--- title: "Every Second Bulgarian Asks AI: Is Your Brand Recommended?" description: "Every second Bulgarian asks AI before buying, Capital reports. Check whether AI can read your brand, describe it correctly and recommend it." canonical: "https://www.kondevs.com/content-hub/every-second-bulgarian-asks-ai-readable-recognized-recommended/" language: "en" type: "article" author: "https://www.kondevs.com/authors/stoyan-kondev/" published: "2026-11-04T13:04:04.906Z" modified: "2026-11-04T13:32:59.267Z" image: "https://www.kondevs.com/assets/images/content/every-second-bulgarian-asks-ai-readable-recognized-recommended/og.jpeg" tags: ["Large Language Model (LLM)", "AI Agent", "Model Context Protocol (MCP)"] --- > For the complete index of this site, see [llms.txt](https://www.kondevs.com/llms.txt); the whole site in one file: [llms-full.txt](https://www.kondevs.com/llms-full.txt). # Every Second Bulgarian Asks AI Before Buying. Is Your Brand Readable, Recognized, Recommended? Industry Trends 4 November 2026 5 min read By [Stoyan Kondev](https://www.kondevs.com/authors/stoyan-kondev/) ## Key takeaways - Capital reports that every second Bulgarian consults AI before a purchase; official statistics measure online shopping (51.2%, NSI) and generative AI use (22.5%, Eurostat) separately, not the overlap. - Half of Bulgarians aged 16 to 24 used generative AI tools in 2025, against 63.8% across the EU. - Commerce already builds for it: CloudCart's Aura Chat held more than 32,000 conversations between 15 July and 13 October 2026, and Aura Search handled over 1.65 million searches for one large retailer. - AI visibility has three levels: Readable (assistants can read your site), Recognized (asked by name, they describe you correctly) and Recommended (asked about the category, they name you). - Measure it like a panel survey: a fixed set of branded and unbranded questions, several assistants, each question asked more than once, repeated every week or month. "Every second Bulgarian consults AI before a purchase." That is how [Capital put it on 24 October 2026](https://www.capital.bg/biznes/media_i_reklama/2026/10/24/4969182_vseki_vtori_bulgarin_se_dopitva_do_ai_predi_pokupka/), adding that young, educated people are most influenced by what platforms tell them. The idea behind the headline predates AI. Advertising has always tried to make one brand come to mind first at the moment of purchase. Search engines turned that moment into a comparison by general criteria. AI assistants change it again: buyers now ask for a quick recommendation that fits their own needs, and the assistant decides which names to put in front of them. For any company, the useful question is not whether the exact share is one in two. It is what the assistant says when your buyer asks. ## What the public numbers measure Before you redesign anything around a headline, it helps to know what the official statistics cover. They measure the two halves of the behavior, not the overlap: - **Shopping:** according to NSI's 2025 survey of 8,421 people aged 16 to 74, [51.2% bought goods or services online for private use](https://www.nsi.bg/en/press-release/ict-usage-in-households-and-by-individuals-8878). - **AI use:** Eurostat puts generative AI use in Bulgaria at [22.5% of people aged 16 to 74 in 2025, against 32.7% across the EU](https://www.bta.bg/en/news/1029092-22-5-of-bulgarians-use-generative-ai-down-from-32-7-eu-wide). NSI breaks it down as 20.2% for private purposes, 8.4% for work and 5.2% for formal education. - **The young:** [half of Bulgarians aged 16 to 24 used generative AI tools in 2025](https://www.bta.bg/en/news/economy/1061221-half-of-16-to-24-year-olds-in-bulgaria-use-generative-ai-tools-eurostat), against 63.8% across the EU. The purchase-specific share comes from the study behind Capital's report; the official statistics do not isolate AI use before a purchase. The direction is clear, though, and commerce already builds for it. Forbes Bulgaria reports that CloudCart's [Aura Chat held more than 32,000 conversations between 15 July and 13 October 2026](https://forbesbulgaria.com/2026/11/03/cloudcart-na-10-ot-platforma-za-onlajn-magazini-kam-ai-operatsionna-sistema-za-targoviyata/), answering the questions that come up before a purchase, and that Aura Search handled over 1.65 million searches for one large retailer. ## Three levels of AI visibility: Readable, Recognized, Recommended [Visibilio](https://visibilio.ai/) describes AI visibility in three levels. Each builds on the one before, and each fails in its own way. We described how we apply the model in [The 3 levels of LLM visibility](https://www.kondevs.com/content-hub/three-levels-of-llm-visibility/). ### 1. Readable - **The question:** can AI assistants and agents read your site at all? - **How to check it:** public agent-readiness scanners, a markdown version of your pages, llms.txt, structured data, and robots rules that let AI crawlers in. - **How it fails:** content hidden behind scripts, blocked crawlers, key facts only in PDFs or images. ### 2. Recognized - **The question:** asked about you by name, does the assistant describe you correctly? - **How to check it:** branded questions in several assistants, such as "What does [company] do?" or "Is [company] a good fit for our project?" - **How it fails:** outdated services, wrong locations, an old company name, a competitor's facts mixed in. ### 3. Recommended - **The question:** asked about the category without your name, does the assistant name you? - **How to check it:** unbranded buyer questions, such as "Who can integrate SAP with our warehouse system in Germany?", and the sources the answer cites. - **How it fails:** missing from the shortlist, or named for the wrong service. The order matters. A brand that is not readable is described from second-hand sources. A brand that is readable but inconsistent is recognized wrongly, which is often worse than being absent: a buyer who meets the wrong facts first rarely checks again. Only a brand that is read and described