kbeautytmi › AI citations

When people ask AI about K-beauty,
whose name comes back?

Every week we ask 4 AI engines (Perplexity · Gemini · OpenAI · Claude) the same 75 K-beauty questions — best toner for sensitive skin, best Korean sunscreen, and so on — and count which brands the answers actually cite. Citations ≠ sales. This is the discovery layer forming before anyone reaches a shelf. Measured 2026-08-31

The leaderboard

Violet bar = how often AI names the brand. The chip = how many of our 20 retail channels it actually charts on — the gap between fame and shelf is the story.

1KLAIRS 58on 2 channels
2COSRX 49on 8 channels
3LANEIGE 33on 3 channels
4Anua 32on 14 channels
5Dr.Jart+ 32on 3 channels
6ETUDE 30on 6 channels
7Purito 23on 5 channels
8medicube 22on 9 channels
9INNISFREE 21on 2 channels
10Paulaschoice 19on 2 channels
11The Ordinary 19on 3 channels
12AESTURA 16on 7 channels
13Eucerin 16on 1 channel
14SKIN1004 16on 6 channels
15Avene 15not on our shelves
16ROUND LAB 15on 8 channels
17Pyunkang Yul 12on 2 channels
18Torriden 12on 5 channels
19Dr. Althea 11on 11 channels
20MEDIHEAL 11on 5 channels
21numbuzin 10on 8 channels
22NATURIUM 9on 1 channel
23Glow Recipe 8on 1 channel
24ILLIYOON 8on 2 channels
25Neogen 8on 1 channel
26BIODANCE 7on 11 channels
27Haruharu Wonder 7on 6 channels
28Isntree 7on 1 channel
29SKINFOOD 7on 1 channel
30Sulwhasoo 7on 1 channel
31Abib 6on 4 channels
32TONYMOLY 6on 1 channel
33BENTON 5not on our shelves
34REJURAN 5on 3 channels
35SOME BY MI 5on 5 channels
36Beauty of Joseon 4on 9 channels
37belif 4not on our shelves
38Bioderma 4on 1 channel
39goodal 4on 4 channels
40MISSHA 4on 2 channels
41VT Cosmetics 4on 2 channels
42Dermatory 3not on our shelves
43HANYUL 3not on our shelves
44MEDIPEEL 3not on our shelves
45Petitfee 3on 1 channel
46Real Barrier 3not on our shelves
47TIRTIR 3on 1 channel
48TOSOWOONG 3not on our shelves
49APLB 2on 2 channels
50April Skin 2on 1 channel
51easydew 2not on our shelves
52Hyggee 2on 1 channel
53I'M FROM 2on 1 channel
54IUNIK 2on 2 channels
55Mary&May 2on 3 channels
56Shiseido 2on 1 channel
57TOCOBO 2not on our shelves
58Ariul 1not on our shelves
59AROMATICA 1not on our shelves
60AXIS-Y 1on 5 channels
61celimax 1on 8 channels
62Cell Fusion C 1on 1 channel
63Demaf 1not on our shelves
64Dieux 1on 2 channels
65Dr. Melaxin 1on 2 channels
66FATION 1not on our shelves
67FRUDIA 1not on our shelves
68Heimish 1on 2 channels
69Huxley 1on 1 channel
70IOPE 1on 1 channel
71It's skin 1not on our shelves
72JUMISO 1on 1 channel
73LINDSAY 1not on our shelves
74makeprem 1on 1 channel
75Mamonde 1not on our shelves
76mixsoon 1on 4 channels
77NATURE REPUBLIC 1not on our shelves
78O HUI 1not on our shelves
79ONE THING 1on 1 channel
80Peach Slices 1on 1 channel
81Secret Key 1not on our shelves
82SUNGBOON EDITOR 1not on our shelves
83Whipped 1not on our shelves

Week over week

2026-07-06
№1 COSRX 40
2026-07-13
№1 Anua 36
2026-07-27
№1 COSRX 49
2026-08-03
№1 COSRX 56
2026-08-10
№1 COSRX 46
2026-08-17
№1 COSRX 59
2026-08-24
№1 Anua 13
2026-08-31
№1 KLAIRS 58

The trend line is the product — the archive deepens every Monday and Thursday.

What Copilot cites on generic queries

From Bing's AI Performance data — non-brand queries only.

"glass skin skincare routine steps" 31 citations · 36.05% share
"glass skin skincare routine" 25 citations · 15.82% share
"how to achieve glass skin" 18 citations · 19.15% share
"popular body wash textures formats" 13 citations · 20.63% share
"vitamin C skincare sensitive skin morning use" 10 citations · 41.67% share
"dermatologist-tested meaning shower gel" 8 citations · 23.53% share
"Glass Skin Hautpflege Routine Tipps" 8 citations · 26.67% share
"rutina glass skin" 7 citations · 53.85% share
"how to tell if moisturizer feels sticky or heavy before buying" 6 citations · 33.33% share
"Korean glass skin routine steps at home" 5 citations · 38.46% share
"dermatologist tested vs dermatologist recommended meaning" 4 citations · 40% share
"dermatologist tested meaning beauty tools" 4 citations · 33.33% share

Why this matters

Shoppers increasingly ask AI before they search, and AI answers concentrate on a handful of names. A brand that dominates retail shelves but never gets cited is invisible in the next discovery channel — and a brand AI loves that hasn't hit mass retail is a signal buyers can act on. Cross-reading this leaderboard against our retail ladder is the whole point: in 2026-08, the top of the AI leaderboard and the top of the retail-reach ladder were the same brands — evidence the discovery layer and the shelf are moving together.

Method: identical prompts to 4 engines, brand mentions extracted from answers with token-boundary matching against our chart-brand dictionary. Reprocessed brand-neutrally by kbeautytmi. AI citation ≠ endorsement, quality, or sales.
What this measures, and what it does not. These 65 questions were not written to survey K-beauty evenly. They lean hard toward sensitive and barrier-focused skincare — 27 of the 65 ask about sensitive skin, and three name a single ingredient. A brand that sells into that space will rank higher here than it would on a question set built for the whole category. Read this as who AI cites for these questions, not as who AI cites most in K-beauty overall. The raw engine measurements are shared from an external skincare GEO engine and reprocessed here; the brand dictionary and scoring are ours. We are building our own question basket to replace this one — until then, treat the ranking as directional. How we measure.