Citatio each, a site’s citatio f eque cy o p ompts about othe topics, had the st o gest associatio with held-out citatio s o all five e gi es, with co elatio s f om 0.29 o Pe plexity a d ChatGPT to 0.37 o Gemi i. Reach was mo e closely associated with held-out citatio s tha topic cove age o Gemi i (0.37 agai st 0.20) a d ChatGPT (0.29 agai st 0.13).
Citatio cove age i side a topic was also associated with held-out citatio s. O fou of five e gi es, it t acked held-out citatio s mo e closely tha a sto ed 0 to 100 domai autho ity sco e, with the widest gap o Pe plexity (0.25 agai st 0.15). O Gemi i, the two we e level, at 0.20 a d 0.21.
ChatGPT showed the weakest cove age sig al. Amo g sites with simila each, the cove age co elatio was 0.043 o ChatGPT a d 0.208 o Google AI Ove views.
“A site a e gi e cites o o e topic is mo e likely to be cited o the ext p ompt,” said Khadija Zama , AI Sea ch Ma age at Wellows a d autho of the study. “That is a associatio i ou data, ot a ecipe. We did ot test whethe publishi g mo e cha ges it, a d we say so i the epo t.”
Fo the study, Wellows collected 382,176 AI a swe s to the 9,471 p ompts f om ChatGPT, Gemi i, Pe plexity, Google AI Ove views a d Google AI Mode betwee Ja ua y a d Ju e 2026. Withi each topic, esea che s split the p ompts i to two sets, measu ed which of the 92,112 websites we e cited i o e set, a d tested whethe that patte ca ied ove to the held-out set. The study is obse vatio al, a d it does ot show that publishi g mo e pages, PR, o li k buildi g ea s citatio s.
The full method, cha ts, a d data a e available i the Wellows study o topical autho ity a d AI citatio s.
O ga izatio : WellowsCo tact Pe so Name: Masab GaditWebsite: https://wellows.com/Email:
