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Category24 briefs

Research

Every brief Cite Solutions has filed in the Research category. Newest first.

Jun 8

What Does ChatGPT Actually Search For?

ChatGPT rewrites your question before it searches, injecting words like best, review, and 2026. Here is the data and how to match it.

Research·10 min read
Jun 5

Does AEO Actually 5x Your AI Traffic?

A log-based natural experiment found AEO's real causal lift is about 1.8x, not the 5.7x vendors quote. Here is how to measure your own number.

Research·10 min read
Jun 3

Does Content Structure Affect AI Citations?

New research changed only a page's structure, not its words, and AI citations rose 17.3% across six engines. Here is what to restructure first.

Research·9 min read
May 31

Do B2B Buyers Really Start Their Search in ChatGPT?

G2's Summer 2026 data shows 50% of B2B buyers now start their search in an AI chatbot, and 74% use ChatGPT. Here is what that means for AEO.

Research·10 min read
May 30

84% of B2B CMOs Now Vet Vendors With AI Before Sales

Wynter surveyed 110 CMOs at $50M+ ARR companies. AI-driven vendor discovery jumped from 24% in 2025 to 84% in 2026. Here is what changes for B2B AEO.

Research·10 min read
May 29

Is AI Overviews the Biggest AI Search Surface in 2026?

Peec AI analyzed 500,000 prompts and found AI Overviews appears in 86.7% of searches. That puts it ahead of ChatGPT for total reach.

Research·11 min read
May 26

Why Are AI Overviews So Volatile in 2026?

Conductor found AI Overviews coverage went 23% to 47% then crashed to 34% in five months. Here is what that volatility means for your tracking.

Research·10 min read
May 18

AI Citation Concentration Is Worse Than PageRank

A new audit of 680M AI citations found 15 domains capture 68% of all references, and Wikipedia owns 47.9% of ChatGPT top-10 sources.

Research·9 min read
May 13

Why Reviews Now Drive 75x More AI Citations

A Trustpilot study of 800K AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode found brands with reviews get cited 75x more often.

Research·10 min read
May 10

Why AI Engines Cite Same Brands but Different Sources

BrightEdge analyzed 5 AI engines across 9 verticals. Brand overlap clusters at 36-55%, source overlap spans 16-59%. The split that matters.

Research·10 min read
May 10

AI Overviews CTR: Cited Brands Get 2.3x More Clicks

Seer analyzed 5.47M queries across 53 brands. Cited brands earn 2.1% CTR inside AI Overviews. Uncited brands earn 0.9%. The gap is 2.3x.

Research·10 min read
May 9

Why ChatGPT Cites 5 Sources but Claude Cites 13

Muck Rack analyzed 25M links across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. Citation rates: 96%, 55%, 82%. Source counts: 5, 13, 8. Each platform retrieves differently.

Research·10 min read
May 7

Should B2B Brands Optimize for Grok in 2026?

Peec AI's 5M-fanout study shows Grok runs 6.8 hidden searches per query, 3.2x ChatGPT. Here is what that means for B2B visibility.

Research·10 min read
May 7

Why Google Rankings No Longer Predict AI Citations

5W research shows the overlap between Google's top rankings and AI citations collapsed from 70% to under 20%. Here is what to do about it.

Research·10 min read
May 6

Why Claude Cites Older Content Than ChatGPT

Only 36% of Claude's journalism citations come from the past 12 months, versus 56% for ChatGPT. That recency gap is the cleanest evergreen wedge B2B has.

Research·10 min read
May 5

How 15 Sites Decide B2B SaaS AI Visibility

5W's new index synthesizes 680M citations across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews. 15 domains hold 68%. B2B SaaS targets almost none.

Research·10 min read
Apr 15

Reddit's AI Citation Share Fell 50%. When AI Does Cite It, It's Often the Only Source.

Conductor analyzed 238,212 prompts where Reddit was cited by AI systems. Citation share dropped from 2.02% to 1.01% between October 2025 and January 2026. Over the same period, Reddit's sole-source authority rose 31%. Here's what that split tells B2B SaaS brands about Reddit as a GEO channel.

Research·9 min read
Apr 15

44% of SaaS Brands in Google's Top 10 Get Zero ChatGPT Citations

EMGI Group analyzed 150 SaaS companies across 120 keywords. 44% of brands in Google's top 10 get zero ChatGPT citations. 81% of ChatGPT-cited brands don't rank in Google's top 10. Topical authority has a 0.76 correlation with AI citations. Organic traffic has a 0.23 correlation. Here's what the data shows.

Research·9 min read
Apr 10

Brand Authority Is the Strongest Predictor of AI Citations. Most B2B Teams Are Optimizing the Wrong Thing.

Brand web mentions correlate with AI citation frequency at 0.664. Brand search volume comes in at 0.334. Both beat backlinks and content quality scores. A Omniscient Digital analysis of 23,000+ citations found 89% came from earned media, not owned channels. Here's what the data means for B2B strategy.

Research·9 min read
Apr 9

Google AI Overviews Are 91% Accurate. Their Sources Often Can't Prove It.

A joint study by Oumi and The New York Times tested 4,326 Google searches. Accuracy improved from 85% to 91% with Gemini 3. But 56% of correct answers now cite sources that don't actually support the answer, up from 37% under Gemini 2. Here's what that means for content strategy.

Research·10 min read
Apr 7

Citation Drift: Why Your AI Visibility Changes Weekly

If your brand is cited by ChatGPT this week and missing next week, that is not random. Citation drift is the normal churn of AI visibility, driven by freshness, prompt mix, source replacement, and platform behavior.

Research·9 min read
Mar 30

ChatGPT Shopping: What Actually Triggers Product Recommendations (1.18M Prompts Analyzed)

Profound analyzed 1.18 million ChatGPT prompts to reverse-engineer when Shopping cards appear. The biggest finding: product category matters far more than purchase intent. Here's what that means for ecommerce GEO and AEO strategy.

Research·8 min read
Mar 30

AI Citations Expire Faster Than You Think. Here's the Data.

Scrunch and Stacker analyzed 3.5 million citation events across AI platforms. The average AI citation loses half its visibility in just 4.5 weeks. ChatGPT is even faster at 3.4 weeks. Here's what that means for your GEO and AEO strategy.

Research·7 min read
Mar 29

ChatGPT's Query Fan-Outs Just Doubled. Here's Why That Changes Everything.

Peec AI analyzed 20 million ChatGPT query fan-outs and found the average word count doubled in four months. For brands trying to get cited by AI, this is the biggest shift since AI Overviews launched.

Research·6 min read

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