Field note
Do AI engines cite the same sources? Barely.
In one audit, 83% of cited sources showed up in just one engine. Citation is engine-specific.
If you get cited by ChatGPT, are you also in Gemini's answer? Mostly not. In the same audit where I counted how many sources each engine shows, I checked how much they overlap, and the answer is: barely.
Of the 727 distinct sources the six engines cited across the audit, 83% appeared in just one engine. Only a handful were shared by four or more, and just two came close to universal: Ahrefs (cited by all six) and one source in five. Wikipedia, Reddit, LinkedIn and a few big-authority sites turned up in four; below them, a long tail each engine drew on alone.
The takeaway is practical and slightly uncomfortable: citation is engine-specific. Earning a mention in one assistant does little to put you in another: they're reading different corners of the web. So "are we visible in AI?" isn't one question; it's six. You either target the rare sources everyone trusts (the encyclopedias, the big communities, the authority sites), or you accept that presence is earned engine by engine.
The honest caveats: one company, one category, one day, search on; the single-engine count includes each engine's long tail of follow-up sources. Treat it as directional. But the shape is hard to miss: the engines mostly don't agree on whom to cite.
See which engines show their sources and where AI looks.
New here? Start with the overview → · By Denes Csaszar · written in the open