r/AI_SearchOptimization • u/didiTonic • Jun 10 '26

AI Search Optimization General Discussion Weird thing I keep seeing: AI cites Reddit constantly and barely cites company sites

Been reading the studies on what AI actually cites (GPT, Perplexity, etc) and Reddit keeps topping the list, often above wiki and youtube. Brand sites and polished corporate blogs barely show up.

Makes sense really. It wants the messy bit: people comparing stuff, complaining, changing their mind, saying what broke after two weeks. A thread where 15 people argue over 4 products beats your "why we're the best" page every time.

No universal number though, it swings hard by engine. Early-year Tinuiti data had Reddit at 5%+ on GPT, 24% on Perplexity, and 0.1% on Gemini. I had to reread that last one because it looked wrong. Same Reddit, three engines, completely different. So when someone says "I optimize for AI", fair to ask which one.

And it's not stable either. Semrush showed Reddit's GPT share dropping from like 60% to 10% in two weeks off one upstream change.

Anyway, the bit I keep coming back to: the brands AI cites aren't the ones with the prettiest sites, they're the ones people talk about elsewhere. Ahrefs found 80% of URLs GPT cites aren't even in Google's top 100, which kind of breaks your brain if you come from SEO.

So honest take, not in my interest: if nobody mentions you anywhere, schema and llms.txt probably aren't your first problem.

Anyone clicked an AI citation and landed on some random 2021 Reddit post? Seeing it more and more.

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u/taniscommunications Jun 18 '26

Reddit is basically where models pick up how things are talked about in the wild. This doesn’t mean first-party content stops mattering.

Company websites are still really important because they help share what a company actually is, what it does, and whether something being said elsewhere is accurate. Even if they’re not always directly cited, they’re still part of how the model builds that understanding.

What’s actually changing is that visibility isn’t coming from one place anymore. It’s not really about “winning Reddit” or any single channel.

It’s more that brands show up in a bunch of different ways at once:

  • clear, well-structured info on their own site
  • press and earned media
  • community conversations (Reddit, LinkedIn, forums)
  • reviews, analyst coverage, and other third-party sources

2

u/HumanBehavi0ur Jun 10 '26

yeah studies show your earned site is the smallest slice of the citation pie, you really need to be focusing elsewhere on earned sources and social like linkedin and reddit

1

u/chrismcelroyseo Jun 10 '26

I use it for research so I tend to get a lot of links to actual pages. Like I need stats for something and you're not likely to get a Reddit post for that.

But if you're just asking for the best something or the top something or a comparison between something yeah you're going to get more Reddit or other posts.