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What source types are

Every page an AI model cites gets classified by the kind of site it lives on: a news outlet, a blog, a Reddit thread, a YouTube video, and so on. The classification matters because the fix for weak visibility depends on where the models look. If your category’s answers are built from Reddit threads, publishing more blog posts won’t move you; if they’re built from news coverage, PR will. Source type is a property of the cited page, so it shows up wherever citations do: as a Source Types filter on Offsite Mentions and on Citations (All Citations and Citation Trends), and as a Source badge on citation table rows and the URL detail sheet. It complements the content type classification (listicle, review, comparison, and so on), which describes what the page is, while source type describes where it is. The Promptwatch Source Types filter open on Offsite Mentions, listing Reddit, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and GitHub.

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The source types Promptwatch tracks

  • News: traditional news outlets.
  • Blog: blogs and personal sites.
  • Corporate: company websites, including yours and your competitors’.
  • Academic: universities and research institutions.
  • Government: government sites.
  • Wiki: Wikipedia and other collaborative references.
  • Reddit: posts and comment threads.
  • YouTube: videos and their comments.
  • X: posts on X (Twitter).
  • Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn: posts on each network.
  • GitHub: issues, discussions, and READMEs.
  • Stack Overflow: developer Q&A.
  • Medium and Substack: publishing platforms and newsletters.
  • HackerNews: posts and comment threads.
  • Quora: Q&A threads.
  • Other: everything that doesn’t fit a category above.
Which types dominate is category-dependent: developer tools see GitHub and Stack Overflow, consumer brands see Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube, B2B software sees comparison blogs and LinkedIn. Filter your own citations by source type before assuming.

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The Socials section: Reddit and YouTube

Reddit and YouTube have dedicated pages under Socials in the sidebar, with a model filter and date range at the top and a tab for each platform. The Promptwatch Socials page with Reddit and YouTube tabs, the Reddit view selected, and Top Posts Over Time beside the cited posts list.
  • Reddit: a Top Posts Over Time chart with the most-cited posts beside it, and a table of every cited post with its subreddit, upvotes, comments, citation count, average citation position, and post state (archived, locked, or deleted). The subreddit column is the strategic one: it tells you which communities feed the models in your category. Full walkthrough: Reddit citations.
  • YouTube: the most-cited videos and channels, overview counts (total YouTube citations, unique videos, distinct channels), and a table of every cited video with channel, views, likes, comments, citation count, average position, and duration. Channels that keep getting cited are collaboration and sponsorship candidates. Full walkthrough: YouTube citations.
Other social source types (X, TikTok, LinkedIn, and the rest) don’t have dedicated pages yet; you reach them through the source type filter on Offsite Mentions.

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Where to go next

For what to do with social citations once you’ve found them, read the Reddit and YouTube strategy. For the general mechanics of citations, start with Citations vs. mentions.