We Analyzed 83,670 AI Citations: ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity Don't Agree on Anything

We analyzed 54 days of AI search data across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity to understand how each engine cites sources, mentions brands, and differs in behavior.

The dataset includes 74,130 brand mentions, 83,670 citations, and 15,530 AI responses tracked between November 22, 2025 and January 16, 2026.

Here are the key questions we set out to answer:

• Do all AI engines use Wikipedia and LinkedIn the same way?

• How do citation patterns differ between ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity?

• What content types does each engine prefer?

• How much do AI engines rely on third-party sources vs. brand websites?

• Do AI engines agree on how they perceive brands?

TL;DR: 

• Do all AI engines use Wikipedia the same way? No. ChatGPT uses Wikipedia for 12.1% of citations. Claude uses it for 0.1%. Perplexity doesn't cite it at all.

• Do all AI engines use LinkedIn? Only ChatGPT. Claude and Perplexity cited LinkedIn zero times in our dataset.

• Which engine provides the most citations? Perplexity, at 1.26 citations per brand mention. ChatGPT is lowest at 0.98.

• What content types does each engine prefer? Claude favors blog content (43.8%). ChatGPT and Perplexity favor product pages (60.1% and 54.3%).

• How much do engines rely on third-party sources? About 83% of citations come from external sources. Only 17% come from brand websites.

• Do AI engines agree on brand sentiment? No. The same brand can be rated 79 points apart across engines, depending on which sources each engine cites.

• How concentrated are AI recommendations? Very. The top 10 brands capture 30% of all mentions.

Wikipedia Usage Varies Dramatically by Engine

The biggest surprise in our data is that Wikipedia citation rates differ by over 100x between engines.

ChatGPT uses Wikipedia for about 1 in 10 citations. Claude cited Wikipedia exactly twice in our entire dataset. Perplexity never cited Wikipedia at all.

This 121x gap between ChatGPT and Claude is significant. It means Wikipedia visibility translates very differently depending on which AI engine your audience uses.

What sources do Claude and Perplexity use instead?

Where ChatGPT reaches for Wikipedia, Claude and Perplexity draw from company blogs, market research firms, and vendor documentation.

LinkedIn Is Only Popular in Citations With ChatGPT

We saw a similar pattern with LinkedIn.

ChatGPT cited LinkedIn 900 times for our B2B software related prompts. Claude and Perplexity cited it zero times.

Recent studies from Semrush and Spotlight have shown LinkedIn rising as a citation source in AI search. Our data suggests this is specific to ChatGPT (and likely Google AI Overviews, which we didn't track). Claude and Perplexity don't appear to use LinkedIn as a citation source as much.

Perplexity Provides More Citations Per Mention

Not all engines cite sources at the same rate.

Perplexity provides about 29% more citations per brand mention than ChatGPT. This means when Perplexity mentions a brand, it's more likely to link to the source that informed that mention.

Content Type Preferences Differ Significantly

We categorized citations by content type and found clear differences in what each engine prefers.

Claude heavily favors blog content—nearly 4x more than ChatGPT. ChatGPT and Perplexity prefer product pages, feature documentation, and official company pages for B2B related prompts.

This makes sense given how each engine is positioned. ChatGPT in search mode looks for authoritative, factual content. Claude appears to value explanatory content that provides context. Perplexity splits the difference.

Third-Party Sources Dominate AI Citations

We looked at whether AI engines cite brand websites directly or rely on external sources.

Everytime a brand is mentioned in AI search, about 83% of citations come from third-party sources like review sites, news articles, analyst reports, and industry blogs. Only 17% come from the brand's own website.

This aligns with what other researchers have found. Muck Rack's December 2025 report showed 82% of AI citations coming from earned media. AirOps found brands are 6.5x more likely to be cited through third-party sources than their own domains.

First-party rates by engine:

Claude is most likely to cite brand websites directly (22.2%). ChatGPT is least likely (13.5%).

This connects to Claude's blog preference—since company blogs are first-party content, Claude naturally cites more owned properties.

AI Engines Disagree on Brand Sentiment

We tracked sentiment scores across engines and found major differences in how they perceive the same brands.

The same brand can be rated up to 79 points apart depending on which engine you ask. This happens because each engine pulls from different sources. 

Winners Take All: Top 10 Capture 30%

We looked at how brand mentions are distributed across our dataset.

The top 10 brands capture 30% of all AI mentions. Salesforce alone appears in 6.3% of responses and was ranked #1 a total of 295 times.

Out of 4980 unique brands tracked, most of the visibility goes to a small group at the top.

This research was conducted using tryanalyze.ai, which tracks brand visibility and attribution across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.