Key Takeaways
  • **Insurify** (comparison tool and editorial content)
  • **[NerdWallet](https://nerdwallet.com)** (reviews and comparisons)
  • **MoneyGeek** (data-driven insurance analysis)
  • **Policygenius** (comparison marketplace)
  • **The Zebra** (insurance comparison engine)

What ChatGPT recommends is almost never the actual brand you would expect. Across 10 major industries, from insurance to education, our AI citation analysis at GetCited reveals the same pattern over and over: when users ask ChatGPT for recommendations, the sources it cites are overwhelmingly third-party comparison sites, review platforms, and aggregator domains rather than the actual businesses being discussed. Stockbrokers.com beats every actual trading platform. Insurify beats Progressive. G2 and Capterra beat the SaaS companies they review. The brands spending millions on advertising and traditional SEO are losing AI citations to websites that simply organize and compare information about those brands. This is not a glitch or a temporary phase. It is the structural reality of how AI search works, and it represents the single biggest visibility opportunity for any business willing to act on it.

This article breaks down what ChatGPT recommends across 10 industries, shows you which types of sites are actually earning citations in each vertical, and explains why the pattern exists and what you can do about it. Every data point here comes from real citation tracking, not speculation. If your business operates in any of these industries, this is the competitive intelligence you need.

Why This Analysis Matters Right Now

AI search is not replacing traditional search overnight, but it is growing fast enough that ignoring it is a strategic risk. Millions of people now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini for product recommendations, service comparisons, and buying advice. When they do, the AI engine pulls from a set of sources it trusts and builds its answer around those sources. If your brand is not one of those sources, you are invisible in that conversation.

What makes this especially urgent is that most brands assume their existing visibility will carry over. They think that because they rank on Google, have strong brand recognition, or spend heavily on advertising, AI engines will naturally cite them. They will not. AI citations follow a completely different logic than traditional search rankings. Understanding what ChatGPT recommends in your industry is the first step toward understanding where your brand stands in this new landscape.

The GetCited research team has been tracking AI citations by industry for months, and the findings are consistent enough to be called a rule rather than a trend. The rule is this: third-party sites that compare, review, and aggregate information about products and services get cited more than the products and services themselves. That rule holds across every industry we have studied.

Let us walk through all ten.

1. Insurance: Comparison Sites Dominate, Insurers Do Not

The insurance industry is one of the clearest examples of the third-party citation problem. When users ask ChatGPT questions like "what is the cheapest car insurance" or "best homeowners insurance for first-time buyers," the citations go to comparison and review sites almost every time.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for insurance queries include:

Notice what is missing from that list. The actual insurance companies. Progressive, State Farm, GEICO, Allstate, USAA. These are among the most recognized brands in America. They spend billions on advertising. And yet, when someone asks an AI engine for insurance recommendations, those brands are not the cited sources. The cited sources are the sites that compare those brands.

From our GetCited data, this plays out in specific and measurable ways. Progressive, a company with over 27 million policyholders and one of the largest advertising budgets in the country, was outperformed in AI citations by Insurify, a comparison site most consumers have never heard of. Progressive lost to Insurify not because Insurify has better brand recognition or more advertising dollars, but because Insurify publishes the kind of content AI engines want to cite: structured, detailed, regularly updated comparisons that directly answer the questions users are asking.

The structural reason for this is straightforward. When someone asks "Progressive vs State Farm," Progressive's own website does not have a page that answers that question. Progressive's website is designed to sell policies, not to provide objective comparisons. Insurify does have that page. It has hundreds of pages like that. And those pages are exactly what ChatGPT reaches for when it needs to build an answer to a comparative question.

This is not a criticism of Progressive's marketing strategy. It is a description of how AI citation works. If you do not publish content that answers the specific question being asked, someone else will, and they will get the citation.

2. SaaS and Software: Review Sites Beat the Products They Review

The SaaS industry might be the most dramatic example of third-party citation dominance. When users ask ChatGPT about software recommendations, project management tools, CRM platforms, or any other SaaS category, the citations almost universally go to review and comparison sites rather than the actual software companies.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for SaaS queries include:

So when someone asks ChatGPT "what is the best project management software," the answer is built from G2 category pages, Capterra comparison articles, and technology review roundups. It is not built from Monday.com's homepage, Asana's feature page, or ClickUp's product tour.

