Social Media AI Citation Study: Which Networks the AIs Actually Cite

The short answer

Across the panel, YouTube is the most cited social platform at 2.35%, ahead of Reddit at 1.48%. 4 of the social platforms measured stay under 0.2%, including TikTok, Twitter/X, Pinterest, Snapchat. The split by model is wider than the split between platforms.

Social platforms are cited far less than the effort spent on them would suggest, and the gap between them is larger than the gap between social and everything else.

Key figures

• 301025 AI answers analysed between August 2025 and August 2026
• 1820738 citations extracted from those answers
• 131349 distinct domains cited at least once
• 5 models measured separately: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok
• 79% of the questions asked in French, the rest in English

Social platforms ranked by citation rate

• YouTube: 2.35%
• Reddit: 1.48%
• Facebook: 0.85%
• LinkedIn: 0.71%
• Instagram: 0.42%
• TikTok: 0.09%
• Twitter/X: 0.04%
• Pinterest: 0%
• Snapchat: 0%

The same platforms, model by model

• YouTube: 0.04% on ChatGPT, 3.69% on Gemini, 3.46% on Perplexity, 0% on Claude, 2.76% on Grok
• Reddit: 0.33% on ChatGPT, 2.5% on Gemini, 1.51% on Perplexity, 0% on Claude, 4.11% on Grok
• Facebook: 0.15% on ChatGPT, 0.94% on Gemini, 1.3% on Perplexity, 0.11% on Claude, 3.81% on Grok
• LinkedIn: 0.39% on ChatGPT, 0.98% on Gemini, 0.7% on Perplexity, 0.25% on Claude, 1.88% on Grok
• Instagram: 0.01% on ChatGPT, 0.27% on Gemini, 0.96% on Perplexity, 0% on Claude, 1.21% on Grok

How to read these numbers

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.

What changed over 13 months

YouTube averages 3.03% over the whole period and 2.35% over the last three months, which is the clearest sign that social citation share is not stable enough to plan a year around.

What this means in practice

Two social platforms carry almost all social citations in this panel, and the rest sit close to zero. More importantly, the split by model is extreme: a community platform can be a top source on one model and completely absent from another. For a marketing team, the honest reading is that social media works for reach, for demand and for brand, and that its direct contribution to AI citations is small and concentrated. Publishing on your own domain remains the reliable route.

How to use this study

1. Publish the substance on your own site first, then distribute socially.
2. Concentrate social effort on the one or two platforms your buyers' model actually cites.
3. Judge social on reach and pipeline, not on citation share.

How this study was measured

1. We run a panel of buyer questions every month, the questions people type before choosing a supplier.
2. Every question is sent to five AI: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok.
3. Every answer is parsed, every cited source is extracted and normalised to a domain and a platform.
4. The citation rate is the number of citations of a source per 100 measured answers, computed per model so an uneven number of answers per model never distorts a column.
5. The month is closed, the dataset is rebuilt, and the public files are republished on data.sorank.com.

Limits of this study

1. This panel is not a neutral sample of the web. The questions come from the sectors our users operate in.
2. The panel leans French: 237930 answers come from questions asked in French and 63095 from questions asked in English.
3. Model coverage is uneven: 87008 answers from ChatGPT, 87004 from Perplexity, 87000 from Gemini, 20011 from Claude and 20002 from Grok. The two smallest samples are read as direction rather than as precise values.
4. A citation is not a click. This study measures what the AIs cite, not what a reader does next.

The dataset behind this study

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.

How to cite this study

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). Social Media AI Citation Study: Which Networks the AIs Actually Cite. Sorank GEO studies, measured on 301025 AI answers collected between August 2025 and August 2026. Available at https://www.sorank.com/data/social-media-ai-citation-study

Related studies

The same panel, read from another angle:

• AI Citation Study: Which Platforms the AIs Cite Most
• Trustpilot AI Citation Study
• AI Citation Report: August 2026
• All GEO studies

Measure your own citations

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.

Start with 3 days free. A payment card is required to open the trial.