The AI Search Cheat Sheet · July 10, 2026
Which sources get cited in your industry.
We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude the same 47 buyer questions across 8 industries, with web search on, and logged every cited source. Each cheat sheet below shows where the citations go, the publishers to get featured in, and which brands the engines name most, on real data.
Cheat sheet No. 01 / 08
SEO & AI search
listicle-led Across 6 buyer questions and 169 citations, listicles led at 47%.
Where the citations go
Listicles 47%
Vendor sites 33%
Media & blogs 12%
Community 4%
Video 3%
Get featured here
1 reddit.com Community 2 eng7 cites
2 marketermilk.com Listicle 2 eng5 cites
3 youtube.com Video 2 eng5 cites
4 rankability.com Listicle 3 eng4 cites
5 zapier.com Media / blog 2 eng4 cites
Who AI names most
1 Ahrefs 12mentions
2 SE Ranking 12mentions
3 Semrush 10mentions
4 Surfer SEO 9mentions
5 Google Search Console 8mentions
The play
Listicle country: 47% of citations are third-party best-X roundups. Earn a spot in the tool roundups (Marketer Milk, Rankability) and stay active on Reddit, where Perplexity looks. Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Semrush own the recommendations today.
Cheat sheet No. 02 / 08
Marketing tools
listicle-led Across 6 buyer questions and 180 citations, listicles led at 44%.
Where the citations go
Listicles 44%
Vendor sites 31%
Media & blogs 12%
Reviews 4%
Community 3%
Video 3%
Get featured here
1 zapier.com Media / blog all 4engines
2 g2.com Review all 4engines
3 emailvendorselection.com Listicle 3 eng6 cites
4 reddit.com Community 2 eng6 cites
5 thecmo.com Listicle 2 eng5 cites
Who AI names most
1 ActiveCampaign 8mentions
2 HubSpot 8mentions
3 HubSpot Marketing Hub 6mentions
4 Mailchimp 6mentions
5 MailerLite 6mentions
The play
Listicles lead at 44%, and G2 is cited by all four engines here, so your review profile matters more than in most categories. Get into Zapier and the email-tool roundups. ActiveCampaign and HubSpot are the names to displace.
Cheat sheet No. 03 / 08
CRM & sales
listicle-led Across 6 buyer questions and 149 citations, listicles led at 41%.
Where the citations go
Listicles 41%
Vendor sites 30%
Media & blogs 19%
Community 4%
Reviews 3%
Video 3%
Get featured here
1 reddit.com Community 2 eng6 cites
2 zapier.com Media / blog 3 eng5 cites
3 g2.com Review 3 eng4 cites
4 hubspot.com Media / blog 3 eng4 cites
5 avoma.com Listicle 2 eng4 cites
Who AI names most
1 Pipedrive 13mentions
2 HubSpot 12mentions
3 Salesforce 9mentions
4 Zoho CRM 7mentions
5 HubSpot CRM 6mentions
The play
Listicles (41%) edge out vendor sites, but hands-on media blogs run high (19%). Reddit and Zapier are the third-party wins to chase. Pipedrive and HubSpot lead the recommendations.
Cheat sheet No. 04 / 08
Project management
listicle-led Across 6 buyer questions and 166 citations, listicles led at 49%.
Where the citations go
Listicles 49%
Vendor sites 27%
Media & blogs 16%
Community 4%
Video 3%
Get featured here
1 zapier.com Media / blog 3 eng12 cites
2 thedigitalprojectmanager.com Listicle all 4engines
3 reddit.com Community Perplexity6 cites
4 youtube.com Video Perplexity5 cites
5 airtable.com Media / blog 3 eng3 cites
Who AI names most
1 Asana 16mentions
2 ClickUp 9mentions
3 Notion 8mentions
4 Monday.com 7mentions
5 Wrike 5mentions
The play
Listicle country. Win a spot in The Digital Project Manager (cited by all four engines) and Zapier first. Perplexity also leans on Reddit and YouTube here, so community and video pay off where they do almost nothing elsewhere.
Cheat sheet No. 05 / 08
HR & recruiting
vendor-led Across 6 buyer questions and 162 citations, vendor sites led at 45%.
Where the citations go
Vendor sites 45%
Listicles 32%
Media & blogs 14%
Reviews 5%
Community 2%
Get featured here
1 forbes.com Media / blog all 4engines
2 peoplemanagingpeople.com Listicle 2 eng5 cites
3 technologyadvice.com Listicle 3 eng4 cites
4 reddit.com Community Perplexity4 cites
5 workology.com Listicle 3 eng3 cites
Who AI names most
1 Gusto 16mentions
2 BambooHR 14mentions
3 Rippling 13mentions
4 Greenhouse 6mentions
5 HiBob 6mentions
The play
HR flips the script: vendor sites lead at 45%, so your own comparison and pricing pages actually get cited here. Forbes is the one publisher all four engines trust. Gusto, BambooHR and Rippling dominate the answers.
