Where AI cites.
Why it matters.
How we get you there.
Based on analysis of over 30 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini — a concentrated group of platforms controls what AI says about your brand. The top 20 platforms account for 66% of all AI citations. If your brand is not present on them, AI cannot cite you.
The platforms AI trusts most —
and where your brand must appear.
Data: Semrush (June 2025) + Peec AI 30M-source analysis (March 2026) + Decoding 10M+ citation study (March 2026)
Reddit's citation rate surged 450% Mar–Jun 2025. #1 or #2 source across every major AI engine.
Trust anchor for AI. ChatGPT cites Wikipedia in up to 47.9% of top-10 citations. Brands without a Wikipedia entry are invisible.
Grew 34% as AI citation source in 6 months to March 2026. AI reads video transcripts and descriptions. #1 on Google AI Mode.
blog.google, support.google, play.google collectively 22.81% of all citations. Publishing on Google-owned properties is highest leverage.
Top 5 for local and recommendation queries. Matters far more for AI visibility than most brands assume.
AI Mode cites Facebook significantly more than other engines. Public posts and Pages are indexed.
Commerce and product queries. Product reviews and listings are cited across ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Appears in AI Mode's top 5. Essential for travel, hospitality, and location-based businesses.
AI Mode cites Instagram significantly more than other engines. Public profiles and posts are indexed.
~15% on AI Mode
Hidden powerhouse. #1 on Google AI Mode at ~15%. Pulse articles, company posts, and profiles are all being cited. Critical for B2B.
Cited in 14% of Google AI Overviews responses. AI Mode cites it 3.5× more than standard AI Overviews.
Forbes doubled its citations after Sept 2025. Being featured or quoted carries direct AI citation value beyond traditional PR.
#4 most-cited domain in B2B BOFU scenarios. G2's share jumps to 7.54% for "what do users think of [Brand]?" queries.
Top 5 on Google AI Overviews. #4 on Gemini. Growing citation share across all engines. High-authority publishing channel.
Each AI engine has different citation preferences.
You need to be optimised for all of them.
Favours encyclopedic and authoritative editorial sources. Citation overlap with Google's top 10 is only 8–10%.
- Wikipedia — 7.8–47.9% of citations
- Reddit — Top 2 source
- Forbes — Biggest gainer post-Sept 2025
- LinkedIn — 14.3% of responses
- Amazon — Commerce queries
- Medium, PRnewswire, TechRadar — Growing
Most Reddit-heavy and most citation-transparent platform. Reddit grew 73% on Perplexity Oct 2025–Jan 2026.
- Reddit — 24–46.5% of citations
- LinkedIn — Consistently second
- NIH / Research domains — Health + factual
- G2 — B2B and SaaS BOFU
- Microsoft, Google — Technical queries
Only 38% of citations now come from pages ranking in Google's top 10 (down from 76%). Non-ranking content is getting surfaced.
- YouTube — 19–29.5% of citations
- Reddit — 21%
- Facebook — Top 5
- LinkedIn — Top 5
- Medium — Top 5
- Quora — 14% of responses
Most social-heavy and self-referential engine. Cites Facebook and Instagram significantly more than others.
- YouTube — #1 (~9.5–10% of all citations)
- LinkedIn — ~15%, highest of any engine
- Reddit — Top 3
- Google properties — ~22.8% collectively
- Quora — 3.5× more than AI Overviews
Sits between ChatGPT and Google's AI products in citation preferences. Balances social and editorial sources.
- Reddit — #1 source
- YouTube — #2
- Wikipedia — #3
- Medium — #4
- Forbes / PCMag — #5
We build your presence
across every platform
AI trusts.
Most brands optimise their website and nothing else. But AI search engines do not primarily cite brand websites — they cite Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, LinkedIn, and 16 other platforms that your brand probably does not have a structured presence on.
AI Search Lab builds that presence systematically. We identify which platforms matter most for your category, your queries, and your AI engines — then we build the content, profiles, and signals that earn citations.
We map your current citation footprint across every platform and identify where the gaps are costing you AI visibility.
We structure your presence on the platforms that matter — Reddit, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, YouTube, G2, Medium, and more.
We track where your brand appears in AI answers across all five engines and iterate based on what's working.