From our corpus
What the AI engines actually cite
Counted from the answers we have stored, per engine. Every figure carries the number of answers behind it and the dates they were sampled. A source domain is named only when an engine reached for it across several unrelated sites; one site’s rival appearing in one site’s answers is that site’s business, not the engine’s habit.
Generated 2026-10-15. Floors: an engine needs 100 stored answers; a domain is named at 20 answers across 3 sites. Download as JSON
ChatGPT
1387 answers · 4 sites · 2026-07-25 to 2026-10-14
- Answers that cite a source
- 90%
- of 1387 answers
- Citations per answer
- 6.6
- mean, over all 1387 answers
- Distinct domains cited
- 1,935
- across those answers
- Citations to the site being asked about
- 3.9%
- of all citations on this engine. The rest went to somebody else.
| Domain | Answers | Share | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com | 217 | 16% | 4 |
| techradar.com | 106 | 8% | 3 |
| worldmetrics.org | 74 | 5% | 3 |
| zipdo.co | 52 | 4% | 3 |
| toolradar.com | 47 | 3% | 3 |
| g2.com | 37 | 3% | 4 |
| cruelx.com | 33 | 2% | 3 |
| arxiv.org | 31 | 2% | 4 |
| crowdreply.io | 30 | 2% | 3 |
| cituna.com | 26 | 2% | 3 |
| toolchase.com | 26 | 2% | 3 |
| searchscore.io | 25 | 2% | 3 |
| axios.com | 24 | 2% | 4 |
| ai-visibility-software.com | 23 | 2% | 3 |
| trustpilot.com | 23 | 2% | 4 |
Google AI Mode
1321 answers · 17 sites · 2026-08-11 to 2026-10-14
- Answers that cite a source
- 97%
- of 1321 answers
- Citations per answer
- 10.2
- mean, over all 1321 answers
- Distinct domains cited
- 3,257
- across those answers
- Citations to the site being asked about
- 2.1%
- of all citations on this engine. The rest went to somebody else.
| Domain | Answers | Share | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | 582 | 44% | 16 |
| reddit.com | 383 | 29% | 17 |
| google.com | 224 | 17% | 17 |
| linkedin.com | 139 | 11% | 15 |
| adobe.com | 127 | 10% | 5 |
| canva.com | 110 | 8% | 4 |
| medium.com | 110 | 8% | 14 |
| facebook.com | 97 | 7% | 12 |
| apple.com | 79 | 6% | 8 |
| quora.com | 79 | 6% | 12 |
| trustpilot.com | 71 | 5% | 9 |
| instagram.com | 65 | 5% | 14 |
| yahoo.com | 56 | 4% | 15 |
| g2.com | 46 | 4% | 8 |
| hubspot.com | 46 | 4% | 9 |
Claude
1287 answers · 4 sites · 2026-07-25 to 2026-10-14
- Answers that cite a source
- 98%
- of 1287 answers
- Citations per answer
- 9.1
- mean, over all 1287 answers
- Distinct domains cited
- 1,139
- across those answers
- Citations to the site being asked about
- 3.4%
- of all citations on this engine. The rest went to somebody else.
| Domain | Answers | Share | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| medium.com | 151 | 12% | 4 |
| alternativeto.net | 136 | 11% | 4 |
| trustpilot.com | 127 | 10% | 4 |
| g2.com | 96 | 8% | 3 |
| scam-detector.com | 64 | 5% | 4 |
| worldmetrics.org | 55 | 4% | 3 |
| wp101.com | 47 | 4% | 3 |
| seranking.com | 46 | 4% | 3 |
| aioseo.com | 45 | 4% | 3 |
| maxaeo.ai | 45 | 4% | 3 |
| frase.io | 44 | 3% | 3 |
| aeoengine.ai | 43 | 3% | 3 |
| therankmasters.com | 42 | 3% | 3 |
| gumroad.com | 39 | 3% | 3 |
| rankability.com | 39 | 3% | 3 |
Perplexity
1194 answers · 11 sites · 2026-07-13 to 2026-10-14
- Answers that cite a source
- 100%
- of 1194 answers
- Citations per answer
- 18.3
- mean, over all 1194 answers
- Distinct domains cited
- 2,069
- across those answers
- Citations to the site being asked about
- 2.6%
- of all citations on this engine. The rest went to somebody else.
| Domain | Answers | Share | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com | 751 | 63% | 10 |
| youtube.com | 381 | 32% | 7 |
| linkedin.com | 305 | 26% | 10 |
| facebook.com | 163 | 14% | 4 |
| gitnux.org | 144 | 12% | 3 |
| adobe.com | 136 | 11% | 3 |
| worldmetrics.org | 132 | 11% | 3 |
| trustpilot.com | 117 | 10% | 6 |
| canva.com | 109 | 9% | 3 |
| medium.com | 100 | 8% | 7 |
| f6s.com | 98 | 8% | 4 |
| g2.com | 96 | 8% | 6 |
| yahoo.com | 94 | 8% | 6 |
| google.com | 93 | 8% | 8 |
| seranking.com | 92 | 8% | 5 |
What this corpus cannot say
- The sites in this corpus are the ones our customers and we chose to measure. They are not a random sample of the web, and nothing here generalises to sites unlike them.
- Each answer was sampled for one site's own buyer questions, so the engines were asked what those sites' buyers ask, not what the public asks.
- openai: 1387 answers, but from only 4 sites. A domain named here for openai clears the 3-site floor by a narrow margin; read it as a lead, not a law.
- anthropic: 1287 answers, but from only 4 sites. A domain named here for anthropic clears the 3-site floor by a narrow margin; read it as a lead, not a law.