Course lesson 4: which sources do AI answers cite?
Broadcastwell measures and fixes whether AI search engines name B2B software companies.
Run the free checkLesson 4 of our AI visibility course: the sources an answer cites show where an engine looked, and each engine looks in a different mix of places. In September 2026, vendor websites made up 85.7 percent of ChatGPT's citation entries but 19.3 percent of Perplexity's. Read the cited sites before you decide which page or listing to work on.
Updated 11 November 2026.
Reading time: about 5 minutes. Lesson 4 of 5 in the course. Previous lesson.
The mix differs by engine
Study 2 sorted every source cited in the 2,095 valid target answers of the September 2026 Index by the kind of site it is. The share held by vendor websites varies more than fourfold between engines:
| Engine | Vendor-site citation entries / all entries | Share | 95% Wilson interval |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 1,708 / 1,993 | 85.7% | 84.1% to 87.2% |
| Google AI Mode | 617 / 1,577 | 39.1% | 36.7% to 41.6% |
| Google AI Overviews | 887 / 3,050 | 29.1% | 27.5% to 30.7% |
| Claude | 955 / 3,975 | 24.0% | 22.7% to 25.4% |
| Perplexity | 1,599 / 8,298 | 19.3% | 18.4% to 20.1% |
Two things stand out. First, the base itself differs: Perplexity attached 8,298 entries to its 420 valid answers, ChatGPT 1,993 to its 420. Second, the engines that cite fewer vendor sites cite more of everything else: review platforms, directories, forums and video. On Google AI Overviews, forums and video together took 547 of 3,050 entries, 17.9 percent. The study page gives every class with its interval.
Sort the cited sites by what you can do
For any buyer question, list the domains cited across its answers, then put each in one of four groups.
- Your own pages. You control them fully. Check that the page an engine cites actually states the fact the answer attributes to it.
- Rivals' pages. You cannot change them, but they show what kind of page earns a citation for this question.
- Pages about the category that name vendors: review platforms, directories, comparison articles. Your listing or profile there is often the practical lever; a correction or a complete profile changes what the page says about you.
- Everything else: forums, video, news. Useful to read, slow to influence, and never a place to plant claims.
A citation is evidence of where the engine pointed, not proof that it trusted the source. Our note on why a citation is not a trust score explains the difference, and our Manual chapter on whether a citation means a recommendation shows how often the two part ways.
Exercise
The fictional Kalvenor sample (Sample data, fictional company), a made-up field service software company, publishes how many of its 518 fictional scored answers cited each domain:
| Domain (fictional sample) | Answers citing it, of 518 |
|---|---|
| hvacoperations.example | 105 |
| servicetechforum.example | 99 |
| veranofsm.example | 97 |
| trakwell.example | 93 |
| softwarecompare.example | 85 |
| servicebuyersguide.example | 81 |
| kalvenor.example, the sample company | 66 |
Put each fictional domain into one of the four groups above, using only its name as a hint and marking any you cannot place as unknown. Then pick the single domain you would read first if Kalvenor were your company, and write one sentence on why. A good answer usually picks a category page that names vendors, such as the fictional comparison or buyers' guide site, because it can be checked and corrected, and because a rival's page can only be learned from.
Sources
- Broadcastwell, citation class shares, Study 2 frozen classification, target answers in Absence Index release 2026-09 captured 22 and 23 September 2026, published 30 October 2026.
- Broadcastwell, answer citation bases, citation entries per engine.
- Broadcastwell, fictional Kalvenor sample, source chart values as shown on our completed-case format page.
Next lesson: Lesson 5: how do you tell whether a page change helped?