This makes perfect sense from the AI's perspective. The user asked for a recommendation, which requires comparing multiple options. No individual SaaS company's website provides an honest comparison of itself against its competitors. But G2 has exactly that, organized by category, with user ratings, feature comparisons, pricing data, and detailed pros-and-cons breakdowns. That is citation-ready content.

The SaaS companies themselves are left in a frustrating position. They have the deepest knowledge about their own product, the most accurate pricing information, and the most detailed feature documentation. But none of that gets cited because it does not answer the comparative question the user asked. A user asking "Asana vs Monday" does not want to read Asana's marketing page about why Asana is great. They want a side-by-side breakdown from a source that has evaluated both options.

For SaaS companies, the implication is direct: if you are not publishing comparison content on your own domain, you are ceding every comparative query about your product to G2, Capterra, and whatever blog posts happen to rank. You are letting third parties frame the conversation about your product, choose which features to highlight, and decide how your pricing compares.

3. Restaurants and Food: Yelp and TripAdvisor Own the Conversation

The restaurant industry has been shaped by review platforms for years, and AI citations follow the same pattern. When users ask ChatGPT for restaurant recommendations, the sources it pulls from are predictable.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for restaurant and food queries include:

Individual restaurants almost never get cited directly. This makes sense for small and independent restaurants that do not have the web presence to compete. But it also holds true for major restaurant chains and well-known establishments with extensive websites. When someone asks "best Italian restaurants in Chicago," ChatGPT does not go to individual restaurant websites to compile its answer. It goes to Yelp's Chicago page, TripAdvisor's restaurant rankings, and Eater Chicago's editorial picks.

The reason is the same structural pattern we see in every industry. The user's question requires aggregation and comparison. No single restaurant's website can answer "best Italian restaurants in Chicago" because no single restaurant is going to list its competitors. Only a platform that aggregates information about many restaurants can answer that question.

For restaurants, the practical implication is that your Yelp profile, TripAdvisor page, and presence on editorial food platforms matters more for AI visibility than your own website. That does not mean your website is irrelevant. It means that for recommendation-style queries, AI engines are going to cite the platforms that aggregate restaurant data, not the restaurants themselves.

Restaurants that want to influence what ChatGPT recommends about them need to think about their presence on these third-party platforms as part of their AI visibility strategy. Complete profiles, strong review volumes, and good ratings on Yelp and TripAdvisor are not just good for traditional reputation management. They are inputs into the AI citation pipeline.

4. Real Estate: Zillow and Realtor.com Are the Default Sources

Real estate follows the aggregator pattern with near-total dominance by two platforms. When users ask ChatGPT about home values, neighborhoods, market trends, or buying advice, the citations consistently point to the same set of sites.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for real estate queries include:

Individual real estate agents, brokerages, and even regional real estate companies are almost entirely absent from AI citations. This is true even for queries that are hyperlocal, like "best neighborhoods in Austin" or "is it a good time to buy in Denver." ChatGPT defaults to the aggregator platforms because those platforms have the structured data, the market-wide coverage, and the editorial content that answers these questions comprehensively.

For real estate professionals, this creates a difficult reality. The platforms that get cited are the same platforms that charge for leads and premium placement. Your expertise as a local agent, your knowledge of specific neighborhoods, your understanding of the local market dynamics, none of that is getting cited by AI engines because it lives in your head or on a website that ChatGPT does not reach for.

The opportunity here is in creating content that goes deeper than what Zillow or Realtor.com can provide. Market analysis with local expertise, neighborhood guides with insider knowledge, buying guides tailored to specific situations. This kind of content can earn citations if it is structured well and published on a domain that AI crawlers can access. But it requires a deliberate content strategy, not just a listing feed and a contact form.

5. Healthcare: WebMD and Mayo Clinic Set the Standard

Healthcare is one of the few industries where some actual providers do earn strong AI citations, but only the ones that have invested heavily in informational content. The pattern is still dominated by third-party health information sites.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for healthcare queries include:

The interesting dynamic in healthcare is that Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic are actual healthcare providers, not just information sites. They earn citations because they have invested enormously in their health information libraries. Mayo Clinic's website is not primarily designed to get patients to schedule appointments. It is designed to be the most comprehensive, trustworthy source of health information on the internet. That investment pays off directly in AI citations.

Most healthcare providers, hospitals, and medical practices do not get cited at all. Their websites are built around appointment scheduling, provider directories, and service descriptions. None of that is what ChatGPT reaches for when someone asks "what are the symptoms of a thyroid disorder" or "how is carpal tunnel syndrome treated."

