Which sources AI (artificial intelligence) relies on when recommending companies: monitoring data

The short answer

When AI assistants recommend a company, they rely on a mix of sources. Your site matters, but answers link to media, blogs and other third-party sites roughly as often. More than a third of answers with links include competitors' sites. For local businesses, maps, directories and city guides play a noticeable role.

Below are our aggregated data, how we collected them and what to do with them.

Where the data comes from

Every day we put the questions that brands' customers ask to AI assistants and store the answers together with their sources. For this article we took:

• 3057 AI answers collected since 28 September 2026;
• several Ukrainian brands in retail, entertainment and IT;
• six answer sources: ChatGPT and Gemini via the API and on the web, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode.

How many sources each platform cites

53% of answers contained links to sources. The average number of sources per answer depends heavily on the platform:

Notably, the same model behaves differently via the API and in the browser. ChatGPT on the web cited 8.9 sources on average, while via the API it cited 3.4. So checking only through the API doesn't show what an ordinary user sees on chatgpt.com.

What types of sources AI cites

Among answers with links, we calculated the share of answers that contain at least one source of each type. A single answer can link to several types, so the total exceeds 100%.

What this means for a business

Your site is the main source you control. It appears in more than half of answers with links. If it lacks prices, addresses, delivery terms or answers to common questions, AI will take those facts from elsewhere or won't mention you.

Third-party sites carry just as much weight. Media, blogs, reviews and "top 10" listicles are cited as often as brand sites. If you aren't in the listicles AI reads in your niche, you lose out to those who are.

Competitors can be the source of the answer about you. 36% of answers with links include competitors' sites. These may be their comparison articles or blogs, which AI retells.

Maps and guides matter for local businesses. Maps and local directories account for 20%, city guides and event listings for 16%. For restaurants, hotels, salons and clinics, an accurate map listing is basic hygiene.

Wikipedia has almost no influence. In our sample it was hardly ever cited. For small and medium-sized businesses it isn't the first priority.

What to do with each type of source

• Your own site. Keep key facts on your pages as text: prices, addresses, opening hours, terms. Add pages that answer customer questions and comparison pages. Make sure the site is open to search crawlers, including OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, and indexed in Google — a prerequisite for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• Media, blogs, listicles. Find out exactly which articles AI cites in your niche and work on getting into them or similar ones: PR, expert comments, updates to listicles.
• Competitors' sites. See which of their pages AI cites. If they are comparisons or guides, create your own, more useful material on the same topic.
• Maps and directories. Check the name, address, phone number, opening hours and category in every listing. Discrepancies carry over into AI answers. How to fix such errors is covered in the article how to fix AI errors about your brand.
• City guides and event listings. For entertainment and hospitality venues, submit events and up-to-date information wherever they are collected.
• Social networks and forums. Answer questions about your niche where customers ask them, and keep an eye on what people write about you.
• Marketplaces, reviews, booking. Keep your listings up to date and collect reviews — for some niches they appear in answers.

Limitations of the data

These figures are useful as a guide, not as a law:

• The sample is small and specific: several Ukrainian brands in three industries. In other niches (healthcare, B2B, travel) the distribution may differ.
• The period is short: the data has been collected since 28 September 2026. Platforms change their behaviour, and the figures may change.
• The categories are approximate. The boundaries between source types are fuzzy; some sites could fall into several categories.
• The queries are mixed: branded (containing the brand name) and non-branded. The distribution may differ for each query type separately.
• Answers change daily, so an individual answer may look quite different from the average.

So the main advice is to look at the sources in the answers to your queries. That is exactly what AI Visibility does: every day it collects answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode and shows which sites they rely on. The difference from classic SEO is explained in the article how AI optimisation differs from SEO.

How to check for your business

Start with a free live check: enter your brand and a customer question, and in 20–60 seconds you'll see a real ChatGPT answer. To see which sites all four platforms cite over several days, use the free first week.