BambooHR was the one product ChatGPT and Gemini kept coming back to, named in 5 of the 6 buyer questions we tested about leave management software. No other product in the category matched that.
We ran this on 2026-08-07. We put the same shopping question to ChatGPT and Gemini in six different phrasings, each with one live web search, and logged every product named and every source cited across the six answers. BambooHR at 5 of 6 was the closest thing to a default answer that leave management software has right now.
Behind it, the field thinned quickly. Factorial and Timetastic were each named in 4 of the 6 answers. Then a block of five products, AbsenceSoft, Clockify, Leave Manager, TalentHR and Vacation Tracker, each landed in exactly 3 of 6. Nineteen different products were named across the six questions in total, so a single mention only put a product in a fairly crowded room.
The shortlist changed with every version of the question
The most useful thing in this data is what happened when we changed one word. Asked for the "best leave management software," the two assistants named eight products: BambooHR, Timetastic, AbsenceSoft, Sentrient, Vacation Tracker, Justworks, Freshteam and Factorial, mostly the established HR names. Add the word "free" and every one of those eight dropped out.
The "best free leave management software" answer named six products: Day Off, Zoho Creator, AttendanceBot, Leave Manager, Gusto and TalentHR. Not one of them appeared in the plain "best" answer. Zero overlap. Same category, same two assistants, asked minutes apart, and the free question produced a completely separate shortlist.
The "most affordable leave management software" question sat between the two. Its eight products were Clockify, Leave Manager, TalentHR, AttendanceBot, BambooHR, Calamari, Factorial and Zoho People. It shared just 2 names with the "best" answer (BambooHR and Factorial) and 3 with the "free" answer (Leave Manager, TalentHR and AttendanceBot). So "affordable" is its own lane, not a synonym for "best" or "free."
Several products lived in exactly one of the six questions and nowhere else. Sentrient appeared only in "best." ConnecTeam appeared only in "best for small teams." Day Off, Gusto and Zoho Creator appeared only in "best free." Calamari and Zoho People appeared only in "most affordable." Rippling appeared only in "recommendations." If you sell one of those, your entire AI visibility in leave management currently hangs on one phrasing of one question.
Where the answers came from
Three sources fed every single answer in this measurement. peoplemanagingpeople.com, technologyadvice.com and vendordirectory.shrm.org each appeared in all 6 of the 6 answers. These are roundup articles and SHRM's vendor directory, not the vendors themselves, and they are the backbone of how both assistants built their leave management lists.
Community discussion mattered nearly as much. reddit.com was cited in 5 of the 6 answers, as often as any source outside the three that fed every answer. Quora did not appear at all, so in leave management, Reddit is the community voice these assistants leaned on.
Here is the insight we care about most: vendors' own domains fed the answers, and when they did, that vendor's product usually got named. leavemanager.com was cited in 5 of 6 answers and Leave Manager the product was named 3 times. absencesoft.com fed 3 answers and AbsenceSoft was named 3 times. clockify.me fed 3 and Clockify was named 3 times. vacationtracker.io fed 2 and Vacation Tracker was named 3 times. Publishing the page the assistant reads is one of the clearest routes to being the product it names.
The classic review directories were mostly missing. G2 and Capterra did not appear in any of the 6 answers. The only analyst-style sources were SHRM's vendor directory, in all 6 answers, and gartner.com, in a single one. If your AI-visibility plan for leave management rests on your G2 rating, this snapshot says the assistants were not reading G2.
What we would do if we sold leave management software
The lesson here is blunt: in these six answers, the source list, not market share, decided who got named. BambooHR did not lead because it is the biggest brand, it led because it sat in the roundups and directories that fed all 6 answers. If we ran marketing for a leave management product, our first job would be to appear in the exact places these answers came from.
In practice that means the three sources present in all 6 answers first: peoplemanagingpeople.com, technologyadvice.com and vendordirectory.shrm.org. Getting listed, reviewed or ranked in those three is the highest-impact move, because every question we tested pulled from them. Miss all three and you are hoping the assistant finds you somewhere else.
Then Reddit, cited in 5 of 6 answers. We would not fake a thread, but we would make sure the honest ones where buyers ask for a tool actually mention the product, since the assistants are plainly reading them. And we would publish our own comparison and pricing pages, because vendor domains like leavemanager.com and clockify.me earned their products a spot in 3 answers each.
The uncomfortable part is that none of this is about being the best tool. A leave management product can be genuinely good and still be named in 0 of 6 answers if it is absent from these pages. That gap is exactly why we think it is worth measuring instead of guessing.
The full list, counted
These are the eight products named in 3 or more of the 6 answers, with the share of answers each one appeared in. Everything else was named twice or once.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| BambooHR | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Factorial | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Timetastic | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| AbsenceSoft | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Clockify | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Leave Manager | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| TalentHR | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Vacation Tracker | 3 of 6 | 50% |
Three more products were named in 2 of 6 answers each: AttendanceBot, Freshteam and Justworks. Eight were named once: Calamari, ConnecTeam, Day Off, Gusto, Rippling, Sentrient, Zoho Creator and Zoho People. On that last pair, note that Zoho shows up under two labels, Zoho Creator (1) and Zoho People (1). We are keeping them as two separate entries rather than reporting a combined "Zoho: 2," because the assistants never named one merged Zoho product and we will not sum a number the measurement did not produce.
We do not sell leave management software, so Glotier was named in 0 of these 6 answers, which is correct. We have no business showing up when a buyer asks for the best way to track time off, and we would distrust our own tool if it invented us into a category we do not serve.
But the measurement you just read is the whole point of Glotier. We ran the same six-question, source-tracked check on leave management software that we run for a customer on the category they actually compete in. The check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute: you paste your category and see who ChatGPT and Gemini name, and which pages put them there.