What news sources AI chat bots read
Why it matters: AI is increasingly being used for search, and how a brand, company or public figure shows up in AI-generated responses could impact their ability to attract customers, investors and talent.
By the numbers: Muck Rack input more than 1 million realistic user prompts into ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude and analyzed the citations.
96% of links cited by AI sit squarely within the purview of communications and corporate affairs, per the report.
37% of inquiries cite external blogs or content (those not owned by the company or product targeted in the query) and 27% cite news stories produced by journalistic entities.
9% cite owned content and government or NGO websites, 7% cite aggregators and 6% cite academic research.
Social media and marketing content each make up 2% of the results, while press releases make up 1%.
Between the lines: A key difference between AI-generated search results and traditional SEO is that paid marketing and sponsored links rarely populate.
"Based on the data, we can see that the models are pretty clearly avoiding marketing materials," says Matt Dzugan, senior director of data at Muck Rack. "Essentially, the models are trying to earn the trust of [their] audience and don't want to regurgitate salesy materials."
Instead of paid marketing, owned content like thought leadership, fact sheets or corporate blogs "seem to be the sweet spot for for getting your content cited by these models," he added.
State of play: Fact-based queries and prompts are more likely to cite news outlets in the responses, the report found.
The outlets most cited include Reuters, the Financial Times, Time, Axios, Forbes and the Associated Press.
Of note, most of these outlets have publisher partnerships with OpenAI, however many are also cited regularly across other LLMs.
Yes, but: New media, like Substack newsletters and podcasts, are showing up too, but in more indirect ways.
As of now, this content is populating through social citations. For example, if "the podcast is on YouTube, and then YouTube generates a transcription file, then Google, in particular, will cite it," says Dzugan.
"If you're a PR person evaluating which podcasts to go on, it's important to know that if you go on one that also publishes on YouTube, you have a better shot at influencing Google Gemini than you would with an [audio only] podcast," Muck Rack CEO Greg Galant added.
LinkedIn, Reddit and Glassdoor — places where user-generated content and reviews can be found — can also influence an LLM's response, he added.
Driving the news: To handle this new reality, Muck Rack will launch Generative Pulse, a tool the monitors how brands are represented in generative AI platforms, says Galant.
"In this new GEO [generative engine optimization] world, recent content or news stories are what's driving the answers," says Galant.
"Journalism and [third-party] articles really affect the outcome, and that impacts the work of the PR function much more than marketing," he added.
Zoom out: Citations can change based on how the query is asked and each LLM has its own habits when responding, says Dzugan.
For example, the report found that Claude uses media outlets the least and is more likely to pull from academic, federal and technical sources.
ChatGPT is the heaviest user of news citations, pulling from mainstream publications like Reuters, AP, FT, Time and Axios.
Zoom in: Niche websites, trade publications and web encyclopedias are also permeating AI-generated responses, the report finds.
Wikipedia is cited most across all industry-specific inquiries, according to the Muck Rack report.
Scientific and medical databases are frequently cited in AI-generated responses relating to health care and education, while government sites are most likely to inform responses related to energy.
Inquiries about government will see federal agencies cited in responses from Claude and Gemini, while ChatGPT incorporates news sources as well.
The bottom line: These citations are not random, says Dzugan.
"If you study it, you can find the patterns and identify [the] niche journalists, publications or even which Wikipedia pages to prioritize within your industry."
"It's on the comms professionals to learn the patterns and then take action on them," he added.
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