Research

The AI Citation Share Index 2026

Which brands do AI engines actually recommend? We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude the questions real buyers ask — dozens of buyer-intent prompts per niche, repeated for stability — and measured who gets cited. Open data, full method, reproducible by anyone.

What we measure

• AI Citation Share — each brand’s share of voice in AI answers, per engine and as a cross-engine mean.
• Citation status — cited / partial / absent, per brand × prompt × engine.
• Cross-engine agreement — how much the engines agree on the top brands (they often don’t).

How it’s run

Queries go through the official vendor APIs — no scraping — with the exact models and prompts recorded for every run. AI answers are non-deterministic, so each prompt is repeated and we report the stable signal plus the volatility. Your Snapshot uses the same method, on your category.

FAQ

What is the AI Citation Share Index?

An open, reproducible study of which brands the major AI engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude — actually name and cite when asked the questions real buyers ask. We publish the full prompt set, brand set, models and method so anyone can reproduce it.

What is "AI Citation Share"?

AI Citation Share is a brand’s share of voice inside AI answers: how often an engine cites it for a set of buyer-intent prompts, relative to its competitors. It is the 2026 equivalent of rank — citation status, not blue-link position.

How is it measured?

We query each engine with ~40 buyer-intent prompts per niche, repeated for stability, and record which brands are named or cited (in the answer text and the engine’s own citations). We then compute per-engine and cross-engine citation share and agreement. Every run records the exact prompts and models used.

Where can I see this applied to my brand?

The fastest way to see this method produce a real number is a free AI Visibility Snapshot on your own brand — that is the index, run for your category: which engines name you, which name your competitors. A broader public index across niches follows once we can publish one without exposing client data.