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Data study of 301025 AI answers: sector directories and marketplaces are cited more than most social networks, and almost nobody optimises for them.
One sector directory, sortlist.fr, is cited in 2.06% of measured answers, which is 6188 citations and more than most social networks reach. pagesjaunes.fr follows at 1.47%. For comparison, the most cited platform of the panel, Trustpilot, sits at 2.7%.
Directories and marketplaces are the least discussed source category in GEO advice, and one of them outranks every social network in this panel.
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.
9 aggregators appear in the top 50 domains of the panel, and none of them is a social network. This is the source category that grew most quietly over the period.
Aggregators answer the question the models are actually being asked, which is who should I use, and they answer it with structured, comparable entries. That is why a sector directory can carry more citations than a large social platform. For a business, this is the cheapest visibility work available: the listings already exist, they are usually incomplete, and completing them costs nothing but time. It is also the most transferable finding, because every sector has its own aggregators.
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). Directories and Marketplaces in AI Answers: the GEO Blind Spot. Sorank GEO studies, measured on 301025 AI answers collected between August 2025 and August 2026. Available at https://www.sorank.com/data/directories-ai-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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sortlist.fr at 2.06%, ahead of pagesjaunes.fr at 1.47% and codeur.com at 0.55%. 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.
This dataset cannot separate paid from free placements. What it shows is that the aggregator page itself is cited, so a complete free entry is the first step before any paid consideration.
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