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Data study comparing 237930 French answers and 63095 English answers: the same questions do not return the same sources.
The panel contains 237930 answers to questions asked in French and 63095 answers to questions asked in English, citing 100597 and 54603 distinct domains. The same platforms do not carry the same weight: the widest gap is Reddit, cited in 0.93% of French answers and 2.28% of English ones.
The same question in two languages does not return the same sources, and the difference is larger than most localisation plans assume.
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.
Platforms that weigh more in English: Reddit, Amazon, HubSpot. Platforms that weigh more in French: Trustpilot, YouTube, Wikipedia. A source plan translated from one market to the other misallocates on both.
Community platforms weigh more in English, while review platforms and local marketplaces weigh more in French. The consequence for an international business is that a source strategy built on English data will misallocate budget in a French speaking market, and the reverse is equally true. It also means a translated page is not a localised strategy: the sources cited around it differ, so the local proof, listings and reviews have to exist in the local market.
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). French vs English: Do the AIs Cite the Same Sources? A Data Study. Sorank GEO studies, measured on 301025 AI answers collected between August 2025 and August 2026. Available at https://www.sorank.com/data/french-vs-english-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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Wikipedia at 3.99%, ahead of Trustpilot at 3.24% and YouTube at 3.12%. 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.
French, since it represents the large majority of the measured answers. The English subset is smaller and should be read as an indication of direction rather than as a precise measurement.
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