The PingMyBrand data study
The State of AI Citations: what engines actually cite.
Citation-volume reports are the standard linkable asset in this category — Otterly.ai and others publish aggregate citation counts across their tracked brands. We don't have their scale yet, and we won't round a number up to look like we do. Every figure below comes from our own live scan pipeline — the same one behind every free report on this site — recomputed on every page load from real, stored scans only.
Brands in the corpus
6
real, live-engine scans — every domain we've ever scanned, free or paid
Distinct sources cited
61
third-party domains AI engines actually cited answering category questions
Simulated scans excluded
29
domains whose only scan on record had no live engine key — disclosed, never counted above
Per engine
How often each engine names — and cites — the brand it's asked about
“Cited” here is a strict, first-party measurement: the engine named the brand AND referenced its own domain in the answer — not a broad web-citation count. Averages are computed only over brands where that engine returned real (non-simulated) data this run.
| Engine | Brands measured | Avg. mention rate | Avg. citation rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 6 | 0% | 0% |
| Claude | 6 | 0% | 0% |
| Gemini | 6 | 0% | 0% |
| Perplexity | 6 | 6% | 0% |
Where AI looks
The source domains AI engines cite most, across every brand we've scanned
Built from the real citation URLs retrieval engines (Perplexity, and Grok when live) return with their answers — chat-completion engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) typically return prose with no links, so this list skews toward retrieval-engine behavior by construction, not by our choice.
| Source | Category | Citations | Distinct brands |
|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com | Social | 222 | 6 |
| medium.com | Social | 98 | 2 |
| pub.dev | Corporate | 82 | 1 |
| trysight.ai | Corporate | 67 | 1 |
| docs.flutter.dev | Corporate | 48 | 1 |
| stackoverflow.com | Social | 47 | 1 |
| linkedin.com | Social | 44 | 2 |
| lokalise.com | Corporate | 44 | 1 |
| phrase.com | Corporate | 39 | 1 |
| github.com | Social | 35 | 2 |
| semrush.com | Corporate | 27 | 2 |
| tripadvisor.de | Corporate | 27 | 1 |
| opentable.de | Corporate | 26 | 1 |
| elfsight.com | Corporate | 25 | 1 |
| fluttergems.dev | Corporate | 24 | 1 |
| reverieinc.com | Corporate | 24 | 1 |
| localizely.com | Corporate | 22 | 1 |
| sueddeutsche.de | Corporate | 21 | 1 |
| intlayer.org | Corporate | 20 | 1 |
| jotform.com | Corporate | 20 | 1 |
Methodology
Where every number on this page comes from
- The corpus. Every domain PingMyBrand has ever scanned — free reports, paid tracked brands, and our own house scan of pingmybrand.com (see /proof, and its per-prompt breakdown on the citation scoreboard) — read from the same live store that powers the app.
- Real scans only. A run counts only if at least one AI engine returned live (non-simulated) data. Fully-mocked runs — no engine API key configured, or every probe failed — are excluded from every rate and source count, and disclosed separately as “simulated scans excluded” above.
- One scan per brand. Each tracked domain contributes its single latest real scan, so a brand re-scanned weekly can't outweigh a brand scanned once — the same convention as our State of AI Visibility study.
- Mention rate is the share of unprompted buyer questions where the engine named the brand of its own accord (branded questions that already name the brand are excluded). Citation rate is the share of unprompted questions where the engine both mentioned the brand AND referenced the brand's own domain in the answer.
- Source domains. Pulled from the engines' own returned citation URLs (never scraped or guessed from prose), aggregated per domain across every real run, ranked by total citations.
Last computed: August 29, 2026. This page is server-rendered on every request from the live store, so it is never stale beyond the store itself.
Questions, answered
About this report
A mention is when an engine names the brand of its own accord, unprompted. A citation is the stricter measurement: the engine named the brand AND referenced the brand's own domain in its answer. Every rate on this page is one of those two, never a mix of both.
Every domain PingMyBrand has ever scanned — free reports, paid tracked brands, and our own house scan of pingmybrand.com — read from the same live store that powers the app, with the single latest real scan counted per brand.
No. A run only counts if at least one AI engine returned live, non-simulated data; fully-mocked runs (no engine API key configured, or every probe failed) are excluded from every rate and source count on this page, and disclosed separately as 'simulated scans excluded.'
Otterly.ai and others publish aggregate citation counts at a scale we don't have yet, and we won't round our numbers up to look like we do — every figure here comes from our own live scan pipeline, shown honestly at our current corpus size.
Live, on every page load — it's recomputed straight from the real scan store, so it reflects the corpus as it stands right now rather than a cached or scheduled snapshot.
See the score side of this data: The State of AI Visibility study · How we compare to a citation-monitoring tool: PingMyBrand vs Otterly.ai
Share the data
Share the citation data
Recomputed live from real, non-simulated scans. Share it — anyone who clicks through sees the same live numbers, then can run their own scan to join the dataset.
https://pingmybrand.com/state-of-ai-citations?utm_source=launch
Add your brand to the real dataset in about a minute.
Every free scan runs the same live probe against ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and its result folds straight into this page. Free, no signup.