Checking one chatbot tells you almost nothing
Four AI tools were asked the same 80 questions and cited almost entirely different websites.
A new study ran the same 80 questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, three times each. That produced 960 answers and 1,329 different cited websites. Of those, 966 sites were cited by only one of the four tools. Just 29 appeared in all four.
SEO Alex Groberman shared the findings from Prefer and summed it up simply. If you check ChatGPT to see whether your business shows up in AI search, you are looking at a small slice of the picture.
Almost 73% of the websites cited across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity appeared in just ONE of them.
otherwise you can end up building an entire AI strategy around a screenshot
The tools do not even agree with themselves
The researchers asked the same question three times within seconds. The sites cited still changed. Average overlap between repeat runs was 96% for Perplexity, 68% for Claude, 37% for ChatGPT and 35% for Gemini. So asking once and not seeing your name proves nothing, and seeing it once does not mean you own that answer.
The number of sources each tool pulls is wildly different too. Perplexity averaged 19.48 sources per answer, Gemini 8.64, Claude 4.58 and ChatGPT just 3.05. Across its 240 answers, Perplexity cited 748 different websites. ChatGPT cited 218.
The source mix differs as well. Reddit was the most cited site overall, appearing in 207 of the 960 answers, but Claude cited Reddit zero times. Gemini cited YouTube in 113 answers, while the other three cited it zero times in this dataset. This matches an earlier finding that each AI tool picks its sources differently.
What this means for your site
One thing did travel well. Among the 25 most cited sites, 23 appeared in three or four of the tools, and five of the top 10 appeared in all four. The split was worst in the long tail, among sites cited rarely. So the fix is the ordinary one. Cover the questions your buyers actually ask, make your business and products easy to understand, and earn mentions on other credible sites.
One caveat. The 80 questions were all about AI search, GEO and AEO. A plumber or a clinic would likely see a different mix of sources.
If you test your own visibility, do not build a plan off a single screenshot. Ask several real customer questions, in at least two tools, more than once, and write down what you see each time.
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.