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.
The numbers for Google AI Overviews
An AI Overview appeared for 22 of the 25 questions. The three that returned none:
- Which search engine does ChatGPT use for web results?
- How many prompts should I track to measure AI visibility?
- How does Perplexity choose which sources to cite?
Across the 22 overviews we read, Google cited 61 sources, 2.8 per overview, from 35 readable domains; 11 citations were redirect links. 3 citations were Google's own documentation.
| Domain | Citations | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | 7 | 7 |
| linkedin.com | 6 | 5 |
| amicited.com | 3 | 3 |
| reddit.com | 3 | 3 |
| aioseo.com | 1 | 1 |
| andrewjpyle.com | 1 | 1 |
| bluearcher.com | 1 | 1 |
| botdeploy.ai | 1 | 1 |
| botdetector.io | 1 | 1 |
| chatgpt.com | 1 | 1 |
| cmswire.com | 1 | 1 |
| developers.google.com | 1 | 1 |
What stands out
AI Overviews is the only assistant in this run that cites video and social pages. YouTube accounted for 7 citations, LinkedIn for 6 and Reddit for 3: 16 of 61, a quarter of everything it cited. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude cited 3 LinkedIn posts and nothing from YouTube or Reddit between them. The overviews draw on Google's index, where a tutorial video ranks for a how-to query, and the API assistants retrieve text.
The missing overviews matter as much as the present ones. Google's documentation says an overview is shown only when its systems decide it adds something to the normal results, and for three of our 25 questions it decided not to. The same day, for three local questions, it showed a local pack with Google Business Profile ratings for the accountant and the plumber and nothing for the dentist:
| 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 |
What this means for a small site
Before writing for AI Overviews, search your buyers' questions and see whether an overview appears at all. If it does, the citations lean on your Google Business Profile for local questions and on video and long posts for how-to questions, in a way no other assistant does. If it does not, the ranked results are the result. Google's eligibility rule is the plain one: indexed, and allowed to show a snippet. The five-assistant comparison sets these numbers beside the API assistants.
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.
Every question
| Question | Answered | Sources cited |
|---|---|---|
| How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT? | yes | 2 |
| Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my company when people ask for recommendations? | yes | 3 |
| Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses, and how does it pick them? | yes | 3 |
| Which search engine does ChatGPT use for web results? | no (error or no answer) | 0 |
| How do I get my website cited by Perplexity? | yes | 3 |
| How do I show up in Google AI Overviews for questions about my product? | yes | 3 |
| What is Google AI Mode and how do I get my site into it? | yes | 3 |
| Should I block GPTBot and other AI crawlers in robots.txt? | yes | 3 |
| What is llms.txt and does ChatGPT or Google actually use it? | yes | 3 |
| How can I track traffic from ChatGPT and Perplexity in Google Analytics? | yes | 1 |
| How do I check whether ChatGPT mentions my brand? | yes | 3 |
| How many prompts should I track to measure AI visibility? | no (error or no answer) | 0 |
| How do I find out what questions customers ask ChatGPT about my product category? | yes | 3 |
| How do I fix wrong information ChatGPT gives about my business? | yes | 2 |
| Does schema markup help a website get cited by AI assistants? | yes | 3 |
| What kind of pages do AI assistants cite most: comparison pages, FAQs, or blog posts? | yes | 3 |
| How do I write a comparison page that ChatGPT will cite? | yes | 3 |
| How do I get my product listed in ChatGPT shopping results? | yes | 3 |
| Do AI assistants use G2, Capterra or Trustpilot reviews when recommending software? | yes | 3 |
| How long does it take for a new page to show up in ChatGPT or Perplexity answers? | yes | 2 |
| What is AI visibility and how is it measured? | yes | 3 |
| What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO? | yes | 4 |
| How does Perplexity choose which sources to cite? | no (error or no answer) | 0 |
| How do I get my SaaS mentioned when people ask ChatGPT for the best tools in my category? | yes | 2 |
| Is there a free way to check my AI visibility? | yes | 3 |
