The AEO Industry Index measures how AI answer engines recommend the players in a category. This November 2026 edition tracks sperm banks across five AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot), scoring how often and how prominently each bank is named when someone asks AI for guidance.
AEO Index · November 2026 · Updated Nov 13, 2026
The complete AI-visibility index for sperm banks.
Two layers of AI visibility, durable memory and the live citation contest, the organic reality beneath them, and where the opportunity sits, in one view.
The short version
What AI already says about this category
Ninety seconds. AI answers this category from two places at once, what the models already remember about it and what they retrieve live, and this index measures both. Every figure below is drawn from a panel further down this page, and none of it is an estimate.
Executive overviewOnly 32% of the sources behind AI's answers about this category come from a tracked bank.
32%
of citations to a bank's own site
of 3,208 sources AI cited
80%
of category search demand captured
by the 12 tracked banks with organic data
The answer is assembled somewhere else. Only 32% of what AI cites in this category sits on a tracked bank's own site. The most-cited source that is not a tracked bank's own site is reddit.com at 130 citations, ahead of en.wikipedia.org and illumefertility.com. The citation panel below lists every source and who owns it.
What AI looks for is not evenly contested. 17% of the sub-questions AI generates on its own are about sperm bank discovery, which is the most contested ground in the category. Another 2.0% are about process and legal, where the cohort averages 0.0% coverage and not one tracked bank holds a position at all.
What the measurement says
Visibility here is not owned, it is cited
Tracked banks hold 32% of the sources behind AI's answers about this category. The rest sits on sites none of them controls, so visibility here is largely a function of who else writes about a bank rather than of what sits on its own site.
What the measurement says
AI demand and search demand do not line up
Process and legal carries almost no Google search volume but 2.0% of the sub-questions AI generates on its own, against 0.0% average coverage across the cohort, and not one tracked bank holds a position in it at all. A cluster AI asks about and the category has not answered is a property of the category, measured here rather than assumed.
How to read every number on this page. Every figure on this page is measured, and each panel names the artifact and the date it came from. This edition has a single collection occasion, so it publishes one blended ordering and no measured margin of error around it: read close neighbours as close, not as ranked. A repeat collection is what turns that ordering into bands the index can defend.
The signature view
The Delta Quadrant
Every bank placed by what AI remembers (model memory) against what AI finds when it searches (live retrieval). Bubble size is mention volume. Tap any bank to focus it; switch Layer, Platform or Signal to move the category.
Two-layer collection · 2026-11-13Adjust this view
Layer
Platform
Signal
Dual leader
Citation-strong · reputation-weak
Reputation-strong · citation-weak
Low / low
What AI remembers → (model memory)
What AI cites now → (live retrieval)
AI has already decided which sperm banks it recommends. Here is who, and why.
Two layers of AI visibility: durable memory, and the live citation contest.
Touch to explore
21 views · scroll down · tap any bank to focus it · ask the index anything
Primary cohort
Extended cohort
Bubble size = mention volume · tap to focus
Where they stand
Blended leaderboard
Memory and retrieval for every entity; blended is the weighted headline (w_p 0.32 / w_g 0.68). Tap a row to focus it across the whole index. The chip shows recommendation quality: how AI frames the bank when it names it, a top pick (green) versus hedged with caveats (red). Hover for the recommended / neutral / cautioned split.
Two-layer collection · 2026-11-13BlendedRec. quality
1California Cryobank0.829+0.16
2Fairfax Cryobank0.739+0.12
3Seattle Sperm Bank0.696+0.10
4Cryos International0.637+0.08
5Xytex0.569+0.11
6ASRMsource0.427
7European Sperm Bank0.413+0.20
8The Sperm Bank of California0.396+0.02
9Cryobank America0.347+0.00
10Redditsource0.255
11World Egg Bank0.212+0.03
12Wikipediasource0.185
13Elevate Baby0.176+0.08
14Growing Generations0.156-0.31
15RESOLVEsource0.145
16Ivy Surrogacy0.124-0.18
17CDCsource0.119
18PubMed Centralsource0.114
19Better Business Bureausource0.092
Tracked, not ranked
Not yet visible
2 more banks are verified and tracked in this index but not ranked in this edition. A bank is ranked when AI names it in at least 10 of the 780 answers to this page's 26 open questions (the ones that name no organization), and in most of an engine's repeat answers to at least one of them. The number beside each name is how many of those answers named it.
