AIRANKS — The Authoritative Rankings for AI Web Content

AIRANKS measures AI visibility: we ask AI models real product and service questions, capture the complete answers as immutable observations, and publish what they contain — which brands were mentioned, which domains were cited, and which exact pages were linked. Every domain gets an AIR score from 1–10 (a decile of visibility in the active dataset; 0 means insufficient data), with the methodology in the open.

AIR

PHRASE

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The Question

← all rankings / dataset COBALT

What is the best external hard drive for backup

Western Digital takes the top spot in 100.0% of resamples. Of 6 ranked brands, only 1 holds a position we'd call firm.

0
answers sampled
0
brands named
1,000
bootstrap resamples

Who AI Cites For This Question

25 cited pages · bars vs the leader

Best External Hard Drives (2026): SSD to Store Data, Video, and More | WIREDwww.wired.comwired.com/story/best-portable-exte…s/?utm=airanks.net38
Best external hard drive of 2026: Expert picks based on real-world testingwww.techradar.comtechradar.com/news/best-external-d…es?utm=airanks.net19
Best external hard drives in 2026: the storage media I'd take on my own gaming adventures | PC Gamerwww.pcgamer.compcgamer.com/best-external-hard-drives/?utm=airanks.net18
Support Page for Expansion Desktop Hard Drive | Seagate USwww.seagate.comseagate.com/support/external-hard-…p/?utm=airanks.net13

The Ranking, With Its Uncertainty

Western Digital locked Western Digital — ci 1.00–1.00 · n=113 · 100.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 96% of answers
Seagate soft Seagate — ci 0.60–0.80 · n=113 · 70.3% of resamples held this rank · named in 49% of answers
Samsung soft Samsung — ci 0.60–0.80 · n=113 · 70.3% of resamples held this rank · named in 65% of answers
SanDisk soft SanDisk — ci 0.20–0.40 · n=113 · 70.5% of resamples held this rank · named in 17% of answers
Toshiba soft Toshiba — ci 0.20–0.40 · n=113 · 70.5% of resamples held this rank · named in 13% of answers
Crucial gathering Crucial — gathering data, n=113. No bootstrap interval yet.

The Incomparability Lattice

what the intervals separate, not what the list claims

An edge means one brand's interval sits strictly above another's — zero overlap. No edge between two brands is not a gap in the drawing, it is the finding: their intervals overlap, and the bootstrap cannot tell them apart. Brands on the same rung are incomparable, not tied — the ranking above orders them anyway because a list has to print a total order; this diagram is the honest version.

Western Digital

1.00–1.00

Seagate

0.60–0.80

Samsung

0.60–0.80

SanDisk

0.20–0.40

Toshiba

0.20–0.40