Original data
Which websites does ChatGPT cite when it recommends your competitors?
· Measured 1 to 25 September 2026 and 4 October 2026
The websites ChatGPT cites depend on your category, so the reliable way to find yours is to ask it your buyers' questions and write down its sources. In our category, AI visibility software, ChatGPT cited reddit.com in 28 of its 80 answers from 1 to 25 September 2026 and techradar.com in 26, and the single page it read most, techradar.com/pro/i-tested-the-7-best-aeo-tools, was cited in 19.
The other engines read largely different websites. Of the 1,502 sites the five engines cited across 391 answers, 76% were cited by one engine only. Below: the sites and pages each engine read, what ChatGPT had cited when it named the most recommended tools, the same question asked on 4 October 2026, and how to build the list for your own competitors.
Key takeaways
- ChatGPT cited reddit.com (28), techradar.com (26) and semrush.com (13) most often, across 80 answers about AI visibility tools.
- Its most-read page was techradar.com/pro/i-tested-the-7-best-aeo-tools, in 19 answers, out of 441 different pages it cited.
- 76% of the 1,502 sites the five engines cited were cited by one engine only; 19 were cited by all five.
- When ChatGPT named Semrush, the sites it had cited most in the same answers were reddit.com, semrush.com and techradar.com.
- Asked this exact question on 4 October 2026, four engines answered and named 12 different tools from our list between them.
What ChatGPT cited, site by site
We put 20 buyer questions about AI visibility tools to ChatGPT with web search on, four times from 1 to 25 September 2026. Every one of its 80 answers cited sources: 330 different sites in all, about 8 per answer. These were cited most:
| Site | Answers citing it |
|---|---|
| reddit.com | 28 of 80 |
| techradar.com | 26 of 80 |
| semrush.com | 13 of 80 |
| en.wikipedia.org | 10 of 80 |
| ahrefs.com | 9 of 80 |
| ai-visibility-software.com | 6 of 80 |
| clearcited.com | 6 of 80 |
| crowdreply.io | 6 of 80 |
| overflowcommerce.com | 6 of 80 |
| yotpo.com | 6 of 80 |
| Page | Answers citing it |
|---|---|
| techradar.com/pro/i-tested-the-7-best-aeo-tools | 19 |
| techradar.com/pro/software-services/se-ranking | 7 |
| overflowcommerce.com | 6 |
| techradar.com/pro/how-to-track-your-brands-visibility-in-ai-search-results | 6 |
| agentrep.io/learn/how-ai-assistants-decide-who-to-recommend | 5 |
| reporteroutreach.com/blog/best-ai-visibility-tools | 5 |
| sixthshop.com | 5 |
| techradar.com/reviews/ahrefs | 5 |
| ahrefs.com/ai-visibility-index | 4 |
| aitechrankings.com/rankings/2026-08-28-the-best-ai-local-seo-tools-for-small-businesses-of-2026 | 4 |
ChatGPT writes the address of each source into its answer, so for ChatGPT the pages can be counted as well as the sites: 441 different pages across the 80 answers. One page, techradar.com/pro/i-tested-the-7-best-aeo-tools, was cited in 19 of them, the most of any page.
Shares like these move. Semrush tracked ChatGPT's Reddit citations falling from about 60% of responses in early August 2025 to around 10% by mid-September (Semrush, 2025). In our September 2026 sample, reddit.com was cited in 35% of ChatGPT's answers. A list measured once is a starting point, not a fixed map.
The other four engines read different websites
The same 20 questions, the same weeks, five engines. The five sites each cited most:
| # | ChatGPT of 80 answers | Claude of 80 answers | Gemini of 80 answers | Perplexity of 80 answers | Google AI Overviews of 71 answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reddit.com 28 | trysight.ai 19 | zapier.com 19 | linkedin.com 28 | youtube.com 32 |
| 2 | techradar.com 26 | ayzeo.com 18 | semrush.com 16 | semrush.com 25 | linkedin.com 14 |
| 3 | semrush.com 13 | alhena.ai 17 | reddit.com 14 | zapier.com 25 | zapier.com 12 |
| 4 | en.wikipedia.org 10 | finseo.ai 12 | trysight.ai 10 | reddit.com 23 | reddit.com 11 |
| 5 | ahrefs.com 9 | amplitude.com 11 | llmpulse.ai 9 | wellows.com 18 | kime.ai 10 |
Across all five engines 1,502 different sites were cited. 1,145 of them, 76%, were cited by one engine and no other, and 19 by all five, among them semrush.com, zapier.com, yotpo.com and wellows.com. Google's AI Overviews cited youtube.com in 32 of its 71 answers, more than any other site. That matches a far larger sample: Ahrefs' September 2026 analysis of more than 3 million US queries found YouTube taking 22.9% of AI Overview citations.
Claude leaned on vendors' own sites most and ChatGPT least. That matters if you are the vendor: the engines that read vendors' pages are the ones where your own page can be the source, while on the others the page to be on is somebody else's.
