What ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini Really Cite

ChatGPT looks for sources whose names it knows and cites about one page out of ten of what it finds. The reasons for an absence, measured, and those to check first.

Necessary, rarely sufficient. Your website matters when you are named; on a market question, AIs mostly cite other sources. What the website must do, and what it cannot do.

Named brand, troubleshooting, comparison, market question, local search: AI does not look for the same sources. Where to appear depending on the context, supported by measurements.

ChatGPT cites what is at the top of its results and the sources it names, Claude reads everything and retains the consensus, Gemini distributes its response. Three ways of choosing, measured.

Because its search often retrieves public websites and it then cites them more readily: up to 71% of its citations depending on the topic, compared to less than 10% for Claude and Gemini. This can be measured, and here is what a business can do.

Same question, one hour later: not a single identical list of sources, and barely a quarter of the sources found again. Why, and how to measure a moving visibility.

An AI that retrieves a Reddit page almost never cites it: on ChatGPT, between 0 and 1.5% according to our measurements. Figures, methodology and other studies.

Wikipedia carries significant weight in what AI learns, but a company page is rare, highly regulated, and rarely cited by ChatGPT. Measurements, rules, and studies.

Google's AI answers often cite YouTube, ChatGPT almost never. What we measured, what studies say, and what makes a video get cited.

ChatGPT almost never cites the forums it retrieves, Claude cites brand communities, Perplexity claims Reddit. Measurements and studies.

ChatGPT finds many PDFs but cites them 2 to 5 times less than web pages; Claude finds very few. Our measurements, for lack of any published study on the subject.

Rarely directly: 1.1% of AI citations go to a press release. Its role is to prompt coverage, and it is this coverage that AI cites. Muck Rack figures and what makes a page cited.

Yes, if it contains the words of the question: up to 1.9 times more citations in ChatGPT. What matters in the title and the address, what does not, backed by measurements.

A developed, affirmative paragraph that uses the words the AI searched with: up to 8 times more cited with Claude. Measurements, methodology, and publishers' documentation.

An AI reformulates your question into several searches, often in English, with source names and years. What we found with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

With Claude, consensus wins: a page that is close to other sources and found through multiple searches is cited far more often. What we measured, and what research says.

No: most cited pages do not have a title in the form of a question, and the effect of this format changes from one corpus to another. What really matters, backed by measurements.

A little, not always, and not everywhere: with Claude, a page less than six months old is cited 1.2 times more, but the year in the title does not help ChatGPT. Measurements and studies.

No: Google does not require it, Ahrefs measures no net increase in citations after adding it, and a share of cited pages carries none. Figures and method.

Nothing shows this. No major AI publisher documents its use, Google deems it useless, and among the sites retrieved by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the cited sites do not publish it significantly more often.

Yes for search crawlers if you want to be cited; a matter of choice for those collecting training data. What OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google say, and what robots.txt files of cited sites show.

Yes, massively: 95% of ChatGPT's responses to our questions in French include a search in English. And from one language to another, the cited sources almost all change.

Nothing shows this. In our local searches in France, none of the three AIs cited a Google listing; ChatGPT relies elsewhere, and on Yelp in the United States. What the Google listing is actually used for.

A website that names your profession and your city, a presence in your industry directories, and pages that can be found by your name. What ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini cite for local searches in France.

SEO aims for a rank in a list of links, GEO for a place in the response written by an AI. Where the term comes from, what Google says about it, and what really changes according to our measurements.

GDO consists of distributing a company's information across third-party sources that AIs read, instead of optimizing its website alone. Where the need comes from, what the term covers, what it does not promise.

GEO works on your own site so that it is well picked up; GDO works on other sites so that your name is read there. What each can do, what they cannot do, and why they combine.

Optimizing your site helps when the AI reads it. On a question that does not name you, it does not read it. What our measurements, Ahrefs, and Moz say about the transition from ranking to citation.

Yes, and it remains the foundation: for Google, optimizing for its AI answers is still SEO. But with ChatGPT, Google ranking matters little. What Google and research say, what we measure.

Not much: ChatGPT citations only overlap with Google's top 10 in 8% of cases according to Ahrefs. What studies measure, what we observe, and what really matters.

ChatGPT remains the leader in traffic, but Gemini and Claude now account for more than a third between them, and the three do not cite the same sites. Similarweb figures and our measurements.

+40% visibility, schema.org, FAQ, Reddit, llms.txt, Google ranking: the most widespread GEO advice confronted with published studies and our measurements on ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

No: each response is recalculated, each AI searches its own web, and publishers separate advertising from the response. What can be guaranteed, and how to read an offer that promises a citation.

Yes when you are named: your website, open and clear, is often enough for it. No when you are not known: AIs first cite other sources there. What is free, what is not, and why.