We asked 25 questions a small business or SaaS team might ask before buying an AI visibility tool, from "How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?" to "Is there a free way to check my AI visibility?". Each question went once to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude through their official APIs with web search switched on, and once to Google AI Overviews from a live results page, through Cite42 on 2026-10-21. We recorded every source each assistant cited: 617 citations in all. The full question list is at the end of this page.
| Assistant | Questions answered (of 25) | Sources cited | Per answered question | Questions with any citation | Own or search-engine documentation | Redirect links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 25 | 47 | 1.9 | 18 | 43 | 0 |
| Perplexity | 25 | 250 | 10.0 | 25 | 22 | 0 |
| Gemini | 25 | 202 | 8.1 | 25 | 2 | 179 |
| Claude | 25 | 118 | 4.7 | 13 | 2 | 0 |
| Google AI Overviews | 22 | 61 | 2.8 | 22 | 3 | 11 |
Five different habits
Perplexity cites ten sources on every question, from 187 domains over the run, most of them small sites with the question in the title. Claude searched on 13 questions and answered the other 12 from memory; when it searched, it cited 9.1 sources from the same kind of page. ChatGPT cited 1.9 per answer and preferred the platforms' own documentation: 43 of its 47 citations. Gemini cited 8.1 per answer but 179 of 202 were redirect links. Google showed an overview for 22 of 25 questions and, where it did, leaned on YouTube, LinkedIn and Reddit for 16 of 61 citations.
| Assistant | Readable citations | Own or search-engine documentation | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 47 | 43 | 91% |
| Perplexity | 250 | 22 | 9% |
| Gemini | 23 | 2 | 9% |
| Claude | 118 | 2 | 2% |
| Google AI Overviews | 50 | 3 | 6% |
They rarely agree
| Assistants citing the same source | Sources |
|---|---|
| 1 | 562 |
| 2 | 50 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 1 |
Of 617 citations, 5 went to a source that three or more assistants chose for the same question. The one source four assistants agreed on was Google's own help page on AI Mode. The typical top source for a question was named by two of five. There is no single page to beat; there are five lists to get onto.
The domains that recur
Counting readable citations across all five assistants, these domains appeared for the most separate questions.
| Domain | Questions | Citations across assistants |
|---|---|---|
| help.openai.com | 10 | 20 |
| semrush.com | 8 | 13 |
| linkedin.com | 7 | 9 |
| youtube.com | 7 | 7 |
| searchengineland.com | 6 | 7 |
| spawned.com | 5 | 8 |
| developers.google.com | 4 | 9 |
| amicited.com | 4 | 7 |
| ahrefs.com | 4 | 6 |
| maxaeo.ai | 4 | 4 |
| support.google.com | 3 | 15 |
| perplexity.ai | 3 | 9 |
Official documentation leads, and then the pattern is two kinds of site: established SEO publishers (Semrush, Search Engine Land, Ahrefs) and small vendors and consultancies with question-titled learn hubs (spawned.com, amicited.com, maxaeo.ai). YouTube makes the list on the strength of AI Overviews alone, and LinkedIn mostly so.
Local questions, same day
We also asked for an accountant in Manchester, a dentist in Austin and a plumber in Leeds.
| Question | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Gemini | Claude | Google AI Overviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who is the best accountant for a small business in Manchester? | 2 sources | 10 sources | 10 sources | declined to name a business | 3 sources |
| Which dentist in Austin should I go to as a new patient? | 4 sources | 10 sources | 5 sources | declined to name a business | no answer |
| Which plumber should I call for a boiler repair in Leeds? | 2 sources | 10 sources | 7 sources | declined to name a business | 3 sources |
ChatGPT and Perplexity named businesses and cited directories and review platforms: trustatrader.com, trustedtraders.which.co.uk, zocdoc.com, healthgrades.com, ac-accounts.co.uk, accountantsup.co.uk. Google showed a local pack with Google Business Profile ratings for two of the three. Claude declined all three and pointed the user to Google reviews, Yelp or Healthgrades.
What to do with this
- Write the page for Perplexity and Claude first: the question as the title, the answer in the first paragraph. That is where a new page gets its first citation.
- Expect ChatGPT to cite the platform's documentation for how-to questions. Your page gets in when it carries something the documentation lacks: a measurement or a dated test of your own.
- For buyer and local questions, maintain the directory and review profiles the assistants quote, and your Google Business Profile for AI Overviews.
- Check whether an AI Overview appears for your questions at all before optimising for it.
- Measure each assistant separately and over several runs. A score that averages five assistants with five different habits hides which one you are missing from.
Limits
This is one run, on one day, on one topic. Asking the same questions a week later would give a different list of sources, which is why the methodology page treats single checks as snapshots. The assistants were queried through their APIs with search enabled, not through the consumer apps, so citation cards in the apps can differ. The questions are about AI visibility, so the cited domains lean towards marketing and SEO sites; a question about dentists would cite different ones. Gemini and AI Overviews return many citations as redirect links that hide the destination, so their domain tables cover only the links we could read.
The 25 questions
- How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?
- Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my company when people ask for recommendations?
- Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses, and how does it pick them?
- Which search engine does ChatGPT use for web results?
- How do I get my website cited by Perplexity?
- How do I show up in Google AI Overviews for questions about my product?
- What is Google AI Mode and how do I get my site into it?
- Should I block GPTBot and other AI crawlers in robots.txt?
- What is llms.txt and does ChatGPT or Google actually use it?
- How can I track traffic from ChatGPT and Perplexity in Google Analytics?
- How do I check whether ChatGPT mentions my brand?
- How many prompts should I track to measure AI visibility?
- How do I find out what questions customers ask ChatGPT about my product category?
- How do I fix wrong information ChatGPT gives about my business?
- Does schema markup help a website get cited by AI assistants?
- What kind of pages do AI assistants cite most: comparison pages, FAQs, or blog posts?
- How do I write a comparison page that ChatGPT will cite?
- How do I get my product listed in ChatGPT shopping results?
- Do AI assistants use G2, Capterra or Trustpilot reviews when recommending software?
- How long does it take for a new page to show up in ChatGPT or Perplexity answers?
- What is AI visibility and how is it measured?
- What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO?
- How does Perplexity choose which sources to cite?
- How do I get my SaaS mentioned when people ask ChatGPT for the best tools in my category?
- Is there a free way to check my AI visibility?