Named in fewer than 10 answers
Donor Concierge 6The Genesis Group 3
How this is measured
How this index is scored
Two layers, scored on the same five signals. The layers are what AI knows about a bank without looking versus what it finds when it searches. The signals are how each layer is measured.
Methodology v2The two layers
Memory (weighted 0.32): what the model has internalized about the category, measured with web search off. The slow-moving reputation layer.
Live retrieval (weighted 0.68): what the model surfaces when it searches the web before answering. The fast, content-driven layer.
Each layer score is the weighted composite of the five signals. The blended score combines them at 0.32 memory and 0.68 retrieval, the same weighting on every Arcalea index so that two categories can be read on one scale.
The five signals
Entity Mention Frequency (EMF) (25%)
Share of tested responses that name the bank. The foundational frequency signal.
Topical Range Score (20%)
Share of distinct question types where the bank appears. Breadth, not volume. A bank that leads its category will often score 1.000 here, because it shows up across every kind of question asked. The signal does its separating work further down the field.
Position Power Score (20%)
Where in the answer the bank lands. Named first counts for more than named last.
First-Position Rate (15%)
How often the bank is the first named of any listed. The advocacy signal.
Cross-Platform Stability (20%)
How evenly the bank appears across engines rather than depending on one. Measured within a layer: the memory layer runs on fewer engines than retrieval, so the two are read within their own layer, not against each other.
Rigor you can see
Head-to-head, honestly measured
When AI compares two banks, the naive answer is mostly an artifact of which is named first. We ask every matchup both ways; the number to trust is order-balanced. Toggle to watch the correction.
Order-balanced · 2026-11-13← now switch to the honest, order-balanced number
Matchups (first bank's balanced win rate)
Citation battleground
How AI frames them
Attribute association
Which factors the models associate with each bank. Darker cell = stronger association. Each row is a share of that bank's own mentions, so a bank needs at least 20 mentions before its shares mean anything.
Grounded layer · 2026-11-13| Bank | Cost | Compensation | Success | Screening | Legal | Donor DB | LGBTQ | Timeline | Support | Reputation | Geography | Transparency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | 34% | 16% | 22% | |||||||||
| Fairfax Cryobank | 19% | 36% | 27% | |||||||||
| Seattle Sperm Bank | 23% | 23% | ||||||||||
| Cryos International | 18% | 20% | 98% | |||||||||
| Xytex | 20% | 31% | 22% | |||||||||
| European Sperm Bank | 46% | 18% | ||||||||||
| The Sperm Bank of California | 24% | 22% | ||||||||||
| Cryobank America | 15% | 15% |
Held back for too few mentions to carry a share (under 20): World Egg Bank (9), Elevate Baby (3), Growing Generations (5), Ivy Surrogacy (4).
What the machines look for
Search fan-out
One question quietly becomes many. These are the hidden sub-searches the models run to answer a category question, the content brief they wrote themselves: sperm bank discovery and screening and success rates dominate.
Grounded layer · 2026-11-136×how much do sperm donors get paid
6×where can single women buy donor sperm
5×sperm bank vs known sperm donor differences
5×sperm donor requirements
5×how to find a sperm donor
4×sperm bank process
4×top rated sperm banks
4×how to choose a sperm donor
4×sperm donor screening process
3×what is the difference between using a sperm bank and a known sperm donor
The citation economy
AI citations
Citation rate and the domains AI leans on.
Grounded layer · 2026-11-1389.5%
responses with citations
3,234
total citations
32%
to a tracked bank
fairfaxcryobank.com
232
seattlespermbank.com
165
cryobank.com
138
reddit.com
130
europeanspermbank.com
116
cryosinternational.com
109
en.wikipedia.org
99
cryobankamerica.com
66
premierspermbank.com
60
thespermbankofca.org
57
cascadecryobank.com
57
spermbank.com
45
Where citations go
Citation flow
Read left to right: the kind of question on the left, the source AI cited on the right.
