Data study of 301025 AI answers over 13 months: which platforms ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok actually cite, model by model.
Across 301025 AI answers collected between August 2025 and August 2026, Trustpilot is the most cited platform of the panel, with a citation rate of 2.7%. The ranking changes completely from one model to another: Wikipedia is cited in 3.43% of ChatGPT answers and 0.03% of Claude answers. Only 6 platforms are cited by all five models.
There is no single way to be cited by the AIs. There are five citation diets, and a platform that carries one model can be almost invisible on another.
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 45% of the citations counted in this table, 7 platforms sit above 1%, and Trustpilot and YouTube are close enough to be treated as one tier. A market where three sources hold most of the citations rewards depth on those three rather than presence everywhere.
The largest rise of the period is Trustpilot at plus 2.34 points between the first and the last quarter measured. The largest fall is Wikipedia at minus 7.94 points. Three platforms moved by more than one full point, which is why a ranking older than a quarter is a poor basis for a decision.
The practical consequence is that a platform budget decided on an average is a budget decided on a number that describes none of your buyers. If your market asks Gemini, video and review platforms carry most of the citations. If it asks ChatGPT, encyclopedic and institutional sources still dominate. The right question is not which platform the AIs prefer, it is which model your buyers actually open before they choose a supplier.
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). AI Citation Study: Which Platforms the AIs Cite Most (301025 Answers Measured). Sorank GEO studies, measured on 301025 AI answers collected between August 2025 and August 2026. Available at https://www.sorank.com/data/ai-citation-study-platforms
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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Trustpilot at 2.7%, ahead of YouTube at 2.35% and Wikipedia at 1.62%. 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.
Start with the platform that appears in every model column rather than the one with the highest average. A source cited by all five models keeps working when your buyers change assistant, which an average cannot promise.
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