Which Websites Do AI Answers Cite Most? ChatGPT and Google's AI Don't Cite the Same Ones

Lists of "the websites AI cites most" are easy to read as a media plan: Reddit ranks high, so post there; YouTube shows up a lot, so make videos; media outlets make the list, so add PR budget. The problem is that these lists usually lump every AI platform and every month together, so you can't see where the differences are.

The Dageno team analyzed 10,045,768 answers in the Dageno AI answer database from June to September 2026, across 5 AI platforms: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Every link in every answer was sorted by website type: company or brand websites; institutions, government and education; media and content platforms; user communities; e-commerce platforms; reference and encyclopedias; and "Other."

1. Which websites show up most in AI answers?

It's different on every platform. ChatGPT cites government agencies the most, Google's two products cite YouTube and Reddit, and Copilot cites e-commerce sites.

The numbers below are September 2026 counts of "link–answer associations": several pages from the same website can appear in one answer, so these are not answer counts or user counts. Brand-website domains are not in the public data, so they are not listed.

• ChatGPT: Amazon (159,259) ranks first, followed by the US National Institutes of Health, NIH (91,713); the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST (90,552); Indonesia's Financial Services Authority, OJK (73,462); the US Federal Trade Commission, FTC (46,592); the EU's official site europa.eu (41,877); the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC (40,591); and the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA (36,390).
• Google AI Mode: YouTube (288,540), Reddit (79,557), LinkedIn (27,070), Facebook (25,881), Instagram (13,602).
• Google AI Overviews: YouTube (127,616), Reddit (63,784), Facebook (28,862), LinkedIn (21,428), Amazon (16,864).
• Gemini: Reddit (20,088), Forbes (7,291), Amazon (7,255), YouTube (6,005).
• Copilot: Amazon (48,669), Walmart (13,605), aesteticadvice.com (5,262), YouTube (5,234), comparor.com (3,071).

ChatGPT's list stands out the most. When a question touches on safety, compliance, health or technical standards, it often cites the original pages of regulators and standards bodies directly, rather than media coverage. For brands, on these questions, stating product facts clearly and linking to the relevant original regulation is likely closer to what AI cites than one more media story (inference).

This list depends heavily on the question set: whichever industries the questions lean toward, the list leans toward those websites. It is not a partnership ranking that applies to every industry.

2. Are brand websites still a main source for AI answers?

Yes. Across 5 platforms and 4 months, brand websites were always among the most widely cited source types.

We compare site types by "coverage": out of every 100 answers with links, how many include at least one link to that type of website. One answer can link to a brand website, a media site and a community site at the same time, so the types add up to more than 100%.

Table: share of answers with links that cite at least one company or brand website

• ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews were stable over all 4 months, between 87.4% and 89.1%, and between 93.7% and 96.4%, respectively.
• Google AI Mode was only 73.6% in June, then jumped to 95.3% in July. We can't tell what caused the jump: the share of answers with links stayed at about 51% to 53% in both months, with no clear change.
• Copilot was the only platform that declined overall, from 80.5% in June to 75.1% in September.

Note that a cited brand website does not mean the answer text used its content, or that users clicked through. What it does show is that AI still relies heavily on pages companies publish themselves as sources. If the model numbers, specs, pricing terms, compatibility and usage limits on your website are incomplete or contradict each other, that may be exactly what AI cites.

3. On which platforms did community sources drop?

They dropped sharply on ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Google's two products stayed relatively high.

Table: share of answers with links that cite at least one community site

• ChatGPT dropped the most: 40.3% in July, 10.9% in September, down 29.4 percentage points. Put another way, out of every 100 answers with links, the number with a community link went from about 40 to about 11.
• Google's two products also declined, but were still around half in September: AI Overviews fell from 77.2% in June to 56.6%, and AI Mode was at 47.1% in September.
• Copilot was down to 4.0% in September, and Gemini to 8.5%.

"Community" here includes Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Zhihu and similar sites. Reddit accounts for a large part of ChatGPT's decline. The Dageno team's earlier study of Reddit as an AI source looked at this day by day: US ChatGPT saw single-day cliffs on June 13, August 8 and August 14, with a rebound on July 7. By September, only 1.4% of ChatGPT answers with sources linked to Reddit, compared with 38.6% for Google AI Overviews.

So the conclusion that "AI no longer needs community content" only holds for some platforms. To show up in Google's AI, community discussion still matters. To show up in ChatGPT, first check whether community pages are still being cited for your target questions, then decide how much to invest.

4. Is it the same for media sources?

Similar direction. Media sources declined on ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot, while Google's two products stayed above 55%.

Table: share of answers with links that cite at least one media and content platform site

• ChatGPT fell from 30.2% in July to 13.1% in September.
• Google AI Mode was at 63.8% in September, still above its 58.8% in June.

One thing that's easy to misread: in this taxonomy, YouTube counts as a "media and content platform," and it is the most-cited website on both Google products. So a large part of Google's high media share comes from YouTube videos, not just news sites and magazines. To decide whether to invest in video, PR or reviews, you need to open the specific pages being cited.

5. Do ChatGPT and Google's AI cite the same websites?

Mostly not. Google's two products overlap the most with each other; ChatGPT overlaps very little with any other platform.

"Overlap rate" here means: the number of websites cited by both platforms, divided by the total number of distinct websites cited by either. For example, if one platform cites A, B and C and the other cites B, C and D, there are 4 distinct websites, 2 of which appear on both sides, so the overlap rate is 50%. Brand websites are excluded from this calculation.

September 2026:

• Google AI Mode and AI Overviews: 20.7%, the highest of the 10 platform pairs.
• ChatGPT and the other 4 platforms: all between 4.6% and 7.1%. ChatGPT and AI Overviews was 5.8%.
• Across all 4 months, the overlap between AI Mode and AI Overviews stayed between 16.2% and 25.0%, consistently higher than ChatGPT's overlap with either of them (5.8% to 11.4%).

One reason ChatGPT's overlap is low is that it cites far more websites. In September, ChatGPT cited 230,473 distinct websites; AI Overviews cited only 39,622. The 14,910 websites cited by both make up 37.6% of the AI Overviews list but only 6.5% of the ChatGPT list. The same set of websites looks very different depending on which side you view it from.

Other trackers report numbers in the same range. In a study Profound published in July 2025, the overlap of cited websites between pairs of AI platforms ranged from 6% (Google AI Overviews vs Copilot) to 16.4% (Perplexity vs Google AI Overviews). Their sample and platform pairs differ from ours, so the numbers can't be compared directly.

For brands, this means: when studying Google's two products, you can start with the websites both of them cite; ChatGPT needs to be checked separately. Studying the sources of one platform and generalizing to all AI is likely to point you in the wrong direction.

6. What are the "Other" websites in the taxonomy?

A large group of websites that the current categories can't describe well, and there are a lot of them.

In September, 79.2% of ChatGPT answers with links cited an "Other" website; Copilot was at 88.4%, and even the lowest, Gemini, was at 46.1%. Within ChatGPT's "Other" links, counted by link entries, 84.0% had no further breakdown of what the site is for; of the part that could be broken down, the largest groups were sports and outdoors (7.9%) and lifestyle (5.5%).

Typical "Other" websites include tools and services (dropboxsign.com), niche review sites (chargetechlab.com, scootergearlab.com), outdoor retail (rei.com) and brand sites (garmin.com, segway.com). So "Other" can't simply be read as independent media or third-party reviews.

The taxonomy itself also has errors. For example, in September yelp.com appeared under "institutions, government and education" for Google AI Mode, and womenshealthmag.com appeared in the same category for AI Overviews; LinkedIn and TikTok are classified as "community."

So site-type statistics are good for seeing the overall direction. To decide which websites to work with or where to add content, you still need to open the pages actually being cited and check who wrote them, how they relate to the brand, and what the content is based on.

7. What should marketing teams do next?

1. Get the product facts on your own website complete first. On all 5 platforms, more than 75% of answers with links cited company websites in September. Model numbers, specs, pricing terms, compatibility, version differences and usage limits should be fully written out on your website and consistent across pages. Google also states clearly that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that standard SEO practices still apply.
2. Set community investment by platform. In September, the share of answers with community links was between 47% and 57% for Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, 10.9% for ChatGPT and only 4.0% for Copilot. Decide which platform matters most to you first, then decide on community investment.
3. For compliance, safety and standards questions, link to the original regulations. In September, 28.2% of ChatGPT answers with links cited an institution, government or education website, most often original sources such as NIH, NIST, FTC, CPSC and FDA. Related claims on your brand pages should map back to those original texts.
4. Study Google and ChatGPT separately. Google's two products overlap the most in the websites they cite, so you can look at their shared sources together. In September, ChatGPT's overlap with each of them was under 8%, so find the pages it cites on their own.
5. Look at specific pages, not just site types. "Other" is a large share, and the taxonomy has errors. A YouTube video, a review and a brand's own page may all end up in the same category.
6. Re-measure monthly with the same set of questions. Over these 4 months, community sources moved by more than ten percentage points in a single month on some platforms. To judge whether a change worked, fix the questions, platforms and time window, and measure again.

Method

The data in this article comes from the Dageno AI answer database. From June to September 2026, we analyzed 10,045,768 answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. The questions come from Dageno's historical monitoring and cover different countries, languages and industries. It is a fixed question set, not a random sample of user queries and not a search volume survey. The questions and collection volume differed by month: June and July together had about 6.99 million answers, and August and September together about 3.06 million; ChatGPT, for example, went from 1.32 million answers in July to 520,000 in September. So part of the monthly change may come from changes in the question set, and this article does not attribute changes to platform strategy or brand investment.

The denominator for coverage is answers with any link on the same platform in the same month. The share of answers with links varies a lot by platform: for Google AI Mode it was only about half in June and July (53.2% and 51.3%), and 96.7% and 89.6% in August and September; Gemini was between 61.1% and 75.1%; Copilot between 94.0% and 95.2%; ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews were close to 100%. Website types follow Dageno's existing taxonomy. Identified brand websites are excluded from the overlap calculation. A link appearing in an answer does not mean the answer text used its content, nor that it is a recommendation.