BrandGhost Observatory
Analyze your brand
The BrandGhost AI Discovery Observatory

Live data on how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity discover, cite and recommend brands across the web.

BrandGhost continuously analyzes AI responses, citations and recommendations to understand how the major AI engines see the web — and how differently they arrive at their answers.

Updated from the latest completed Observatory run· November 3, 2026
AI Citations Analyzed
5,688
Median Age of Cited Content
151d
Based on citations with detectable publication dates
Citations Under 90 Days Old
33.9%
Citations Over One Year Old
24.3%
Cross-Engine Source Overlap
~10.7%
Major AI engines often cite very different domains for the same questions.
Recommendation Sets With No Brand Overlap
42.5%
Share of comparable recommendation sets where engines shared no recommended brands.
Average Recommendation Overlap
11.7%
AI Engines Tracked
4
ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini · Perplexity
Trends over time

How AI discovery is shifting across Observatory runs

Headline metrics tracked across the most recent completed runs. Each bar is one run; the rightmost is the latest. This is where the Observatory becomes longitudinal — showing not just where AI discovery stands, but which way it's moving.

Citations Analyzed
5,688
▼ 1,666
Aug 2712 runsNov 3
Citations Analyzed: 5,688 in the latest run, down 1,666 from the first tracked run.
Median Cited Age
151d
▼ 93d
Aug 2712 runsNov 3
Median Cited Age: 151d in the latest run, down 93d from the first tracked run.
Cross-Engine Overlap
11%
▼ 2%
Aug 2712 runsNov 3
Cross-Engine Overlap: 11% in the latest run, down 2% from the first tracked run.
Recommendation Overlap
12%
▲ 1%
Aug 2712 runsNov 3
Recommendation Overlap: 12% in the latest run, up 1% from the first tracked run.

Trends cover the 12 most recent completed runs. The latest bar in each series matches the scoreboard above. Runs before a metric was reliably measurable appear as gaps rather than zeros.

Section 01

AI engines don't see the same web

Even when answering similar questions, major AI engines frequently rely on different parts of the web. This compares how often two engines cite the same domains for the same prompts.

Perplexity ↔ ChatGPT
14%
Perplexity ↔ Claude
9.2%
ChatGPT ↔ Claude
8.9%
There is no single AI search result.

Across shared questions, the major engines overlap on only a small fraction of cited domains — a reminder that AI visibility is fragmented across the web, not concentrated in one ranking.

Overlap is measured as the average share of shared cited domains between each engine pair across comparable prompts. Gemini is excluded from this comparison because its current citation representation is not directly comparable.

There's no single AI ranking to win. BrandGhost builds coordinated blog and social campaigns that represent you consistently across every engine buyers ask.

Analyze your brand
Section 02

How old is the content AI cites?

The distribution of cited-page age across mutually exclusive buckets, for citations where a reliable publication date could be detected.

0–30 days
14.7%
31–90 days
19.2%
91–180 days
22.6%
181–365 days
19.2%
1–2 years
8.8%
2–3 years
3.2%
3+ years
12.4%
AI citations are not just a freshness game.

More than 24.3% of dated citations in the current Observatory run point to content more than one year old. Established, durable content still earns AI citations.

Median cited age is 151 days. Only citations with a detectable page date are included (1,634 citations).

Durable content keeps earning citations. BrandGhost builds an owned content library on your own domain — long-form SEO clusters that compound instead of reach you rent on a platform.

Build your content library
Section 03

Citation freshness by AI engine

Median age of cited pages with detectable publication dates, by engine. Engines without sufficient date coverage are omitted.

Perplexity
146d
ChatGPT
149d
Claude
170d

Median age of cited pages with detectable publication dates.

Engines reward different recency. BrandGhost schedules and auto-publishes coordinated campaigns so your coverage stays current everywhere — no copy-pasting across channels.

See how it works
Section 04

Where AI citations come from

Broad, identifiable source categories from the latest run. Source classification is still expanding, so a large share of citations remains unclassified.

Government
1%
Reddit
0.7%
News
0.7%
Academic
0.7%
Reference
0.3%
Social
0.3%
Review sites
0.2%
Video
0.1%
Editorial
0%
Documentation
0%
Government is the largest individually identifiable citation source category in the Observatory.

Government accounts for 1% of all citations in the latest run among sources we can currently classify.

Source classification is an expanding capability. 96% of citations in this run are not yet assigned to an identifiable category and are excluded from the bars above rather than shown as a dominant "other" bucket.

AI cites content it can actually parse. BrandGhost structures your content for modern search and AI understanding — and surfaces the topics and buyer questions you're missing.

Find your content gaps
Section 05

How providers differ

The identifiable source mix varies by engine. Where an engine's citations can't yet be reliably classified, we say so rather than presenting misleading comparisons.

ChatGPT
Reference
10.1%
Reddit
9%
Review sites
2.1%
Government
1.1%
News
0.5%
Claude
News
1.4%
Review sites
0.5%
Government
0.2%
Academic
0.2%
Social
0.2%
Gemini
Provider source classification currently unavailable for this engine.
Perplexity
Government
2.6%
Academic
1.8%
News
1.5%
Reddit
1.2%
Social
0.8%
Section 06

Top public citation sources

A limited leaderboard of the most-cited recognizable domains in the latest run. This is a benchmark sample, not the full citation database.

DomainCitationsShare of runEngines
reddit.com400.7%2
forbes.com270.5%3
consumerreports.org240.4%2
yahoo.com240.4%2
ftc.gov220.4%1
usnews.com210.4%2
wikipedia.org190.3%1
realtor.com160.3%1
linkedin.com150.3%2
homelight.com150.3%1
rtings.com140.2%3
pcmag.com130.2%1
businessinsider.com130.2%1
ones.com130.2%2
cnet.com110.2%1
cnbc.com110.2%2
goodhousekeeping.com100.2%2
chase.com100.2%1
consumeraffairs.com100.2%1
charitynavigator.org90.2%2

These are the domains AI trusts today. BrandGhost helps you earn a place among them by building authority and an owned content library on your own domain — not rented reach on someone else's.

Analyze your brand
Section 07

AI discovery is a representation problem, not just a ranking problem

The Observatory data suggests that AI engines frequently rely on different domains and can recommend different brands for similar questions.

For businesses, visibility increasingly depends on how consistently their products, expertise and reputation are represented across the web — not simply whether a single page ranks in traditional search.

How does AI see your brand?

BrandGhost Launchpad analyzes how your company is represented across search and AI discovery, identifies visibility gaps, and turns those gaps into an actionable content strategy.

Methodology

About the data

The BrandGhost AI Discovery Observatory runs a cross-section of consumer and business discovery questions through major AI providers and analyzes the resulting recommendations and cited sources.

Metrics shown on this page reflect the latest completed Observatory run.

Publication-age metrics only include pages where a reliable date could be identified.

Source and content classifications may have different coverage levels. Metrics with incomplete classification are explicitly labeled.

AI systems, models and retrieval behavior change frequently, so Observatory statistics should be treated as a snapshot of the current AI discovery environment.