What ChatGPT had read when it named a competitor
This is the view the question asks for. For the six tools the engines named most, the answers in which ChatGPT named each one, and the sites ChatGPT cited in those same answers:
| Tool named | ChatGPT answers | Sites ChatGPT cited most in those answers | Own site cited, all engines |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush | 28 | reddit.com 12, semrush.com 9, techradar.com 8, ai-visibility-software.com 4, aitechrankings.com 4 | 34 of 160 |
| Otterly.AI | 36 | reddit.com 16, semrush.com 10, techradar.com 8, ahrefs.com 5, en.wikipedia.org 5 | 19 of 152 |
| Profound | 26 | reddit.com 12, semrush.com 8, techradar.com 7, ai-visibility-software.com 5, marketraa.com 4 | 21 of 150 |
| Peec AI | 24 | reddit.com 9, semrush.com 8, techradar.com 6, ai-visibility-software.com 5, dataforaisearch.com 4 | 3 of 116 |
| Ahrefs | 20 | reddit.com 10, techradar.com 8, ai-visibility-software.com 3, crowdreply.io 3, datadab.com 3 | 6 of 80 |
| Scrunch | 15 | reddit.com 7, ai-visibility-software.com 4, dataforaisearch.com 4, dattva.com 4, reporteroutreach.com 4 | 6 of 68 |
reddit.com is among ChatGPT's most-cited sources for every one of these tools, so the same few pages sit behind most of the recommendations. A tool's own site was a smaller part of it: across all five engines, Semrush was named in 160 answers and its own site was cited in 34 of them. For a competitor that is named often, the pages to study are the ones written about it.
The same question, asked on 4 October 2026
We added “Is there a tool that shows which websites ChatGPT cites when it recommends my competitors?” to our tracked questions on 25 September. On 4 October 2026, after the engines had moved to newer models, four of the five engines answered it:
| Engine | Tools named, from our list | Sites cited |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | none of the tools we count | cite.run, sonarvue.com, searchscore.io, citationradar.ai, getcited.in, covable.app |
| Claude | Semrush, Profound, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Ahrefs, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, SE Ranking, Omnia, Dageno and Rankshift | blog.hubspot.com, aisearch.similarweb.com, useomnia.com, dageno.ai, stackmatix.com, atomicagi.com, wrodium.com |
| Gemini | Semrush, Profound, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Ahrefs, LLMrefs and Dageno | siftly.ai, nicklafferty.com, elfsight.com, winstondigitalmarketing.com, llmpulse.ai, beamtrace.com, dageno.ai, deepsmith.ai, ahrefs.com, reddit.com, foglift.io, topcited.ai, wrodium.com, makebttr.com |
| Perplexity | Profound, Otterly.AI and Scrunch | honeyb.ai, blog.hubspot.com, nicklafferty.com, siftly.ai, citeflow.io, get-ryze.ai, targetlytics.com, analyticsinsight.net, aisearch.similarweb.com, scrunch.com, qvery.ai, finance.yahoo.com, llmpulse.ai, useomnia.com |
| Google AI Overviews | No answer: results page not read that day | |
Otterly.AI and Profound were each named by 3 of the 4 engines that answered. ChatGPT named none of the 42 tools we count; the six sites it cited are listed in full above. One answer per engine is a single reading, so treat this as a snapshot of the question, and the September tables as the pattern.
Across all 104 answers that day, the most-cited sites beside September's:
| # | 1 to 25 September 2026 391 answers | 4 October 2026 104 answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | reddit.com 76 | semrush.com 24 |
| 2 | semrush.com 67 | llmpulse.ai 21 |
| 3 | zapier.com 66 | dageno.ai 17 |
| 4 | trysight.ai 44 | zapier.com 17 |
| 5 | linkedin.com 43 | otterly.ai 16 |
| 6 | yotpo.com 43 | rankability.com 14 |
| 7 | wellows.com 42 | seranking.com 14 |
| 8 | alhena.ai 41 | youtube.com 13 |
The two columns differ in more than the date. The newest run includes five questions added since September, and four engines had moved to newer models. Read a change here as a change in what the engines read, without pinning it on one cause.
How to find the sites ChatGPT cites for your competitors
- Write down the questions your buyers ask. “Best [what you sell] for [who you sell to]”, comparisons, the problem you solve. Leave your own name out: a question that names you is answered with you.
- Ask ChatGPT with web search on, and keep every link. The sources are written into the answer. Save the question, the date, the answer and each page address.
- Note who was named next to each source. The pages cited in the answers that name a competitor are the pages behind that competitor.
- Ask the other engines the same questions. They read different sites, as the tables above show, so a list from ChatGPT alone covers one engine.
- Sort the sources by what you can do about them. The author of a list or a review can be asked to consider you. A forum can be answered in, honestly. A competitor's own page shows what a page needs to say to be quoted.
- Ask again next week. Sources move faster than names: in our data 39% of the sites an answer cited were cited again at the next run. How to run the weekly check.
