How Many Sources Do AI Search Engines Actually Cite?

How many sources does ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Copilot actually cite when it answers a question? We track the average number of citations per response across major AI search engines every day — so you can see which models cite the most, how that's changing, and what it means for your content strategy.

ChatGPT Citations

Track how ChatGPT references external sources in its responses. Higher citation rates indicate more comprehensive, well-sourced answers—a critical metric for understanding AI search behavior and optimizing your content strategy.

Note: This data only shows numbers from ChatGPT messages where web search has been triggered. Responses without web search are not included in these statistics.

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AI Overviews Citations

Monitor how Google AI Overviews references external sources in search results. Higher citation rates indicate more comprehensive, authoritative answers—essential data for understanding Google's AI-powered search and optimizing your content visibility.

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Perplexity Citations

Analyze how Perplexity cites and prioritizes sources in its AI-powered search responses. Higher citation rates reflect more research-based, comprehensive answers—key insights for optimizing your content to appear in Perplexity's curated search results.

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Microsoft Copilot Citations

Understand how Microsoft Copilot references and attributes sources in its AI-powered responses. Higher citation rates indicate more comprehensive, well-researched answers—crucial data for optimizing your content visibility across Microsoft's AI ecosystem including Bing Chat and Edge browser integrations.

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How we collect this data

We collect millions of prompt responses, citations, and click data from the actual user interfaces of major AI platforms — over 1 billion data points and growing. This gives us one of the largest and most authentic datasets on how AI search engines cite sources and recommend brands.

Real UI monitoring

We collect data from the interfaces of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, AI Overviews, and more — the same results hundreds of millions of users see daily.

1B+ data points

Our dataset spans over 1 billion analyzed citations, prompts, and responses — giving us one of the largest AI search datasets available.

Aggregated & public

We publish these reports freely so the GEO and AI search community can learn from the data. All reports are based on aggregated, non-identifiable trends.

Want to start tracking your own AI search data? Get started with Promptwatch

Be the brand AI recommends

Monitor your brand's visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Get actionable insights and create content that gets cited by AI search engines.