Who Do AI Engines Actually Recommend? What 320 Buyer Queries Reveal

There is no single AI SEO. A study published on 8 July 2026 by CiteLens ran 320 real buyer queries across four AI engines, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and ChatGPT, and the sources they cited were dramatically different. Four engines, at least three separate rulebooks, which means one tactic can make you visible in one engine and leave you invisible in another.

The finding that matters: different engines recommend and cite experts in different ways, so there is no one thing you can do to become visible in all of them.

People have moved away from Google. We used to get ten blue links, click through them and find our own way. Now people search inside AI, and CiteLens compared what those engines actually pulled from. Here is what each one rewards.

Google AI Mode and Perplexity: SEO Is Still Your Entry Ticket

For these two, search engine optimisation is the way in, which means your website needs to be ranked by Google. If you rank on the first page, it is very likely you will be cited and recommended by both.

The numbers are striking. Google AI Mode pulled 93% of its citations from Google’s top 10, and Perplexity pulled 89% from Google’s top 10 organic results. Citation frequency tracked Google rank almost perfectly, with correlations of 0.92 and 0.87. If Google ranks you, these engines cite you.

Claude and ChatGPT used Google’s top 10 far less, at 53% and 30%.

This is exactly why your website still matters. I always say that if you want to build a future-proof business, you need a website. It needs to be clean, well structured and AI readable, with the handful of optimisations that let it rank in the first place, and you need to be creating content on it.

The takeaway is simple. If your website ranks on Google, Google AI Mode and Perplexity will cite you, and your website is your entry ticket.

Claude Recommends Names the Web Already Knows

Claude cares less about your rankings and more about whether you are a recognised entity. It was the only one of the four engines whose citations tracked brand search demand more closely than search rankings.

Brand search demand is essentially how many people are looking for your brand, how visible you are online, what your digital footprint looks like. And 58% of Claude’s citations went to sites with a Wikipedia presence, because it favours names the web already recognises.

That is what we call entity authority: a consistent, recognised presence across the web. Same name, same story, same expertise everywhere AI looks. Which means you have to clean up your digital footprint and then consciously engineer it.

To be visible to Claude specifically you need a website, you need to speak on podcasts, you need to be in the media, and you need a LinkedIn profile. Ideally you would also have a Wikipedia presence, but that sits at the very top and it is genuinely hard to get. So the first thing to aim for is a Google Knowledge Panel, which is the box you see when you Google a name, with the images across the top and the short bio at the side. That is step one, and the Wikipedia presence comes much later.

As a CEO, a founder or an experienced business owner, all of this is achievable, and you can become visible to every one of these engines. What it takes is consistency across your profiles and being mentioned across the web.

Entity authority helps most with Claude, and it supports the rest. Only 21% of ChatGPT’s citations were Wikipedia backed, for comparison. The takeaway is that Claude recommends recognised names, so you have to build a consistent presence across the web until AI knows who you are.

ChatGPT Is a Black Box, and You Cannot Rank Your Way In

ChatGPT plays by its own rules. The most used AI assistant ignores your Google rank, your Bing rank and your brand size.

Only 30% of its citations came from Google’s top 10, which means 70% of the sources it recommended ranked in neither Google’s nor Bing’s top 10. The common theory that ChatGPT mirrors Bing did not hold either, because fewer than 4% of its citations sat in Bing’s top 10. So the search engines play a very minor role in what ChatGPT recommends and cites.

Its correlation with rankings and with brand popularity was close to zero, and it kept surfacing niche sites that ranked nowhere. Which is good news, by the way. It points to preferences baked into the model itself, and the model learns from what it reads.

So what does it read? Articles, interviews, podcast transcripts and mentions. Which is exactly why you should be speaking on podcasts, getting into the media and running a proper website.

The takeaway is that you cannot rank your way into ChatGPT. It picks from what the model reads, and earned media is precisely what it reads. Media, podcasts, everything earned.

Three Moves That Cover Every Engine

Your playbook here is the visibility triangle, and it is three moves.

Your website is the foundation, with your SEO, your structure, your content and your schema markup, everything you need to rank. Then you speak on podcasts, where you build deep trust and create long-form natural language content that AI can read and cite. Then media, where you want features, mentions and backlinks.

Do those three and you become visible in all four engines. No single tactic covers everything. If you only speak on podcasts, you will not show up in Perplexity or Google AI Mode, because those two are looking at the rankings, which is why the website has to be handled. For Claude, you need your digital footprint engineered and your name recognised across the web. For ChatGPT, it comes back to podcasts and media.

Everything plays together. If you want to be visible to AI in general, across all four of these engines, implement the visibility triangle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Take Care of the Website, Get on Podcasts, Get Into the Media

The engines do not agree with each other, and that is the whole point of this study. Chasing one of them with one tactic leaves you missing from the others.

So take care of your website, be on podcasts, and be in the media. Together, those three cover every type of AI engine and every large language model. Want to learn how and what to do exactly? Join the AI Visibility Lab, it’s free!