Which websites AI answers cite most: 2026 data

• 47.9%

  of ChatGPT's top 10 cited sources were Wikipedia, in Profound's study of 680 million citations from August 2024 to June 2025

  Profound, 5 Jun 2025Copy citationEmbed

• 46.7%

  of Perplexity's top 10 cited sources were Reddit

  Profound, 5 Jun 2025Copy citationEmbed

• 21.0%

  of Google AI Overviews' top 10 cited sources were Reddit, and 18.8% were YouTube

  Profound, 5 Jun 2025Copy citationEmbed

• 22.9%

  of US AI Overview citations among the top 50 cited domains went to YouTube in September 2026, ahead of Reddit at 18.5% and Facebook at 10.1%

  Ahrefs, updated 2 Sep 2026Copy citationEmbed

• 54.5%

  of AI Overview citations came from pages that also rank organically in September 2025, up from 32.3% in May 2024

  BrightEdge, 18 Sep 2025Copy citationEmbed

• 71.0%

  of AI Overview citations in B2B tech overlapped with organic rankings in September 2025

  BrightEdge, 18 Sep 2025Copy citationEmbed

• 6%

  of sources in Google AI summaries were .gov sites, against 2% in standard results

  Pew Research Center, 22 Jul 2025Copy citationEmbed

These figures come from AI Search Statistics 2026: ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Clicks, which puts them in context.