Who appears for “best software” queries across seven industries

On 12 November 2026 we ran 14 English “best software” queries, two per industry across seven industries, and recorded the top five listed results for each. That gives 70 result slots across 47 distinct domains.

Review publishers and software directories occupy most of these listed results: 35 of 70 (50%) were publisher or independent review pages and 16 (22.9%) were review directories. Vendor-authored best-of pages also appear, in 19 slots (27.1%).

This is a small snapshot. Read it as a description of what one tool listed on one day, not as a rule about how search or AI assistants work.

• It is not a Google or Bing results page snapshot.
• It does not record citations in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT or Perplexity.
• The search tool’s ranking function is unpublished.
• One collection date, English only, five results per query.
• Source-type classification involves judgment.
• These classifications do not establish whether a page is sponsored, independent or using any particular link attribute.
• No causal or representative conclusions should be drawn.
• These are not offsiteposts.com client results, and they do not predict outcomes from paid placements.