The lesson from healthcare is that brands which invest in genuinely useful, comprehensive informational content can compete for AI citations even against pure-play information sites. Mayo Clinic proves that being an actual healthcare provider does not disqualify you from being an AI-cited source. But you have to build content that serves the informational need, not just the commercial one.

For smaller healthcare practices, this is admittedly a steep hill to climb. You are not going to out-content WebMD across every medical topic. But you can create comprehensive content in your specific area of expertise, the conditions you treat most often, the procedures you specialize in, the questions your patients ask every day. Targeted depth in your specialty can earn citations even when broad coverage cannot.

The legal industry follows the same pattern as insurance, with directory and information sites earning citations while individual law firms are mostly invisible to AI engines.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for legal queries include:

When someone asks ChatGPT "how to file for divorce in Texas" or "what to do after a car accident," the answer comes from these legal information platforms, not from individual law firm websites. This is true even though law firms often have extensive blog content covering exactly these topics.

The reason law firms struggle to earn AI citations despite having relevant content often comes down to two factors. First, the content on most law firm websites is written to attract local clients, not to serve as a comprehensive resource on a legal topic. It is thin, geographically targeted, and often repeats the same basic information that a hundred other law firm blogs have already published. Second, law firm content tends to end with a call to action rather than a thorough answer. "If you have been injured, contact our firm for a free consultation" is not the kind of conclusion that AI engines want to cite.

The legal information sites succeed because they provide complete, jurisdiction-aware, regularly updated answers to legal questions without any sales angle. Nolo's guide to filing for divorce covers every state, explains every step, and provides enough detail that the reader could actually use the information. Most law firm blog posts about divorce cover the topic at a surface level and then redirect the reader to call the firm.

For law firms that want AI visibility, the shift requires thinking of your content as a resource first and a marketing tool second. That does not mean removing your calls to action. It means building content that is genuinely comprehensive enough to be the best answer to the question, even before the reader considers hiring you.

7. Finance and Trading: Third-Party Sites Crush Actual Platforms

The finance and trading industry provides some of the most striking data in our entire analysis. When users ask ChatGPT about brokerage accounts, trading platforms, or investment tools, the citations go to review and comparison sites with overwhelming consistency.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for finance and trading queries include:

Here is the data point that should stop every financial services CMO in their tracks. From our GetCited tracking data, stockbrokers.com was the number one cited domain for brokerage-related queries. Not Fidelity. Not Charles Schwab. Not E-Trade. Not Robinhood. Stockbrokers.com. A review site beat every single actual trading platform in AI citations.

Think about what that means for a company like Fidelity, which manages trillions of dollars in assets. When a potential customer asks ChatGPT "what is the best brokerage for beginners," the answer is built from stockbrokers.com's reviews and Benzinga's comparison articles, not from Fidelity's own content. Fidelity has the data, the expertise, and the track record. But it does not have the comparison content structure that AI engines prefer.

The financial services industry is especially vulnerable to this dynamic because the queries users ask are inherently comparative. Nobody asks "tell me about Schwab." They ask "Schwab vs Fidelity" or "best brokerage for ETF investing" or "cheapest platform for options trading." Every one of those queries requires a multi-platform comparison, and the actual platforms do not publish those comparisons.

Benzinga understood this years ago. Their entire editorial model is built around comparison content: "5 Best Brokerages for Day Trading," "Robinhood vs Webull: Which Is Better," "Best Free Stock Trading Apps." That content is perfectly structured for AI citation. It answers comparative questions directly, includes structured data like pricing tables and feature comparisons, and covers the topic from the user's perspective rather than from any single platform's perspective.

The actual trading platforms, meanwhile, publish content about their own features, their own pricing, and their own tools. That content is useful for someone who has already decided to use the platform, but it is useless for someone still deciding between platforms. And the deciding phase is where AI citations matter most.

8. Ecommerce: Amazon and Review Blogs Own Product Recommendations

Ecommerce is the industry where most consumers have already experienced AI recommendations without thinking of them as AI citations. When users ask ChatGPT for product recommendations, the sources it relies on follow a predictable hierarchy.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for ecommerce and product queries include:

Amazon's dominance in ecommerce AI citations comes from the sheer volume of product data and customer reviews on its platform. When someone asks "best wireless headphones under $100," Amazon product pages are among the most cited sources because they contain the aggregated review data, pricing information, and feature specifications that AI engines need to build a recommendation.

