BlogSources
84 percent of what AI cites does not come from your own site
· 1 min read · 3 sources
Muck Rack
Institute for Public Relations
Pew Research Center
When an AI assistant recommends a business, it bases that on sources. But which ones? Muck Rack has been researching that since July 2025 in its series What Is AI Reading?. The May 2026 edition looked at more than 25 million links from answers by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, across 17 industries.
What others say about you weighs most
84 percent of the cited sources was earned media: articles, comparisons, reviews and mentions on other people's sites. Owned sites and paid content together made up about 16 percent. Across all three editions since July 2025, the share of earned media stayed between 82 and 89 percent.
Each assistant reads differently
The three assistants differ a lot in how often and on what they base their answers:
- ChatGPT cites sources in 96 percent of answers, Wikipedia most often.
- Gemini does so in 82 percent, with eight sources on average, and cites Reddit strikingly often, which ChatGPT and Claude hardly use.
- Claude is the most sparing: sources in 55 percent of answers, but then thirteen on average. PubMed Central tops its list.
In Google too: the same big sites
Pew Research saw something similar in Google. In the AI Overviews of March 2025, Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most cited sites, together 15 percent of all links. Government sites showed up more often in AI Overviews (6 percent) than in the regular results (2 percent).
What does this mean for you?
- Improving only your own site is not enough. The assistant mostly looks at what comparison sites, industry portals, news media and review platforms say about you.
- Find out which sites the assistants cite in your industry, and whether your competitors are on them and you are not. That is usually where the quickest wins are.
- Do not optimise for one assistant. What ChatGPT reads is different from what Gemini or Claude reads.
Get AI to recommend you
Oddrank measures every week whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google name you, shows who is named instead, and sets out what to do about it.