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Data study of 87008 ChatGPT answers over 13 months: the platforms it cites most, its citation density and how it differs from the four other AI.
ChatGPT was measured on 87008 answers over 13 months. Its most cited platform is Wikipedia at 3.43%, and it names on average 4.1 sources per answer, which places it third of the five models measured.
ChatGPT is the most conservative of the five models in what it cites, and the least generous in how many sources it names per answer.
A citation rate of 2% means the source was cited twice for every 100 measured answers. Rates are computed per model against the number of answers of that model, so a model with a smaller sample never distorts a column. A source cited several times inside one answer is counted once per company block, which keeps a single verbose answer from dominating a month.
The distribution is worth as much as the ranking. The top three sources hold 58% of the citations counted in this table, 4 platforms sit above 1%, and Wikipedia is cited 1.3 times more often than Trustpilot. A market where three sources hold most of the citations rewards depth on those three rather than presence everywhere.
Citation density on ChatGPT moved from 5.8 to 4.1 sources per answer over the period. The platforms it cites moved too: Wikipedia is now first at 3.43%.
ChatGPT rewards established, institutional and encyclopedic sources, and it cites few of them per answer. That makes each citation slot expensive to win and durable once won. Video and forum content that performs on other models barely registers here. If your buyers use ChatGPT, the work is reference-grade: a well structured page, a consistent entity across the web, and presence on the sources ChatGPT already trusts.
Every number on this page comes from the public Sorank dataset. The underlying figures, the monthly detail and the filters are available here:
Open the source data on data.sorank.com
Data updated on 2026-08-26.
This study is free to quote, in an article, a deck or a report. Please cite the source and the measurement period, because the numbers move every month.
Sorank (2026). ChatGPT Citation Study: What ChatGPT Cites in 87008 Measured Answers. Sorank GEO studies, measured on 301025 AI answers collected between August 2025 and August 2026. Available at https://www.sorank.com/data/chatgpt-citation-study
The same panel, read from another angle:
This study describes a market. Sorank measures your site: which questions mention you, which mention someone else, and what to publish to change that, tracked weekly across the same five AI.
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Wikipedia at 3.43%, ahead of Trustpilot at 2.7% and Microsoft at 1.14%. The full ranking is on this page, and the source data is public on data.sorank.com.
On 301025 answers from five AI, collected between August 2025 and August 2026, with every cited source extracted and normalised. The citation rate is the number of citations per 100 measured answers. The public dataset is on data.sorank.com.
Not by volume alone. ChatGPT names the fewest sources per answer of the five models measured, so the constraint is selection, not production. One authoritative page per topic beats ten thin ones.
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