But what is more interesting for brands is the role of review blogs and product testing sites. Wirecutter, RTINGS, and similar sites earn outsized AI citations because they do exactly what the user is asking for: they test products, compare them against each other, and make specific recommendations with clear reasoning.

For ecommerce brands and direct-to-consumer companies, this means that your product pages are not your most important AI visibility asset. Your product pages describe your product. But AI engines are rarely trying to describe a single product. They are trying to answer comparative questions. "Best running shoes for flat feet" is not a question your product page answers, even if your shoe is genuinely the best option for flat feet. The AI needs a source that has compared multiple options and concluded that yours is the best.

This is where brand-owned review and comparison content becomes critical. If you sell running shoes, publishing a genuine, detailed comparison of running shoes for flat feet, including your competitors, gives AI engines a page to cite when that question comes up. It feels counterintuitive to mention competitors on your own site, but the alternative is letting someone else control the narrative entirely.

9. Travel: TripAdvisor and Booking.com Control the Narrative

Travel is another industry where aggregator platforms have dominated consumer behavior for years, and AI citations follow the same power structure.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for travel queries include:

Hotels, airlines, tour operators, and destination marketing organizations are largely absent from AI citations for recommendation queries. When someone asks "best hotels in Barcelona" or "things to do in Tokyo," ChatGPT builds its answer from TripAdvisor reviews, Booking.com data, and editorial travel publications. The actual hotels and tourism boards are not part of the conversation.

This is particularly frustrating for hotels that have invested heavily in their own websites. A luxury hotel might have beautiful photography, detailed room descriptions, and comprehensive information about its amenities. None of that matters for AI citations because the user did not ask about that specific hotel. They asked for the best hotels in a city, and answering that question requires comparing many hotels, which only aggregator and editorial sites do.

For travel brands, the path to AI visibility runs through two channels. First, optimizing your presence on the platforms that do get cited, making sure your TripAdvisor profile is complete, your Booking.com listing is detailed, and your reviews are strong. Second, creating destination and comparison content on your own domain that goes beyond self-promotion. A hotel in Barcelona that publishes a genuine guide to the best hotels in Barcelona, including competitors, has a shot at earning the citation directly. A hotel that only publishes content about itself does not.

The editorial travel publications in this list, Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, and Condé Nast Traveler, earn citations because they produce comprehensive destination content. Their guides cover entire cities, regions, and travel categories. That breadth of coverage is what makes them useful to AI engines trying to answer open-ended travel questions.

10. Education: University Sites and Course Platforms Lead

Education is a somewhat unique industry in this analysis because some actual providers, specifically major universities, do earn meaningful AI citations. But the pattern still tilts toward aggregation and comparison.

The sites ChatGPT tends to cite for education queries include:

Major research universities like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard earn AI citations for two reasons. First, they produce enormous volumes of academic content that AI engines treat as authoritative. Second, their course catalogs and program descriptions are structured information that AI engines can extract and cite easily.

But for most educational institutions, the story is the same as every other industry. When someone asks "best online MBA programs" or "most affordable coding bootcamps," ChatGPT cites U.S. News rankings, Coursera's program listings, and Niche.com reviews, not the individual programs being recommended.

Course platforms like Coursera and edX occupy an interesting middle position. They are both the product and the aggregator. Coursera does not just offer its own courses. It aggregates courses from hundreds of institutions, creating exactly the kind of comparison and browsing experience that AI engines like to cite. When someone asks "best data science courses," Coursera's category page is a natural citation source because it lists and compares dozens of options.

For educational institutions that are not MIT or Stanford, the AI citation challenge is real. Your admissions page does not answer the comparative question a prospective student is asking. But your expertise in your specific field does give you an opportunity. A university with a strong nursing program that publishes comprehensive guides about nursing careers, nursing program comparisons, and nursing specialization overviews has a much better shot at AI citations than a university that only publishes program brochures and application deadlines.

The Universal Pattern: Why Third-Party Sites Win

Across all ten industries, the same structural dynamic is at work. Let us name it clearly.

AI engines answer questions by synthesizing information from multiple sources. When a user asks a comparative or recommendation question, the AI needs sources that have already done the work of comparing multiple options. Third-party comparison sites, review platforms, and aggregator domains provide exactly that. Individual brands, by design, only talk about themselves.

