Study of 1,771 AI citations: industry media outrank brand sites
AI systems initiate a fact-checking search 3.2 times more often for brands they already recognize than for unfamiliar ones, according to research from geoSurge cited in an analysis published on sostav.ru. The same analysis reviewed 1,771 citations pulled from AI answer engines, including ChatGPT, Yandex's Alice AI, Perplexity, Gemini and GigaChat, across industry-related search queries. Specialist media and expert content sites accounted for most of those citations. Company websites made up a visibly smaller share. Alice AI builds its answers on top of Yandex's organic search results, so ranking positions still matter there. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini crawl the web independently, and a brand can appear prominently in one system while being absent from another for an identical query.
Media plans built around a single line item for search now need a separate line for each AI system, since visibility in one does not guarantee visibility in another. Budget aimed at a channel where a brand is already well cited does little to close a gap in a channel where it stays invisible. External publications in trade media carry more weight in this new mix than before, and a company's own site still matters because it confirms the facts an AI answer cites. Frequency and consistency of coverage regain the importance they held in performance marketing: a single campaign burst raises visibility briefly but does little to change whether an AI model checks a brand's facts at all. The first practical step is the same for every company: measure where a brand currently stands in each AI system separately, then build the next plan on those numbers.