YouTube is the most cited website in AI answers to buyer questions, with 4.3% of 12,652 citations, almost all of them from Google AI Overviews.
We asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews the same 200 buyer questions in each of four industries (help desk software, personal loans, cruise lines and email marketing) and counted every source they cited, by website.
Source: Google AI Overviews (Ujeebu SERP API), Gemini (Ujeebu Gemini API), ChatGPT search answers. Collected Oct 2, 2026 with the Ujeebu API. Chart: Ujeebu, CC BY 4.0.
Powered by UjeebuKey takeaways
- Google AI Overviews leans on user-posted platforms: YouTube (9.2% of its citations), Reddit (5.5%) and Facebook (3.4%) are its three most cited sites. Forums and community sites took 19.9% of its citations, against 2.8% for Gemini and almost none for ChatGPT (one Reddit link and no YouTube link in 4,553 citations).
- ChatGPT points to brands' own sites most: at least 63% of its citations went to brand sites, against 34% for Gemini and 29% for Google AI Overviews.
- Each industry has its own reference site: cruisecritic.com took 9.3% of cruise line citations, zendesk.com 6.4% of help desk citations and upstart.com 5.8% of personal loan citations. In email marketing, YouTube led with 5.8%.
- Vendor roundups get cited: getmacha.com, a support software vendor whose blog ranks help desk tools, drew 2.4% of help desk citations, more than Freshdesk's own freshworks.com and freshdesk.com together (2.0%).
- The tail is long: the answers cited 2,325 different websites, 1,347 of them only once, and the 10 most cited drew 19.5% of all citations.
The data
| Website | Site type | Share of all citations | Citations | Help desk | Personal loans | Cruise lines | Email marketing | ChatGPT | Gemini | Google AI Overviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | Forum or community | 4.3% | 543 | 2.6% | 1.3% | 7.1% | 5.8% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 9.2% |
| reddit.com | Forum or community | 2.9% | 372 | 2.9% | 1.3% | 4.6% | 2.8% | 0.0% | 2.2% | 5.5% |
| cruisecritic.com | Review or comparison site | 2.4% | 300 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 9.3% | 0.0% | 2.8% | 0.0% | 2.9% |
| facebook.com | Forum or community | 1.6% | 202 | 0.1% | 0.3% | 5.5% | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 3.4% |
| zendesk.com | Brand site | 1.5% | 193 | 6.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.2% | 0.5% | 0.6% |
| upstart.com | Brand site | 1.4% | 176 | 0.0% | 5.8% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.2% | 1.2% | 0.9% |
| experian.com | Other | 1.4% | 174 | 0.0% | 5.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.7% | 2.3% | 1.5% |
| bankrate.com | Review or comparison site | 1.3% | 168 | 0.0% | 5.5% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.7% | 2.6% | 1.3% |
| consumerfinance.gov | Other | 1.3% | 168 | 0.0% | 5.5% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.6% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| royalcaribbean.com | Brand site | 1.3% | 165 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 5.1% | 0.0% | 2.4% | 0.4% | 0.8% |
| nerdwallet.com | Media or publisher | 1.3% | 160 | 0.0% | 5.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 1.5% | 0.0% | 1.6% |
| mailchimp.com | Brand site | 1.2% | 150 | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 4.4% | 2.3% | 0.5% | 0.6% |
| intercom.com | Brand site | 1.2% | 149 | 4.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.8% | 0.4% | 0.2% |
| sofi.com | Brand site | 1.2% | 148 | 0.0% | 4.8% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.5% | 1.3% | 0.9% |
| shopify.com | Brand site | 1.1% | 141 | 2.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.2% | 1.8% | 0.3% | 0.9% |
| credible.com | Brand site | 1.0% | 123 | 0.0% | 4.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.4% | 1.6% | 1.2% |
| lendingtree.com | Brand site | 0.9% | 114 | 0.0% | 3.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.7% | 2.2% | 0.5% |
| mailerlite.com | Brand site | 0.9% | 113 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.4% | 1.4% | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| cnbc.com | Media or publisher | 0.8% | 105 | 0.0% | 3.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.4% | 0.0% | 1.5% |
| hubspot.com | Brand site | 0.8% | 100 | 1.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.1% | 1.7% | 0.1% | 0.3% |
| sequenzy.com | Brand site | 0.8% | 98 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.9% | 0.1% | 1.5% | 1.1% |
| constantcontact.com | Brand site | 0.8% | 96 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.9% | 0.8% | 0.6% | 0.8% |
| ncl.com | Brand site | 0.8% | 95 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.9% | 0.0% | 0.9% | 0.5% | 0.8% |
| virginvoyages.com | Brand site | 0.7% | 94 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.9% | 0.0% | 1.4% | 0.1% | 0.4% |
| gorgias.com | Brand site | 0.7% | 93 | 3.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.8% | 0.0% | 0.2% |
Showing the first 25 of 2,325 rows. The full table is in the CSV.
