AI tools name your brand, then cite a stranger's site as the source
Across 1,851 citations drawn from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, only 2.8% pointed to brand-owned pages. Even when a tool recommended a brand by name, its own site was cited just 31% of the time. For ecommerce teams, being recommended and being cited are now separate outcomes worth tracking — and the gap is where visibility quietly leaks to third-party review sites.