Cheat sheet No. 06 / 08
Accounting & finance
vendor-led Across 6 buyer questions and 146 citations, vendor sites led at 41%.
Where the citations go
Vendor sites 41%
Listicles 33%
Media & blogs 14%
Community 5%
Reviews 3%
Video 2%
Get featured here
1 reddit.com Community 2 eng6 cites
2 farseer.com Listicle 3 eng3 cites
3 jobbers.io Listicle 3 eng3 cites
4 youtube.com Video Perplexity3 cites
5 creditsuite.com Listicle 2 eng2 cites
Who AI names most
1 Xero 9mentions
2 FreshBooks 8mentions
3 Wave 8mentions
4 Brex 7mentions
5 Ramp 7mentions
The play
Another vendor-led category (41%), where a strong owned comparison page earns citations, but Reddit is unusually influential (finance buyers crowd-source). Few dominant listicles means less competition for a roundup spot. Xero, FreshBooks and Wave lead.
Cheat sheet No. 07 / 08
Customer support
vendor-led Across 5 buyer questions and 124 citations, vendor sites led at 39%.
Where the citations go
Vendor sites 39%
Listicles 33%
Media & blogs 15%
Reviews 8%
Video 3%
Community 2%
Get featured here
1 thecxlead.com Listicle 3 eng4 cites
2 youtube.com Video 2 eng4 cites
3 getvoip.com Listicle 3 eng3 cites
4 slite.com Media / blog 3 eng3 cites
5 guideflow.com Listicle 2 eng3 cites
Who AI names most
1 Zendesk 17mentions
2 Zoho Desk 10mentions
3 Freshdesk 9mentions
4 Intercom 8mentions
5 HubSpot Service Hub 6mentions
The play
Vendor-led (39%) with the highest review-site share of any category (8%), so a strong G2 or Capterra profile pays off here. The CX Lead and GetVOIP are the roundups to target. Zendesk is far ahead of the field.
Cheat sheet No. 08 / 08
Ecommerce
listicle-led Across 6 buyer questions and 141 citations, listicles led at 40%.
Where the citations go
Listicles 40%
Vendor sites 28%
Media & blogs 22%
Community 4%
Video 3%
Reviews 3%
Get featured here
1 reddit.com Community 2 eng6 cites
2 technologyadvice.com Media / blog 3 eng4 cites
3 youtube.com Video 2 eng4 cites
4 ecommerce-gold.com Listicle 3 eng3 cites
5 metaoption.com Listicle 3 eng3 cites
Who AI names most
1 Shopify 10mentions
2 BigCommerce 8mentions
3 Brightpearl 4mentions
4 Klaviyo 4mentions
5 Omnisend 4mentions
The play
Listicles lead (40%) but media blogs are unusually high (22%), so trade publications matter. TechnologyAdvice and buyer-guide sites are the targets, and Reddit is active. Shopify and BigCommerce own the recommendations.
See your own numbers
Where does AI cite you today?
These cheat sheets show where the citations go in each category. Run a free audit to see which of these sources already mention you, and which name your competitors instead.
Run a free AI visibility audit Common questions
What kind of content gets cited most in AI search, by industry?
It splits. In 5 of the 8 industries we measured (SEO, marketing, CRM, project management, ecommerce), independent "best-X" listicles are the single biggest source of AI citations. In the other 3 (HR, accounting/finance, customer support), the vendors' own sites lead instead. So the winning play depends on your category: chase third-party roundups in listicle-led markets, and strengthen your own comparison pages in vendor-led ones.
Which publishers should my brand get featured in to show up in AI answers?
It depends on your category, but the pattern is consistent: a small set of third-party roundup and review sites earn most of the citations. For project management it is The Digital Project Manager (cited by all four engines) and Zapier; for marketing, G2 and Zapier; for HR, Forbes. Each cheat sheet below lists the specific publishers that were actually cited for that industry.
Do the AI engines cite Reddit and YouTube for these buyer questions?
Mostly just Perplexity. Across every industry, Reddit and YouTube citations came almost entirely from Perplexity; ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude rarely cite either. So community and video presence pays off on Perplexity and does little on the other three engines.
Methodology
On July 10, 2026 we sent 47 buyer questions across 8 industries to four engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) through the DataForSEO LLM API with web search on, producing 188 answers and 1237 citations. Each cited URL was normalized to its root domain and classified by source type. "Get featured here" lists only third-party publishers a brand can earn a spot in (roundups, media, community, video, review sites), not vendor product pages. Per-industry samples are small (about 6 questions each), so read the counts as directional, not definitive. This is one measured run and LLM outputs vary between runs. Full dataset and caveats live on the Visibly Index.