This creates a fundamental mismatch between what brands publish and what AI engines need. A brand publishes content about its own products and services. An AI engine needs content that compares multiple products and services. The brand's content cannot answer the comparative question, so the AI reaches for a source that can.

Here is why this matters so much. The majority of high-value queries in any industry are comparative. People do not ask "tell me about Brand X." They ask "Brand X vs Brand Y" or "best option for my situation" or "cheapest provider in my area." Every one of those queries requires multi-brand comparison content, and if Brand X has not published that content, Brand X is not getting cited.

The data across all ten industries confirms this:

This is the single biggest opportunity in AI visibility right now. And it is available to every brand willing to do what most brands will not.

The Opportunity: Create Your Own Comparison Content

If the problem is that third-party sites are earning citations by comparing brands, the solution is for brands to create their own comparison content. This is the strategic shift that GetCited has been advocating since we started tracking AI citations, and the data only gets more convincing with every audit we run.

Here is what brand-owned comparison content looks like in practice:

For an insurance company: "Progressive vs State Farm: A Detailed Comparison of Coverage, Pricing, and Claims Experience." Published on progressive.com. Honest, data-backed, regularly updated. Covers the exact query that consumers are typing into ChatGPT.

For a SaaS company: "Asana vs Monday.com vs ClickUp: Which Project Management Tool Fits Your Team?" Published on asana.com. Includes a genuine feature comparison table, pricing breakdown, and use-case recommendations, even when the comparison is not entirely favorable to Asana.

For a trading platform: "Best Brokerage Accounts for Beginners: Fidelity vs Schwab vs Robinhood." Published on fidelity.com. With real fee comparisons, platform walkthroughs, and honest assessments of where each platform excels.

For a hotel: "10 Best Boutique Hotels in Barcelona, Including Where We Think You Should Stay." Published on the hotel's own domain. Featuring genuine recommendations, not just a list that coincidentally puts them at number one.

The key word in all of these examples is honest. AI engines are sophisticated enough to detect content that pretends to be a comparison but is really just a sales pitch in disguise. If your "comparison" page concludes that your product is the best in every category with no weaknesses, AI engines will treat it as marketing content and reach for a more balanced source instead.

The brands that succeed with comparison content are the ones that treat it as a genuine resource. They acknowledge their competitors' strengths. They are transparent about their own limitations. They provide enough detail that a reader could make an informed decision even if they choose a competitor. This kind of honesty is what makes content citable. AI engines trust sources that demonstrate balanced evaluation, and they can detect the difference between real analysis and dressed-up advertising.

Why Most Brands Will Not Do This (And Why That Is Your Advantage)

The reason this opportunity exists at all is that most brands will not take it. The obstacles are real:

Legal teams resist comparison content. Lawyers worry about making claims about competitors that could lead to disputes. This concern is valid but manageable. Comparison content that sticks to publicly available data, published pricing, and documented features does not create legal risk.

Marketing teams resist mentioning competitors. The traditional marketing instinct is to never give competitors airtime on your own domain. This instinct made sense in a world where brand awareness was the primary goal. It makes less sense in a world where AI engines are actively looking for comparison content and will cite whoever provides it.

Leadership teams resist the investment. Creating genuine, comprehensive comparison content is expensive. It requires research, regular updates, and the kind of editorial rigor that most marketing teams are not staffed for. But the cost of not doing it is losing every comparative citation to a third party that may not represent your brand accurately.

Cultural resistance to honesty about weaknesses. Admitting that a competitor is better than you in any dimension feels wrong to most brand teams. But that honesty is exactly what makes comparison content citable. An AI engine that encounters a comparison page where Brand X wins every category will discount it as biased. An AI engine that encounters a comparison page where Brand X wins in some areas and loses in others will treat it as a credible source.

Every one of these obstacles is a reason why your competitors will not create this content either. The brands that push through these objections and publish genuine comparison content will capture a disproportionate share of AI citations in their industry. The market will remain wide open for longer than you think because these cultural and organizational barriers are deeply entrenched.

How to Build an AI Citation Strategy for Your Industry

Based on what we see across all ten industries, here is a practical framework for improving your AI citation performance:

Step 1: Audit Your Current AI Visibility

Before you create any content, you need to know where you stand. Run the queries your customers are actually asking through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Track which domains get cited. Count how many times your domain appears versus your competitors and third-party sites. GetCited's audit tools can automate this process, but even a manual audit of 20 to 30 key queries will give you a clear picture.

