim's franchise list", "GyG franchise cost"
• Service-specific: "cleaning franchise" , "test and tag franchise"
• Open-ended discovery: "franchises in australia", "best franchise australia", "franchise opportunities melbourne", "most profitable franchises australia", "top franchises in australia"

There's a clear split between brand-specific research and open-ended discovery queries. The open-ended discovery queries are where the real competition happens, because that's where AI has to choose which brands to recommend, and those choices are being driven by the ranking sources we've just covered.

• Directory presence outweighs brand size. McDonald's is proof that brand recognition alone doesn't translate to AI visibility. If your franchise isn't well-represented on sites like Seek Business, TopFranchise, Franchise Direct, and Franchise Business, AI can't recommend you.
• Your own website content can break through. Jim's Group is the only brand with its own website consistently cited alongside the directories. Their franchise landing page and strategic blog directly answer the questions prospective franchisees are asking, giving AI something to cite beyond the directories.
• Cross-platform visibility requires deliberate effort. Being visible on Google AI Overviews doesn't mean you're visible on ChatGPT or Perplexity. Each platform sources and weights information differently. GyG's strong showing on AI Overviews but zero presence elsewhere is a clear example of this.
• Reddit and forums are influencing recommendations. Real conversations about franchise experiences are being cited in AI responses. Brand sentiment in these forums affects how AI positions your franchise.
• AI visibility is a franchise recruitment channel now. This isn't hypothetical. People are asking AI which franchise to invest in right now. The brands that show up in those answers have a meaningful advantage in their recruitment pipeline. The ones that don't are invisible to a new generation of buyers.

Finding franchisees is hard and competitive. We’re at a time though where the playing field is changing, and there are opportunities for those who invest their resources in the right places.

AI is becoming a filter between your brand and the people who might invest in it.

The brands winning in AI right now aren't just the biggest or the most well-known. They're the ones that are well-represented on the sources AI actually pulls from. Jim's Group is doing this well, most others aren't doing it at all.

If you're a franchise brand thinking about how to attract more franchisees, AI is a channel worth paying attention to. The answer to "what's the best franchise to buy in Australia?" is being answered by AI right now - shaped by franchise directories, Reddit threads, and whatever content you've made easy for AI to find.

Data sourced from Ahrefs Brand Radar, February 2026. Franchise-related queries filtered across Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity for nine tracked Australian franchise brands.