Which Chinese mining machinery brands does ChatGPT recommend? November 2026

When an overseas buyer asks ChatGPT in English which Chinese crusher or mineral processing supplier to use, half of the answers name SBM. SANME appears in 42%, Liming Heavy Industry in 36% and Nanchang Mineral Systems (NMS) in 34%. Across two rounds, 44 Chinese brands were named; 13 of them only once or twice.

Disclosure: Liming Heavy Industry Group is a Moments client (case). No Chinese brand is named in the question set, and the same scoring rules apply to every brand.

Method

• Dates: round one on 4 November 2026, round two on 5 November 2026, with the same 40 questions.
• Collection time: 4 Nov 2026 09:54–10:37, 5 Nov 2026 10:01–10:50 (UTC+8). AI answers change over time; this ranking reflects these two windows only.
• Platform: ChatGPT on the web, with search on, in temporary chat (no account memory or history).
• Questions: 40 buyer-style English questions covering crushers, sand making, screening, feeders, grinding mills, mineral processing, mobile crushing plants, large mining equipment and general supplier searches. Phrasings include “best manufacturer”, “who to choose for a project in a given region”, “Chinese alternative to a Western brand” and “reliability”.
• Metrics:
  • Mention rate = answers that name the brand ÷ answers on that platform (80 on ChatGPT, 80 on Gemini, 78 on Claude)
  • First mention = the brand is the first Chinese brand named in the answer
  • Own site cited = answers that link to the brand’s own website, subdomains included
• Platform scope: the top 10, the full list and Figures 1–6 use ChatGPT data only. Gemini and Claude were tested later; their results are in the section “On Gemini and Claude, the ranking shifts”. Perplexity (login required) and Copilot (answers could not be captured) were not tested.

Top 10

Rank	Brand	Mention rate (80)	Round 1	Round 2	First mentions	Own site cited
1	SBM	50%	48%	52%	10	31
2	SANME	42%	42%	42%	10	30
3	Liming Heavy Industry	36%	35%	38%	4	19
4	NMS (Nanchang Mineral Systems)	34%	38%	30%	6	23
5	ZENITH	30%	30%	30%	2	18
6	CITIC Heavy Industries (incl. CITIC-TLC)	25%	28%	22%	10	16
7	Xinhai Mining	21%	22%	20%	7	16
8	NFLG	20%	22%	18%	3	14
9	XCMG	16%	20%	12%	10	8
10	SANY	15%	18%	12%	0	8

Northern Heavy Industries also appeared in 15% of answers (12) with no first mentions, tying SANY for 10th. All 44 brands that were mentioned are listed below.

Show all 44 brands

Rank	Brand	Mention rate	Mentions	First mentions	Own-site citations
1	SBM	50%	40	10	31
2	SANME	42%	34	10	30
3	Liming	36%	29	4	19
4	NMS	34%	27	6	23
5	ZENITH	30%	24	2	18
6	CITIC HIC	25%	20	10	16
7	Xinhai	21%	17	7	16
8	NFLG	20%	16	3	14
9	XCMG	16%	13	10	8
10	SANY	15%	12	0	8
10	NHI	15%	12	0	7
12	JXSC	11%	9	2	9
13	Zoomlion	10%	8	0	2
13	Prominer	10%	8	0	8
15	BGRIMM	9%	7	2	5
15	LiuGong	9%	7	0	3
17	Fote	8%	6	0	4
17	DSMAC	8%	6	0	5
17	Henan Hongxing	8%	6	0	3
20	MESDA	6%	5	4	5
21	Zhengzhou YIFAN	5%	4	1	3
21	Baichy	5%	4	1	3
21	Anzhong	5%	4	1	4
21	Luoyang Dahua	5%	4	1	5
21	Kminda	5%	4	0	4
26	Zhejiang Shuangjin	4%	3	0	0
26	Yunnan Kreat	4%	3	0	3
26	Henan ZK Corp	4%	3	0	2
26	Dasen Mining	4%	3	0	3
26	ZMJ	4%	3	0	1
26	Yantai Jinpeng	4%	3	0	2
32	Guilin Hongcheng	2%	2	2	1
32	AIMIX	2%	2	1	2
32	Aury	2%	2	1	2
32	Shanghai Kinglink	2%	2	0	0
32	Shanbao	2%	2	0	1
32	Shanghai Clirik	2%	2	0	2
32	Hongji	2%	2	0	1
32	China ENFI	2%	2	0	0
32	Beijing HOT Mining	2%	2	0	2
32	Hengchang	2%	2	0	1
42	Sinosteel	1%	1	1	1
42	Camelway	1%	1	0	1
42	Sinoma	1%	1	0	1

Four findings

1. The manufacturer’s English website is ChatGPT’s source

The 80 answers cited 397 links (excluding ChatGPT’s own pages and map tiles). 313 of them, about 79%, pointed to a listed manufacturer’s own website. Media coverage, industry directories and B2B marketplaces were rarely cited. Three answers cited nothing at all.

For manufacturers in this category, what ChatGPT says about you depends mostly on what your English website says. Product lines, applications and project references that aren’t clearly on the site are hard for the model to repeat.