Step 2: Identify the Comparison Queries You Are Losing

Look specifically for queries that include your brand name plus a competitor's name, queries that ask for "best" or "top" options in your category, and queries that compare features, pricing, or alternatives. These are the queries where third-party sites are eating your citations.

Step 3: Create Comparison Content That AI Engines Trust

For each high-value comparison query, create a dedicated page on your own domain that answers it thoroughly. Include structured data, comparison tables, clear headings, and honest assessments. Update it regularly. Make sure AI crawlers can access it by checking your robots.txt and ensuring your site does not block AI user agents.

Step 4: Structure Content for AI Extraction

Use clear heading hierarchies. Put direct answers in the first paragraph. Include FAQ sections with schema markup. Use comparison tables and bulleted lists. Give AI engines clean extraction targets so your content is easy to parse and cite.

Step 5: Monitor and Iterate

AI citations are not static. The sources ChatGPT cites change as new content is published and indexed. Monitor your citation performance over time, track which pages are earning citations, and update your content to stay current.

The Bottom Line for Every Industry

What ChatGPT recommends in your industry is not determined by your brand size, your advertising budget, or your traditional search rankings. It is determined by who publishes the best answer to the question being asked. And for comparative, recommendation-style queries, the best answer is almost always a detailed, honest, well-structured comparison.

Right now, that comparison is being published by someone else. Stockbrokers.com is answering the questions that Fidelity should be answering. Insurify is answering the questions that Progressive should be answering. G2 is answering the questions that every SaaS company should be answering on its own domain.

The brands that recognize this pattern and act on it will earn the AI citations that their competitors are leaving on the table. The brands that do not will continue to watch third-party sites tell their story for them.

GetCited tracks these AI citation patterns across every major industry and AI platform. If you want to see exactly where your brand stands and which citations you are losing, start with an AI visibility audit and build your comparison content strategy from there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does ChatGPT recommend most often when users ask about products or services?

ChatGPT most often cites third-party comparison and review sites rather than the actual brands being discussed. Across every industry we have studied, aggregator platforms, review sites, and comparison tools earn more citations than the businesses they write about. This holds true for insurance (Insurify over Progressive), software (G2 and Capterra over SaaS companies), finance (stockbrokers.com over actual trading platforms), and every other vertical. The reason is structural: ChatGPT needs sources that compare multiple options, and individual brand websites only cover themselves.

Why do third-party sites get more AI citations than actual businesses?

Third-party sites get more AI citations because they publish content that matches how users ask questions. Most user queries are comparative, asking for the "best" option, comparing two products, or evaluating alternatives. Individual businesses publish content about their own offerings, which cannot answer a comparative question. A review site that compares five brokerage accounts is inherently more useful to an AI answering "best brokerage for beginners" than any single brokerage's product page. AI engines follow the content that answers the question, regardless of who published it.

Can brands actually compete with comparison sites for AI citations?

Yes, but only if they create their own comparison content. Brands that publish genuine, balanced, well-structured comparison pages on their own domains can earn citations for the same queries that third-party sites currently dominate. The key is honesty and comprehensiveness. A comparison page that reads like a marketing pitch will not get cited. A comparison page that honestly evaluates multiple options, including your competitors' strengths, will be treated as a credible source by AI engines. Our data shows that brands willing to do this can significantly improve their AI citation performance.

How does AI citation differ across industries?

The core pattern of third-party dominance holds across all industries, but the specific dominant sites vary. In insurance, comparison tools like Insurify lead. In SaaS, review platforms like G2 and Capterra lead. In healthcare, medical information sites like WebMD and Mayo Clinic lead. In finance, sites like stockbrokers.com and Benzinga lead. The common thread is that whatever site provides the most comprehensive, structured, comparative information in a given industry is the one that earns the most AI citations. Industries where brands have invested heavily in informational content, like healthcare, show some exceptions, but the overall pattern is consistent.

How can I check what ChatGPT recommends about my brand?

Start by running the queries your customers are most likely to ask through ChatGPT and other AI engines. Search for your brand name plus a competitor's name, your product category plus "best" or "top," and specific comparison queries relevant to your industry. Track which domains appear in the citations for each response. Note whether your domain appears, how often it appears relative to competitors and third-party sites, and which specific pages are being cited. GetCited offers automated AI visibility audits that track these citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, giving you a complete picture of your AI citation landscape across all major platforms.