Grounded layer · 2026-11-13Bank sites
Aggregators
Other
The content pattern
Citation sources & page types
Of the bank pages AI does cite, the mix concentrates in homepage (39%) and process guide (20%). The chart below sets that against where citations go overall, across 3,208 cited URLs.
Grounded layer · 2026-11-13Citation sources by side
banks 32% aggregators 8.3% other 60%
Cited bank page types
Measured and never the cited page: community forum, reference.
Google's AI layer
Google AI Overviews
An AI Overview appears on 91% of the 113 category keywords, the highest-volume AI surface. The naming concentrates on a few banks, and almost all of it happens on non-branded queries. The count below is how many keywords return an AI Overview naming that bank, out of 113. It is not a count of citation instances: one Overview naming a bank twice still counts once. Tap to focus.
DataForSEO · 2026-11-14Keywords whose AI Overview names each bank (all / non-branded)
California Cryobank28 / 28 nb
Fairfax Cryobank26 / 25 nb
Cryos International26 / 26 nb
Seattle Sperm Bank14 / 14 nb
The Sperm Bank of California8 / 8 nb
Xytex7 / 7 nb
Cryobank America6 / 6 nb
Growing Generations3 / 3 nb
Ivy Surrogacy1 / 1 nb
European Sperm Bank1 / 1 nb
Elevate Baby1 / 1 nb
Top cited domains
Act 4Organic reality and opportunity
The organic baseline
Organic share of voice
Share of estimated addressable organic clicks.
DataForSEO · 2026-11-14| Entity | Organic SoV | Keywords ranking | Est. clicks/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | 27% | 29 | 13783 |
| Fairfax Cryobank | 21% | 36 | 10744 |
| Cryos International | 19% | 16 | 9583 |
| The Sperm Bank of California | 8.1% | 10 | 4143 |
| Xytex | 4.1% | 3 | 2066 |
| Seattle Sperm Bank | 1.1% | 11 | 582 |
| European Sperm Bank | 0.0% | 1 | 0 |
| Cryobank America | not ranked | 0 | 0 |
| World Egg Bank | not ranked | 0 | 0 |
| Growing Generations | 0.0% | 1 | 0 |
| Elevate Baby | 0.0% | 1 | 0 |
| Ivy Surrogacy | not ranked | 0 | 0 |
The 12 tracked banks with organic data: 80% of 50,997 estimated addressable clicks a month. The rest of the category's search demand goes to publishers, aggregators and everyone else.
Keyword reality
SERP and keyword coverage
Keyword-universe SERP appearances per bank.
DataForSEO · 2026-11-14| Bank | SERP appearances | KW coverage | Top-3 rate | SEO composite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | 47 | 35% | 5% | 0.294 |
| Fairfax Cryobank | 41 | 28% | 4% | 0.272 |
| 31 | 23% | 9% | 0.240 | |
| Cryos International | 20 | 13% | 5% | 0.203 |
| Xytex | 6 | 3% | 1% | 0.177 |
| PubMed Central | 3 | 4% | 1% | 0.162 |
| Yelp | 8 | 8% | 4% | 0.162 |
| Growing Generations | 2 | 1% | 0% | 0.161 |
| Better Business Bureau | 10 | 9% | 3% | 0.156 |
| The Sperm Bank of California | 11 | 7% | 1% | 0.145 |
| Seattle Sperm Bank | 17 | 12% | 1% | 0.142 |
| Quora | 1 | 1% | 0% | 0.056 |
| Elevate Baby | 1 | 1% | 0% | 0.056 |
| Cryobank America | 3 | 1% | 0% | 0.031 |
| Wikipedia | 1 | 1% | 0% | 0.031 |
| Trustpilot | 1 | 1% | 0% | 0.006 |
"not ranked" means the bank ranks for none of the tracked keywords, so no composite is computed. That is absence from this keyword universe, not a score of zero.