To do it without the spreadsheet, a tracker records the sources for you. 19 of the 32 AI visibility tools we describe mention citations on their own sites. These four lead with showing them. In their own words, checked on their sites on 25 September 2026:
- SE Ranking: Shows the domains and URLs that appear most in AI answers, across seven markets.
- Ayzeo: Shows which pages on a site AI systems open and cite, and the phrases behind each sentiment.
- Wellows: A Citation Score, with citation and sentiment changes surfaced the next day down to the URL.
- Siftly: Shows the exact pages the engines cite in place of the brand's own.
For which tools the engines recommend overall, see the full ranking, and for getting your own pages quoted, the guide to getting cited by ChatGPT.
How we measured this
Our methodology: these are buyer questions we track for our own product in our own workspace, asked as a buyer in the United States. Each figure on this page names the sample it comes from:
- September: 391 answers to 20 buyer questions from five engines, in four runs on 1, 2, 10 and 25 September 2026. They are the same answers our ranking of AI visibility tools counts, asked through the same models.
- 4 October 2026: one run of all 25 questions we track now, including five added on 25 September. 125 questions went out and 104 answers came back. ChatGPT answered 21 of 25, and Google's results page could be read for 9 of the 25 questions, 8 of which showed an AI Overview. Missing answers are left out, never counted as misses. The engines had moved to newer models on 29 September: ChatGPT gpt-5.6-luna, Claude claude-sonnet-5-5, Gemini gemini-3.6-flash and Perplexity perplexity/sonar.
The questions quoted on this page, exactly as the engines were asked them:
- “Is there a tool that shows which websites ChatGPT cites when it recommends my competitors?”
Cited means the website was among the sources the engine returned for that answer, counted once per answer however many of its pages were used.
Pages are the addresses ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews write into the answer itself. Claude, Gemini and Perplexity return their sources as citations, of which our workspace keeps the website and not the page, so page lists cover those two engines only. Tracking codes such as utm_source are removed.
Named means the tool appears in the answer's own words, matched the way our ranking matches it. Links are removed first, because a link to a vendor's blog is a source and not a recommendation. A tool named in the question is not counted for it. We match 42 AI visibility vendors plus our own product, so a tool outside that list is not counted however often it appears.
Where this can mislead. We chose the questions, and we sell a tool in this category, so read these as one company's measurement rather than a census. Answers came through each engine's API or Google's results page, which is close to what the consumer apps show but not identical, from one country in English.
Nobody paid to appear on this page, and no vendor saw it before it was published. Our editorial rule is to describe every vendor only in the words of its own site. If a figure or a description here looks wrong, tell us through the contact page.
Where Greater Than Services fits
Our own product, so read this as the vendor's description, not part of the measurement above.
Greater Than Services is a workspace per brand that puts your buyer questions to five AI engines every week, records which answers named you and what they cited instead, shows your Google rank beside each answer, and drafts the fixes. In the count above it was named in none of the 391 answers.
- If you need the sources behind every answer, engine by engine, each weekly run records the sites every answer cited and the competitors it named beside them, engine by engine, on the engines your plan covers.
- If you need to read what ChatGPT actually said, the full text of every answer is kept, including the page addresses ChatGPT and AI Overviews write into it.
- If you need to see a competitor's sources change, the same questions run every week, so a site that starts or stops citing a competitor shows up in the next run.
- If you need a page of your own where the answer has none, the GEO Writer drafts it and can send it to WordPress or Shopify as an unpublished draft, so nothing goes live until you publish it.
Sources are listed by website for every engine. Page addresses appear where the engine writes them into its answer, which ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews do; Claude, Gemini and Perplexity give the site.
Plans start at $49 a month, billed yearly, for one brand on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews; Growth and Agency cover all five engines. The three-day trial is on one brand and needs a card.
Questions people ask
Which websites does ChatGPT cite most?
It depends on the question, so the list for your category has to be measured. For buyer questions about AI visibility software, across 80 ChatGPT answers from 1 to 25 September 2026, it cited reddit.com in 28, techradar.com in 26 and semrush.com in 13.
How do I see which sources ChatGPT used for an answer?
Ask with web search on and open the sources it links in the answer. Save them per question and per week, and note which competitors each answer named beside them. That record is the list to work from.
Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cite the same websites?
Mostly not. Of the 1,502 different sites the five engines cited across 391 answers in our data, 1,145 (76%) were cited by one engine only and 19 by all five. Being on the sites ChatGPT reads says little about the others.
Why does ChatGPT recommend a competitor without citing its website?
Because the recommendation usually rests on other people's pages. In our data Semrush was named in 160 answers across five engines, and its own site was cited in 34 of them; the other 126 named it while citing other sites.
Can I get onto the pages ChatGPT cites?
Some of them. A list or a review is written by someone you can contact, and a community such as Reddit is open to anyone who answers honestly. Offer the author something new, such as your own data, rather than a request to be added.
Does Greater Than Services show which sites the engines cite?
Yes. It is our own product: every week it records the sites each answer cited and the competitors named beside them, on the engines your plan covers, and keeps the full answer. Sites are listed for every engine, and page addresses appear where the engine writes them into its answer, as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews do.