AI Assistants Overwhelmingly Cite Third-Party Lists, Not Company Homepages, Study Finds

Artificial intelligence assistants overwhelmingly cite third-party “best-of” and comparison pages rather than companies’ own websites, according to a new study from citations.press. The research analysed 60,350 citations generated across 10,000 commercial prompts spanning 50 industries, comparing how ChatGPT and Claude source the answers they give to buyers.

Just 7% of ChatGPT’s citations and 4% of Claude’s pointed to a brand’s homepage. The remainder went, in large part, to ranked lists published by independent media and review sites. For businesses weighing where to spend on marketing, and on AI itself, the finding suggests that owned websites are not where these systems look.

Lists dominate; homepages barely register

Grouping every cited page by type, ranked comparison and category pages accounted for the large ...