Open vs owned
Category concentration and saturation
How many cohort SERP appearances each question category actually has, and how concentrated they are where there are enough to tell. A concentration index over a handful of appearances reports the reciprocal of that handful, not the shape of the category, so it is withheld under 30.
Grounded layer · 2026-11-13| Category | Cohort SERP appearances | Entities appearing | Concentration (HHI) | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Other | 169 | 15 | 0.14 | Open |
| Community | 10 | 9 | n/a | Base too small to judge |
| Solution | 7 | 5 | n/a | Base too small to judge |
| Discovery | 5 | 4 | n/a | Base too small to judge |
| Comparison | 5 | 5 | n/a | Base too small to judge |
| Decision | 4 | 4 | n/a | Base too small to judge |
| Educational | 4 | 4 | n/a | Base too small to judge |
Read the appearance counts first. 169 of 204 cohort SERP appearances land in the residual bucket rather than any named question category, so the keyword universe barely reaches the categories the AI prompt set asks about. That gap is the finding here; a concentration index computed over the handful that do land in a named category would only report how few there are.
Unclaimed territory
White space
High-volume query clusters where no cohort bank has built a strong position.
DataForSEO · 2026-11-14| Cluster | Volume/mo | Keywords | Cohort avg | Best placed | Their coverage | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sperm Donor | 117,490 | 92 | 6.2% | California Cryobank | 37% | Partial |
| Other | 66,440 | 14 | 1.2% | California Cryobank | 7.5% | Open |
| Local And Geographic | 590 | 2 | 0.0% | no position | n/a | Open |
| Agency Discovery | 160 | 4 | 3.5% | Cryos International | 21% | Open |
| Process And Legal | 90 | 1 | 0.0% | no position | n/a | Open |
AI vs organic
AEO vs SEO
How AI visibility diverges from organic standing. AI rank here is the blended composite, because this vertical has no second collection occasion and so no measured band on any single dimension.
Cross-instrument · 2026-11-13| Bank | AI rank | Organic SoV | Divergence |
|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | #1 | 27% | Aligned |
| Fairfax Cryobank | #2 | 21% | Aligned |
| Seattle Sperm Bank | #3 | 1.1% | AI-ahead |
| Cryos International | #4 | 19% | Aligned |
| Xytex | #5 | 4.1% | Aligned |
| European Sperm Bank | #6 | 0.0% | AI-ahead |
| The Sperm Bank of California | #7 | 8.1% | Organic-ahead |
| Cryobank America | #8 | not ranked | Aligned |
| World Egg Bank | #9 | not ranked | Aligned |
| Elevate Baby | #10 | 0.0% | Aligned |
| Growing Generations | #11 | 0.0% | Aligned |
| Ivy Surrogacy | #12 | not ranked | Aligned |
Drill down
Entity explorer
Per-bank two-layer and organic detail. Tap any row to open the five signals behind its memory and retrieval scores.
Two-layer · 2026-11-13| Bank | Memory | Retrieval | Blended | AI mentions | Organic SoV | SEO composite |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | 0.922 | 0.785 | 0.829 | 145 | 27% | 0.294 |
| Fairfax Cryobank | 0.749 | 0.734 | 0.739 | 146 | 21% | 0.272 |
| Seattle Sperm Bank | 0.741 | 0.675 | 0.696 | 138 | 1.1% | 0.142 |
| Cryos International | 0.606 | 0.652 | 0.637 | 92 | 19% | 0.203 |
| Xytex | 0.635 | 0.538 | 0.569 | 91 | 4.1% | 0.177 |
| European Sperm Bank | 0.460 | 0.391 | 0.413 | 41 | 0.0% | 0.006 |
| The Sperm Bank of California | 0.176 | 0.500 | 0.396 | 40 | 8.1% | 0.145 |
| Cryobank America | 0.000 | 0.511 | 0.347 | 20 | not ranked | 0.031 |
| World Egg Bank | 0.000 | 0.312 | 0.212 | 9 | not ranked | not ranked |
| Elevate Baby | 0.000 | 0.259 | 0.176 | 3 | 0.0% | 0.056 |
| Growing Generations | 0.000 | 0.229 | 0.156 | 5 | 0.0% | 0.161 |
| Ivy Surrogacy | 0.000 | 0.183 | 0.124 | 4 | not ranked | not ranked |
The freshness lever
Freshness of cited pages
How recently each bank's most-cited pages were last updated. Pages refreshed within 90 days earn far more AI citations than stale ones.
