{"data":{"slug":"which-sites-does-chatgpt-cite-most-august-2026","series":"cited_publishers","question":"Which sites does ChatGPT cite most?","lede":"ChatGPT cites google.com more than any other site, with 8.6% of citations (5,871 citations). The August 2026 sample covers 4,207 responses and 68,519 total citations.","body_markdown":"google.com is the site ChatGPT cites most, by a wide margin. It took 8.6% of citations, 5,871 in total, and appeared in 1,757 responses. The next named domain, PubMed, is far behind at 1.3%.\n\nThe top of this table is thin. Everything outside the top 15 domains, the Other bucket, accounts for 83.5% of citations (57,194). Even the leader holds less than a tenth, which means ChatGPT's sourcing is spread across a long tail of smaller sites rather than concentrated in a handful of publishers.\n\nAfter google.com there is a steep drop. PubMed gets 1.3%, OpenAI's own help center (help.openai.com) gets 1.1%, and everything else sits at 0.7% or below. help.openai.com appears in 634 responses, second only to google.com's 1,757, so OpenAI leans on its own documentation more than almost any external source.\n\nOfficial and academic domains dominate the list. Three Indian income tax domains all appear: incometaxindia.gov.in at 0.7%, incometax.gov.in at 0.6%, and wmstatic-prd.incometaxindia.gov.in at 0.3%. On the research side, PubMed (1.3%), PMC (0.6%), ScienceDirect (0.4%), doi.org (0.3%), and arxiv.org (0.3%) round out the top 15. ChatGPT reaches for primary sources, official references, and product documentation rather than news or editorial sites.\n\nReddit is the outlier, and it is not a good story for forums. Its share of citations fell 87.1 percentage points month over month to 0.5% (323 citations). It now trails help.openai.com and two Indian tax domains.\n\nLower in the table, developers.google.com shows the opposite pattern. It logged 469 citations across only 64 responses, the fewest of any named domain in the top 15. Where help.openai.com spreads across many answers, developers.google.com gets cited repeatedly inside a small set of technical ones.\n\nFor anyone chasing AI visibility, the message is sobering. The leader holds 8.6% and 83.5% of citations sit in a long tail no single publisher controls. There is no rank-for-ChatGPT playbook here; the sites that get cited are the ones ChatGPT already treats as authoritative, mostly official documentation, primary research, and government reference pages.\n\nThe practical move is to stop hunting for one citation slot and instead publish the kinds of pages ChatGPT already reaches for: docs, original research, and reference material on stable domains. Reddit's collapse is the cautionary note. A channel that was prominent a month ago can vanish from AI answers overnight, so no single source is a durable backdoor.","faq":[{"answer":"google.com leads with 8.6% of citations (5,871). PubMed follows at 1.3%, then OpenAI's own help center, help.openai.com, at 1.1%. The next entries, incometaxindia.gov.in and developers.google.com, each sit at 0.7%, and everything below is 0.6% or less.","question":"Which sites does ChatGPT cite most?"},{"answer":"Barely concentrated at all. The Other bucket, everything outside the top 15 domains, holds 83.5% of citations (57,194). Even the leading domain takes only 8.6%, so most citations come from a long tail of smaller sites.","question":"How concentrated is ChatGPT's sourcing?"},{"answer":"Reddit's share fell 87.1 percentage points month over month, ending August at 0.5% (323 citations). It now trails help.openai.com and two Indian tax domains.","question":"What happened to Reddit in ChatGPT citations?"},{"answer":"Official and academic domains cluster at the top. PubMed (1.3%), PMC (0.6%), ScienceDirect (0.4%), doi.org (0.3%), and arxiv.org (0.3%) all appear, along with three Indian income tax domains: incometaxindia.gov.in (0.7%), incometax.gov.in (0.6%), and wmstatic-prd.incometaxindia.gov.in (0.3%). News and editorial publishers are absent from the top 15.","question":"What kinds of sites does ChatGPT cite?"},{"answer":"Stop chasing a single citation slot. 83.5% of citations live in a long tail, and the biggest named source holds 8.6%. The sites that do get cited are mostly official documentation, primary research, and government reference pages, so publishing those formats is a more realistic path than trying to displace google.com.","question":"What should a marketer do with this?"}],"period_start":"2026-08-01","period_end":"2026-08-31","period_label":"August 2026","payload":{"table":{"rows":[{"key":"google.com","delta":null,"value":8.6,"citations":5871,"publisher":"google.com","responses":1757},{"key":"pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov","delta":null,"value":1.3,"citations":879,"publisher":"pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov","responses":268},{"key":"help.openai.com","delta":null,"value":1.1,"citations":736,"publisher":"help.openai.com","responses":634},{"key":"incometaxindia.gov.in","delta":null,"value":0.7,"citations":512,"publisher":"incometaxindia.gov.in","responses":156},{"key":"developers.google.com","delta":null,"value":0.7,"citations":469,"publisher":"developers.google.com","responses":64},{"key":"incometax.gov.in","delta":null,"value":0.6,"citations":443,"publisher":"incometax.gov.in","responses":83},{"key":"pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov","delta":null,"value":0.6,"citations":414,"publisher":"pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov","responses":211},{"key":"reddit.com","delta":-87.1,"value":0.5,"citations":323,"publisher":"Reddit","responses":219},{"key":"sciencedirect.com","delta":null,"value":0.4,"citations":298,"publisher":"sciencedirect.com","responses":179},{"key":"monday.com","delta":null,"value":0.4,"citations":252,"publisher":"monday.com","responses":65},{"key":"linkedin.com","delta":null,"value":0.4,"citations":247,"publisher":"LinkedIn","responses":128},{"key":"github.com","delta":null,"value":0.4,"citations":243,"publisher":"GitHub","responses":108},{"key":"wmstatic-prd.incometaxindia.gov.in","delta":null,"value":0.3,"citations":238,"publisher":"wmstatic-prd.incometaxindia.gov.in","responses":92},{"key":"doi.org","delta":null,"value":0.3,"citations":216,"publisher":"doi.org","responses":116},{"key":"arxiv.org","delta":null,"value":0.3,"citations":184,"publisher":"arxiv.org","responses":127},{"key":"Other","delta":null,"value":83.5,"citations":57194,"publisher":"Other","responses":null}],"columns":[{"key":"publisher","label":"Publisher"},{"key":"value","label":"% of citations"},{"key":"citations","label":"Citations"},{"key":"delta","label":"MoM change (pp)"}]},"period":{"end":"2026-08-31","label":"August 2026","start":"2026-08-01"},"series":"cited_publishers","k_stats":{"citations_included":68519,"responses_included":4207,"publishers_published":15},"highlights":{"top_share":8.6,"top_citations":5871,"top_publisher":"google.com"},"description":"Top domains cited in ChatGPT answers from url_metrics, with a minimum team diversity threshold before publishing.","methodology":{"filter":"ChatGPT answers only.","metric":"Top domains from cited URLs (up to 15), plus Other for the long tail.","sample":"Based on AI answers collected across Zerply customers. This is not a random sample of the open web.","source":"Aggregated from Zerply URL / domain citation metrics.","window":"Covers the previous calendar month."},"slug_prefix":"which-sites-does-chatgpt-cite-most","generated_at":"2026-09-02T11:00:42.141054+00:00","question_seed":"Which sites does ChatGPT cite most?"},"published_at":"2026-09-02T11:15:54+00:00","json_url":"/public/research/reports/which-sites-does-chatgpt-cite-most-august-2026.json","csv_url":"/public/research/reports/which-sites-does-chatgpt-cite-most-august-2026.csv"}}