Someone on your team says the way to show up in AI answers is more press. Someone else says: fix your website first.
We checked which side the citations favour, using internal research at Genezio. We looked at the types of pages cited when two AI assistants answered questions about companies in six industries: ChatGPT (from OpenAI) and Google AI Overviews (the AI summary above Google's regular results).
The short version: In our data, company websites made up 64% to 86% of the cited pages in a typical answer, in every industry we could measure on both assistants. Independent media made up only 5% to 16%. "Company websites" includes your competitors' and other sellers' sites, but yours is the one part of that share you control, so the facts on it matter most.
The data covers 3,206 answers from simulated conversations between 1 August and 26 September 2026 (31 August to 13 September not included).
Company websites supply most of what AI assistants cite
Two terms first. Company websites are sites run by any business that sells something: the company asked about, its competitors and other sellers. Media and news are publishers that don't sell what they write about, like news sites, magazines and review sites.
Each number is the share of cited pages in a typical answer, with every company weighted the same.
| Industry | ChatGPT: company sites | ChatGPT: media | Google AI Overviews: company sites | Google AI Overviews: media |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail & e-commerce | 73% | 15% | 64% | 13% |
| Banking & finance | 72% | 14% | 68% | 16% |
| Real estate & construction | 80% | 9% | – | – |
| Legal & professional services | 79% | 7% | – | – |
| Health, pharma & dental | 73% | 7% | 81% | 8% |
| Software & IT services | 86% | 5% | 75% | 5% |
Company websites led in every row, and outweighed media several times over. A dash means too few companies to measure.
The rest came from forums, video and social sites, research and public sources, and shops and listings.
These shares are estimates, but the gap is too wide for the uncertainty to close it. The media shares are the least stable: with a different set of companies, banking on ChatGPT could land anywhere from 7% to 23%.
What this means: When these assistants answer questions about companies, they mostly quote companies.
Why your own site matters most
If assistants mostly quote company websites, the next question is which ones. Your site competes for that biggest pool of citations, and it's the only page in the pool you fully control. Our reading (not something we measured directly): if your site doesn't state a fact clearly, the next most citable source is likely someone else's company page.
That matters because citations show which pages shape what the assistant says about you: whether it recommends you, and whether it gets your facts right.
Two findings from separate internal research point the same way:
- Owned pages keep their citations longer. Seventy-six days after first being cited, owned pages (a brand's or a competitor's) kept 57% to 74% of their early presence. Third-party pages kept 33% to 37%.
- Missing documents get quoted from elsewhere. In mid-August 2026, ChatGPT began citing Scribd, a document-sharing site, about four times as often. Its share of answers went from 1.7% to 7.0%. Many of the cited files were old copies of company fee lists, manuals and offers. We covered this case in Is ChatGPT citing an old copy of your price list? It's one observed case, not proof of cause, but the risk is clear: if your current version isn't easy to find on your site, an assistant may quote an outdated one with your name on it.
Press is a small slice of citations
So where does that leave press coverage? Independent media made up 5% to 16% of a typical answer's citations. Banking and retail were highest, software lowest.
The implication: Press supports your website; it doesn't replace it. This doesn't mean media coverage doesn't work. We measured citations, not influence on recommendations or on what models learned in training.
What to do: put your facts where assistants already look
- Put the key facts on your own site. State current product, pricing, fee and comparison details in plain text, where they're easy to find.
- Publish the current version of every document people ask about. Fee lists, manuals, offers and rate sheets belong on your site, clearly dated.
- See which competitor and seller pages get cited for your prompts. Those are the pages you're really competing with.
- Measure press in your own market before you budget for it, by checking what share of the pages cited for your own prompts comes from media sites.
- Judge citations by what they produce. The goal is being recommended, with your facts right; citations explain how the assistant got there. Genezio's documentation, for example, treats recommendations as the most important signal.
Want to see which sources sit behind what ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews say about your company, and whether those answers are accurate? Genezio runs persona-based, multi-turn conversation tests for brands.