Research
What the answer engines actually cite, measured on the engines themselves.
Every number comes with its method and the dates it was measured.
Research
We fetched nine vendors' pricing pages without running JavaScript, the way OpenAI's, Anthropic's and Perplexity's crawlers fetch them. Four publish an entry price a crawler can read. One loads its prices with JavaScript and one publishes none.
Research
How much seven AI engines cite Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn for questions about AI visibility tools, from 15.8% of Google AI Mode's citations to 0.1% of ChatGPT's, with per-engine counts, shares and the questions involved.
Research
ChatGPT cites few sources per answer, and its most-cited sites are AI visibility vendors' own domains. Our scans show which roundups, page kinds and questions make up the rest, and how ChatGPT differs from six other engines.
Research
Claude cites about eight sources per answer, gives articles and reference pages a larger share than any other engine, and cited no Reddit threads at all. Our scans show its most-cited sites, page kinds, questions and misreads.
Research
Gemini cites fewer sources than any other engine and keeps returning to the same few sites. Our scans show which sites, page kinds and questions it relies on, and where it confused Otterly.AI with Otter.ai.
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Google AI Overviews and AI Mode cite YouTube more than any other site, and lean on video and community pages far more than the other five engines. Our scans show their top sites, page kinds, questions and overlap.
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Grok cites about four and a half sources per answer, almost all roundups and articles, and many of its sites are ones no other engine cites. Our scans show its most-cited sites, page kinds and questions, and how it differs from six other engines.
Research
Perplexity cites about 20 sources per answer, more than three times the other engines, and sends more citations to pages on the wrong subject than any of them. Our scans show its most-cited sites, page kinds and questions.
Research
We kept every source from 3,531 answers by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok and Google's two AI engines. Perplexity cites four times as many sites as ChatGPT, roundups take two thirds of the citations, and one engine answered a software question with alternative rock.