ChatGPT
Leans on forbes.com and techradar.com.
- 01forbes.com
- 02techradar.com
- 03reddit.com
- 04healthline.com
- 05goodhousekeeping.com
llmranks original research · ai citation index
AI recommends brands without linking their sites.
We put 75 real buyer questions to 3 live AI engines and parsed every source they cited and every brand they named. The verdict: AI is happy to name your brand. It just doesn’t send anyone to your site.
- 89%
- named, not linked
- 6.5
- brands / answer
- 75
- buyer questions
- 3
- AI engines
89%
of the brands AI recommends are named without a link to their own site.
measured by llmranks · June 29, 2026
01 · the index
Reddit runs the AI web.
reddit.com is the single most-cited domain we measured — cited 1.8× as often as the #2 source, and a top-five source for every engine we tested. The repeatable citations go to forums, video, and editorial reviews about brands. No individual brand’s own site cracks the top of the list.
most-cited domainsanswers citing
- 01reddit.comforum / ugc149
- 02youtube.comvideo81
- 03forbes.comeditorial63
- 04google.combrand / other48
- 05techradar.comeditorial30
- 06healthline.comprofessional18
- 07goodhousekeeping.comreview13
- 08nerdwallet.comeditorial13
- 09zapier.combrand / other11
- 10rtings.comreview11
- 11cnet.comeditorial11
- 12pcmag.comeditorial8
- 13quora.comforum / ugc8
- 14consumerreports.orgreview8
- 15mattressclarity.comreview8
what kind of source gets cited
- brand / other70%
- editorial10%
- forum / ugc10%
- video5%
- review3%
- professional2%
02 · mentions vs links
AI names the brand. It rarely links the brand.
Across 3 engines, AI named brands 2,929 times — an average of 6.5 per answer. Only 11% of those named brands had their own website cited as a source. The other 89% were recommended by name, with no link home. Each bar below is the split for one engine, across every brand it named.
ChatGPT92%named, not linked
own site linked 8%named only 92%names a brand in 96% of answers
Gemini93%named, not linked
own site linked 7%named only 93%names a brand in 92% of answers
Google AI Overviews84%named, not linked
own site linked 16%named only 84%names a brand in 99% of answers
03 · ask it twice
Ask the same question twice — the sources change.
We asked every question 2 times. The cited sources rarely hold still: on ChatGPT, 65% of cited sources change between two identical asks. Even the steadiest engine, Google AI Overviews, swaps 34%. Any single snapshot of “what AI cites” is already out of date.
ChatGPT
65%
of cited sources change between two asks.
35% overlap run-to-run
Gemini
62%
of cited sources change between two asks.
38% overlap run-to-run
Google AI Overviews
34%
of cited sources change between two asks.
66% overlap run-to-run
04 · per-engine fingerprints
No two engines cite the same web.
Each engine has a distinct citation fingerprint shaped by how it retrieves and what it trusts. Optimizing for “AI search” in the abstract is wishful thinking — you have to know which engine you’re talking to.
Gemini
Leans on reddit.com and forbes.com.
- 01reddit.com
- 02forbes.com
- 03cnet.com
- 04youtube.com
- 05healthline.com
Google AI Overviews
Leans on reddit.com and youtube.com.
- 01reddit.com
- 02youtube.com
- 03google.com
- 04forbes.com
- 05nerdwallet.com
what this means for your brand
Be the named entity, not just the linked page.
The pages AI cites are mostly about brands, not by them. Forum threads, video reviews, editorial round-ups, comparison sites — third parties discussing the category — are what get pulled into the answer. Your homepage usually isn’t.
So the brands that win in AI aren’t the ones with the best landing page. They’re the ones that show up, by name, in the places AI reads — and that get recommended even when no link points home. Optimizing only your own domain is playing the wrong game.
LLMRanks measures exactly that for your brand: which engines name you, which actually cite you, and which third-party surfaces are feeding them in your category — then where to show up next.
Methodology
We put 75 buyer questions across 15 categories to 3 AI engines, 2 times each — 450 answers in total, captured June 29, 2026. For every question we asked each engine for its live answer, then parsed the sources it cited and the brands it named, and aggregated. No third-party datasets and no estimates: every figure on this page traces to that measurement.
- Index rank — domains ordered by the number of answers that cited them.
- Named vs linked — a brand is “named” when it appears in the answer text; “linked” when the brand’s own domain is also cited as a source.
- Volatility — for each question we compare the sources cited across two separate asks; the figure is how often they differ.
Re-verify before you act on any single number — AI engines retune their retrieval constantly, and citation share moves with them. We refresh this index each quarter. Captured June 29, 2026.