61.7% of AI citations never name the brand
AI cited your page, but customers never saw your name. That is the norm, not the exception.
Key numbers
- Across 3,981 domains, 115 prompts, 14 countries and 4 engines, an industry analysis found 61.7% of citations never name the brand.
- Only 13.2% of appearances earn both a citation and a mention.
- ChatGPT cites 87% but names only 20.7%; Gemini names 83.7% but cites only 21.4%.
- Engines disagree on the same brand 22% of the time.
Method and sample
Sample: 3,981 domains, 115 prompts, 14 countries and 4 engines, with citations and brand mentions counted separately per engine.
What it means for brands
Being cited and being named are two different battles: citations come from content being used; mentions come from presence in the answer.
How SourceSight handles it
SourceSight tracks the two separately: for every prompt we record whether your brand appears in the answer and which sources the answer cited. Citation rate alone misleads — ghost citations only show up in the mention number.
Limits
The sample skews to large consumer brands; validate with your own audits.
References
Run it on your own project
What the same prompts return across 10 engines is only knowable by running them.
Related research
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