correctly has a real chance of being recommended. ## How to measure AI visibility Unlike a search ranking, an AI answer is not one fixed result. It varies by assistant, by wording and by day. So measurement works like a panel survey, not a spot check: - **A fixed set of questions** your buyers actually ask, half with your name and half without it, in the languages they use. For a Bulgarian company selling into the DACH region that means Bulgarian, English and German. - **Several assistants** (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot), each question asked more than once, because single answers vary. - **Four things to record per question:** are you mentioned, is what is said correct, is your own site cited, and which competitors appear instead. - **A schedule:** the same set repeated every week or month, so you see a trend rather than a snapshot. This is what Visibilio's AI Visibility measurement does: it runs a fixed set of topics and questions against AI assistants on a weekly to monthly cadence, repeats each question, and compares you with a list of competitors. Whatever the tool, the rule is the same: measure before you optimize, and keep the question set stable long enough to compare. ## What we did at KONDEVS _Disclosure: KONDEVS works with Visibilio, and this article was prepared with it._ We started at the first level, because everything else depends on it. On 17 October 2026 kondevs.com scored 100/100 in Is Agentic and 93 (Level 5) in Is It Agent Ready. [Four public tools that test agent readiness](https://www.kondevs.com/content-hub/four-tools-test-website-agent-readiness/) explains what each scanner checks and what its score does not measure, and [AI agent readiness and LLM visibility](https://www.kondevs.com/content-hub/ai-agent-readiness-and-llm-visibility/) shows the work behind it, from llms.txt to an MCP server. For the second and third levels we track a fixed set of buyer questions; [how AI assistants find, read and cite a company](https://www.kondevs.com/content-hub/llm-visibility-in-ai-answers/) describes what we look at. The lesson so far: being readable was an engineering task we could finish in weeks. Being recognized and recommended is continuous work, because the answers change whenever the assistants, their sources or your competitors do. ## What to do this week 1. Write down 20 questions your buyers ask: 10 with your company name and 10 without it. 2. Ask each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, twice, and note whether you are mentioned, whether the answer is correct, which sources it cites and which competitors appear. 3. Run your site through the public agent-readiness scanners and fix what stops assistants from reading it. 4. Correct the three most damaging wrong facts at their source: your own pages first, then the profiles and directories the answers cite. 5. Ask the same questions again next month and compare. Capital's headline will age; the shift behind it will not. Your buyers will keep asking an assistant first. Make sure it can read you, describe you correctly, and has a reason to name you. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does every second Bulgarian really ask AI before buying? That is the finding Capital reported on 24 October 2026 from the study behind its article. Official statistics measure the two halves separately: 51.2% of Bulgarians aged 16 to 74 bought online in 2025 (NSI) and 22.5% used generative AI (Eurostat). They do not isolate AI use before a purchase. ### What do Readable, Recognized and Recommended mean? Readable: AI assistants and agents can read your site. Recognized: asked about you by name, they describe you correctly. Recommended: asked about your category without your name, they name you. Each level builds on the one before. ### How do you measure AI visibility? With a fixed set of questions your buyers ask, half with your name and half without, in their languages, asked in several assistants more than once. For each question record whether you are mentioned, whether the answer is correct, whether your site is cited and which competitors appear. Repeat every week or month. ### Why is being described wrongly worse than being absent? A buyer who meets wrong facts first, such as outdated services or a wrong location, rarely checks again. Correct the most damaging wrong facts at their source: your own pages first, then the profiles and directories the answers cite. ### Where should a company start? At the first level. Run the site through public agent-readiness scanners and fix what stops assistants from reading it, then write down 20 buyer questions and ask them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Being readable is a project of weeks; being recognized and recommended is continuous work. ## Sources 1. [Every second Bulgarian consults AI before a purchase, Capital](https://www.capital.bg/biznes/media_i_reklama/2026/10/24/4969182_vseki_vtori_bulgarin_se_dopitva_do_ai_predi_pokupka/) 2. [ICT usage in households and by individuals - 2025, nsi.bg](https://www.nsi.bg/en/press-release/ict-usage-in-households-and-by-individuals-8878) 3. [22.5% of Bulgarians Use Generative AI, Down from 32.7% EU-Wide, bta.bg](https://www.bta.bg/en/news/1029092-22-5-of-bulgarians-use-generative-ai-down-from-32-7-eu-wide) 4. [BTA :: Half of 16-to-24-Year-Olds in Bulgaria Use Generative AI Tools, bta.bg](https://www.bta.bg/en/news/economy/1061221-half-of-16-to-24-year-olds-in-bulgaria-use-generative-ai-tools-eurostat) 5. [CloudCart на 10: От платформа за онлайн магазини към AI операционна система за търговията, forbesbulgaria.com](https://forbesbulgaria.com/2026/11/03/cloudcart-na-10-ot-platforma-za-onlajn-magazini-kam-ai-operatsionna-sistema-za-targoviyata/) ## Related concepts & services Key terms: [Large Language Model (LLM)](https://www.kondevs.com/glossary/#large-language-model), [AI Agent](https://www.kondevs.com/glossary/#ai-agent), [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](https://www.kondevs.com/glossary/#model-context-protocol)