Download the free sample CSV (CC BY 4.0) Full CSV, 2,325 rows
We make every effort to find high-quality data sources, but this data comes from AI engine answers collected from the open web and we cannot guarantee its accuracy, completeness or reliability. Use it at your own risk.
How we got this data
We collected these answers with Ujeebu's LLM APIs, which return what ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews actually tell people, including the brands they name and the sources they cite, as structured JSON. The same APIs are available to you: ask any question and get the answer and its citations back in seconds.
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Methodology and known limits
What we asked. 200 buyer questions in each of four industries (help desk software, personal loans, cruise lines and email marketing), 800 in total: 80 asking for a recommendation, 50 describing a problem, 40 comparing named brands and 30 about price. They are written in US English from People Also Ask boxes, Reddit threads and keyword research, and frozen for the quarter (prompt set 2026Q4.1). Each question was asked once per engine, from the US, between Oct 1, 19:27 and Oct 2, 04:16 UTC (ISO week 2026-W40).
Where we asked. ChatGPT (search answers), Gemini and Google AI Overviews, through Ujeebu's LLM APIs.
What we counted. Every source link in an answer, by registrable domain: support.zendesk.com counts as zendesk.com, bbc.co.uk stays bbc.co.uk. 2,366 answers cited 12,652 sources on 2,325 websites. A website's share is its citations divided by all 12,652; the table also gives its share of each industry's and each engine's citations. The engines do not cite at the same rate (Google AI Overviews 5,832 citations, ChatGPT 4,553, Gemini 2,267), so the pooled share leans toward Google AI Overviews; the engine columns show each one on its own.
Site types. Brand site: a website owned by one of the 293 brands we track in the four industries, or a company's own site we reviewed by hand. Review or comparison site (including marketplaces and agencies that rank options), media or publisher, and forum or community: from the publisher list the AI Citation Index uses, plus a hand review of every unlisted website in the top 120 (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn count as community). Everything else is Other, including government sites and the 1,925 smaller websites we did not review (27% of citations). Type shares are therefore lower bounds for the four named types. The full CSV says how each website was typed (type_basis).
How the AI Citation Index collects and counts answers: read the methodology.
Known limits
- One week: answers collected on Oct 1 and 2, 2026. AI answers change from day to day, so this is a snapshot, not a trend.
- 200 questions per industry, four industries, US English, asked from the US. Other industries, languages and countries cite other sites.
- Engines covered: ChatGPT (search answers), Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
- We did not check that our ChatGPT collection captures every kind of source ChatGPT shows, such as video results, so ChatGPT's near-zero share for YouTube and Reddit may partly come from collection.
- Google AI Overviews appeared on 767 of the 800 searches; the other 33 add nothing to the count.
- 27% of citations went to 1,925 websites we did not classify; they count as Other, so the brand, review, media and community shares are lower bounds.
- Gemini's shopping cards link to googleusercontent.com placeholders (61 citations); they are counted as Other under that domain.
- A citation is counted once per link in an answer; we do not weigh links by their position in the answer.
The data comes from AI engine answers to our own questions. This page publishes aggregated counts only: no answer text and no personal data. Spotted an error? Tell us.
Disclaimer: We make every effort to find high-quality data sources, but this data comes from AI engine answers collected from the open web and we cannot guarantee its accuracy, completeness or reliability. Use it at your own risk.
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