Live fetch · 2026-11-13| Bank | Fresh <90d | Median age | Pages dated |
|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | 100% | 0d | 2/2 |
| Fairfax Cryobank | 100% | 17d | 2/2 |
| Seattle Sperm Bank | 100% | 25d | 1/1 |
| Cryos International | n/a | n/a | 0/1 |
| Xytex | 0% | 128d | 1/1 |
| European Sperm Bank | n/a | n/a | 0/1 |
| The Sperm Bank of California | n/a | n/a | 0/1 |
| Elevate Baby | 100% | 0d | 1/1 |
| Ivy Surrogacy | 0% | 227d | 1/1 |
The infrastructure lever
Citability infrastructure
Whether each bank has the machine-readable infrastructure AI leans on to recognize and cite an entity: structured data, an encyclopedia presence, an AI-crawler guide, and named authors.
Live checks · 2026-11-13| Bank | Schema | Wikipedia | Wikidata | llms.txt | Authors | Infra score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California Cryobank | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | · | 40% |
| Fairfax Cryobank | ✓ | · | · | · | ✓ | 40% |
| Seattle Sperm Bank | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | 60% |
| Cryos International | · | · | · | · | · | 0% |
| Xytex | ✓ | · | · | · | · | 20% |
| European Sperm Bank | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | 60% |
| The Sperm Bank of California | ? | ✓ | ✓ | ? | ? | 100% |
| Cryobank America | · | · | · | · | · | 0% |
| World Egg Bank | · | · | · | ✓ | · | 20% |
| Elevate Baby | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | · | 40% |
| Growing Generations | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | · | 40% |
| Ivy Surrogacy | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | ✓ | 60% |
? = homepage blocked our automated check, so the on-site checks could not be verified for that row and are excluded from its score.
What the index establishes
Category findings
What this index establishes about the category as a whole. Covered on the call.
Next step
Turn this into a plan.
This index shows where each bank stands and which layer, model memory or live retrieval, is holding it back. A GEO Audit turns that into a prioritized action plan for one bank: the pages, entity infrastructure, schema, and AI crawler access to fix, in order, with the measurement re-run afterward to prove the lift.
Arcalea AEO Index · neutral two-layer baseline November 2026 · 12 banks · a Galileo-family measurement surface
FAQ
Common questions about the AEO Index
What is the AEO Industry Index?
What is the difference between the memory and live-retrieval layers?
The index measures two instruments and never blends them. The parametric (memory) layer queries each model with web search off, capturing what the model has internalized about the category. The grounded (live-retrieval) layer lets the models search the live web before answering. Memory is the slow-moving reputation moat; retrieval is the fast, content-driven citation contest. The gap between the two layers is itself the finding.
Why does a bank rank differently on memory versus live retrieval?
A bank can hold a strong place in a model's memory yet lose the live-retrieval layer when competitors publish more citable, current content, or the reverse. The Delta Quadrant plots both layers at once, so you can see which lever a bank must pull: build durable reputation, or win the live citation contest.
How is AI visibility different from an SEO ranking?
SEO measures where a page ranks on a results page. AEO measures whether a brand is named and cited inside the AI-generated answer, where most people never click through to a link. A bank can rank well organically and still be absent from the AI answer, or lead the AI answer while trailing in organic search. This index reports both and shows where they diverge.
Which platforms and prompts does the index use?
Five platforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot. Each runs the same frozen prompt set. Most prompts are entity-neutral, meaning no bank is named and the model chooses who to recommend on its own; a separate head-to-head track deliberately names two banks per prompt to test direct comparisons. Scores aggregate across platforms and prompt categories, with per-platform detail in each section.
Can Arcalea build this index for my category?
Yes. The methodology is category-agnostic. Give us your market and competitive set and we build the same two-layer index for your industry and your brand's position within it. Use the Get Your Index button to start.