Which Social Platforms Do AI Search Engines Cite?
Klaas FoppenSocial Media Citation Share by AI Search Engine
Based on all citations from each AI engine from Sep 28 - Oct 4, 2026. Each bar is that platform's share of all the engine's citations, and the row below the chart shows the average across the three engines. Compare with the earlier social media report.
ChatGPT has nearly stopped citing social media, while AI Overviews cites it more
ChatGPT has almost stopped citing social media. All seven platforms together make up 0.46% of its citations, down from 5.8% in our earlier report. Reddit fell the furthest, from 5.19% to 0.09%, after the collapse in August. LinkedIn is now ChatGPT's most cited social platform, at 0.3%.
Google AI Overviews goes the other way. Social platforms earn 12.2% of its citations, about 26 times ChatGPT's share. YouTube leads at 4.28%, and Facebook has more than doubled to 2.38%, passing Reddit (2.15%). Instagram (1.61%) and LinkedIn (1.55%) also grew.
Perplexity sits in between, with 2.7% of its citations from social platforms. LinkedIn and Reddit tie at 0.86%, just ahead of YouTube at 0.79%, which dropped from 2.67%. X barely registers on any engine, and TikTok only shows up in AI Overviews (0.22%).
Match your social mix to each engine
- If your buyers search on Google, invest in YouTube first, then keep your public Facebook pages and Instagram profiles complete and active. AI Overviews cites all three far more than ChatGPT or Perplexity do.
- Don't count on Reddit threads to get you into ChatGPT anymore. Put that effort into your own site and the listicles, guides, and comparisons ChatGPT does cite (see citation share by content type).
- For Perplexity, publish on LinkedIn as well as Reddit. The two platforms now earn the same share of its citations.
- Keep X out of your AI search plans. It peaks at 0.1% of citations, on Perplexity.
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 26 billion data points and growing. This gives us one of the largest datasets on how AI search engines cite sources and recommend brands.
Real UI monitoring
Data straight from the interfaces of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, AI Overviews, and more.
26B+ data points
Over 26 billion analyzed citations, prompts, and responses, one of the largest AI search datasets available.
Continuously updated
Refreshed constantly so the trends you see reflect the latest behavior of AI search engines.
Aggregated & public
Published freely for the GEO community, based on aggregated, non-identifiable trends.
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