2. The top three are stable; below that, rates move

Re-tested a day later, SBM, SANME, Liming and Xinhai each moved by 3 percentage points or less. SBM was named on the same question in both rounds 17 times, more than any other brand. From 4th place down, rates moved more: NMS 38% → 30%, XCMG 20% → 12%, JXSC 15% → 8%.

Treat the top three as a stable result. From 4th place down, swings of 5 to 8 points between rounds are common, so a one- or two-place gap is not a real difference.

3. Being mentioned is not the same as being recommended first

XCMG appeared in only 13 of 80 answers, but was named first in 10 of them, mostly broad questions such as “biggest mining machinery manufacturers in China”, exports and how to choose a reliable supplier. CITIC Heavy Industries also had 10 first mentions, all in questions about ball mills, grinding and large mining equipment. ZENITH appeared 24 times and was named first twice.

Whether a brand is remembered and whether it is put first depend on the equipment type and project scale in the question.

4. Recommendations are concentrated

The top four brands together collected about as many mentions as the 34 brands ranked 11th to 44th combined (130 vs 135). For smaller manufacturers, the problem is not a low rank. It is not appearing in most buyer questions at all.

By segment, the leader changes

Ask about crushers and SANME appears in 94% of answers; ask about processing plants and Xinhai appears in all 10; ask about grinding mills and CITIC HIC and NHI each reach 75%. General questions favour SBM (64%).

On Gemini and Claude, the ranking shifts

We asked Gemini and Claude the same 40 questions in two rounds each: Gemini on 8 and 9 November 2026 (80 answers), Claude on 9 and 15 November (78 answers; two answers on 15 November were too short to score). Web search was on and chats were temporary. Scoring is identical to the ChatGPT results above.

• SBM leads on all three platforms: ChatGPT 50%, Gemini 69%, Claude 67%.
• XCMG, Hongxing and SANY rank much higher on Gemini and Claude. XCMG is at 16% on ChatGPT and 49% on Claude. Hongxing goes from 8% to 21% (Gemini) and 29% (Claude), and SANY from 15% to 29% and 42%.
• SANME and NFLG go the other way. SANME is at 42% on ChatGPT and 18% on Claude. NFLG, at 20% on ChatGPT, barely appears on Gemini or Claude (0% and 3%).
• Cited sources differ most. About 79% of ChatGPT’s citations point to listed manufacturers’ own sites. On Gemini it is 33% (53 of 162 links), and on Claude 16% (74 of 465), which cites directories and trade media such as DirectIndustry, International Mining, Aggregates Business and Mining Technology instead. Twenty Gemini answers and six Claude answers cited no links at all.
• Liming Heavy Industry (a Moments client) appears in 63% of Claude’s answers, second place, but Claude never cited its website in 78 answers across two rounds. Nine answers cited its product and project pages on DirectIndustry instead.

What this means for exporters

1. Check your own English website first, then third-party pages. About 79% of ChatGPT’s citations are manufacturers’ sites. If your product lines, ore types and capacities, and overseas project references aren’t clearly written there, the model has little to repeat. Gemini and Claude cite directories and trade media more often (only 16% of Claude’s citations are makers’ sites), so your listings on sites such as DirectIndustry and in trade media need to be accurate too.
2. Look at your position by equipment type, not just the overall rank. CITIC ranks only 6th by mentions, but is often named first when buyers ask about grinding mills; XCMG is often first when they ask for the biggest manufacturers. Work out how buyers ask about your core products, then check your position in those questions.
3. Test at least twice, a few days apart, before drawing conclusions. Below 3rd place, rates can move 5 to 8 points in a day. A single screenshot doesn’t show a ranking change.

Limitations

• Each platform was tested twice, all between 4 and 15 November 2026. The results describe these three platforms during that period. The next re-test is planned for late December.
• Brands are identified by alias matching (English names, pinyin, common abbreviations), which can miss unusual spellings. One cited grinding-mill site, limingmill.com, could not be attributed to a company and was not counted for any brand.
• Correction, 9 November 2026: the scoring script missed four brands (Henan Hongxing, ZMJ, Hengchang, Sinoma) and only matched ZENITH and SANY in capitals. After rescoring, ZENITH moves from 26% to 30% (first mentions 1 → 2), JXSC first mentions from 3 to 2, the brand count from 40 to 44 and the own-site citation share from 77% to 79%. The top-10 order is unchanged.
• SBM and ZENITH may be related companies. We have not verified this and count them separately.
• This study does not assess equipment quality. It measures visibility in AI answers only.

Data download

• Images to share: Top 10 card · full ranking
• Full results, both rounds combined (44 brands)
• Per round: 4 Nov · 5 Nov
• Three-platform comparison: summary · Gemini results: 8 Nov · 9 Nov · Claude results: 9 Nov · 15 Nov · raw answers: Gemini 8 Nov · 9 Nov · Claude 9 Nov · 15 Nov
• The 40 questions
• Raw answers with cited links (JSON Lines): 4 Nov · 5 Nov
• Scoring script

You’re free to cite this data. Please credit “Moments AI Recommendation Index for Chinese exporters” and link to this page.

Where does your brand stand?

If you export industrial equipment and want the same test run on your product line, see the manufacturing export lead guide or contact Moments.