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Most-cited websites by Google AI Mode

The publishers and platforms Google AI Mode actually reaches for when it answers, ranked by citation share, with weekly movement.

Rolling 4 weeks: 25,938 citations · 8,208 model responses · every named domain seen across ≥ 2 independent projects

Top-50 stability: 26% retained week to week: a fast-changing source list

By modelAll models Claude Perplexity Gemini ChatGPT Grok Google AIO

This week's movers

Citation-share change, week commencing 2026-08-31 vs 2026-09-07. Minimum 25 citations in both weeks and a 0.2pp move to qualify; domains newly added to monitoring don't count as movers.

Gaining

facebook.com 2.8% → 5.2% ▲ +2.4pp

instagram.com 1.5% → 2.7% ▲ +1.2pp

tiktok.com 0.7% → 1.0% ▲ +0.3pp

reddit.com 1.8% → 2.0% ▲ +0.2pp

Declining

google.com 4.5% → 1.8% ▼ -2.7pp

Google AI Mode's top sources

Top 50 domains by share of all citations in the rolling window. The trend column is the weekly share trajectory.

#	Domain	Share	Citations
1	youtube.com	7.7%	1,997
2	google.com	6.6%	1,716
3	facebook.com	3.7%	948
4	instagram.com	2.1%	554
5	reddit.com	2.1%	542
6	tiktok.com	0.9%	240
7	shopping.google.com	0.7%	173
8	moneysupermarket.com	0.5%	125
9	gocompare.com	0.3%	89
10	uaeexperthub.com	0.3%	74
11	moneysavingexpert.com	0.3%	72
12	postoffice.co.uk	0.3%	70
13	gov.uk	0.2%	63
14	siman.com	0.2%	63
15	wikipedia.org	0.2%	61
16	autofact.cl	0.2%	55
17	nsinternational.com	0.2%	53
18	linkedin.com	0.2%	50
19	eurostar.com	0.2%	49
20	carwow.co.uk	0.2%	48
21	which.co.uk	0.2%	45
22	adac.de	0.2%	45
23	trustpilot.com	0.2%	44
24	fi.cr	0.2%	43
25	yahoo.com	0.2%	42
26	whatcar.com	0.2%	41
27	moneyhelper.org.uk	0.2%	40
28	quora.com	0.2%	39
29	mercadolibre.com.ar	0.2%	39
30	infobae.com	0.2%	39
31	samsung.com	0.1%	38
32	citizensadvice.org.uk	0.1%	38
33	comparethemarket.com	0.1%	37
34	tesla.com	0.1%	36
35	kia.com	0.1%	36
36	consumerreports.org	0.1%	36
37	scribd.com	0.1%	35
38	nespresso.com	0.1%	35
39	gob.pe	0.1%	34
40	plazavea.com.pe	0.1%	33
41	ato.gov.au	0.1%	33
42	bancobcr.com	0.1%	32
43	aviva.co.uk	0.1%	32
44	wise.com	0.1%	31
45	uswitch.com	0.1%	29
46	bancocajasocial.com	0.1%	27
47	anwb.nl	0.1%	27
48	gulfnews.com	0.1%	27
49	apple.com	0.1%	26
50	autoexpress.co.uk	0.1%	26

The race for the top

Where the leading sources sat against each other, week by week. Rank space makes every crossing an event.

Figure 1The race for the top of the index

Rank within the top 6 sources, week by week. Only the biggest mover is coloured; the greys are the rest of the field.

Data table

Series	24 Aug	31 Aug	7 Sept	14 Sept
youtube.com	2	1	1	1
google.com	1	2	5	4
facebook.com	3	3	2	2
instagram.com	4	5	3	5
reddit.com	5	4	4	3
tiktok.com	6	6	6	6

3 places lost: google.com, #1 → #4 (14 Sept)

How sourced are the answers?

Citations per response over the last 12 complete weeks: whether the models are leaning on the web more or less.

Figure 2Citations per answer, week by week

Each cell is one model in one week; hotter cells mean answers leaned on more sources. Single-hue ramp; the scale runs from the lowest to the highest cell shown.

Data table

Series	22 Jun	29 Jun	6 Jul	13 Jul	20 Jul	27 Jul	3 Aug	10 Aug	17 Aug	24 Aug	31 Aug	7 Sept
Google AI Mode	3.3	2.9	2.7	3.3	6	5.6	10.6	9.6	8.7	3.5	3.1	3.1

Methodology

What's counted: every citation/source URL Google AI Mode returned across the rolling 4 ISO weeks, aggregated from every analysis run on BrandInsightAI. Citations deduplicate to one registrable domain per model response.
Quality gate: a domain must appear across ≥ 2 distinct projects to be named; shares are computed against ALL citations in scope, so the gate hides names, never distorts percentages.
Movers: week-over-week comparisons use the two most recent COMPLETE ISO weeks (2026-08-31 → 2026-09-07); the in-progress week is excluded because it refreshes hourly, and a domain must clear the citation floor in BOTH weeks, so a newly monitored category entering the dataset never shows up as a gainer.
Freshness: the snapshot behind this page recomputes every hour. All figures are measured, never estimated.

Where next

This board answers "which websites does AI cite?". These answer the questions that come next — which brands it recommends, which sources each model prefers, and how any of it is counted.

By modelAll models Claude Perplexity Gemini ChatGPT Grok Google AIO

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