We analyzed social citations across five AI engines. The leading network changes depending on the engine, and your strategy should too.
Ask ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity the same question, and they won't pull from the same social sources to answer it. Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn all show up in AI-generated answers, but each engine has its own favorite.
We track this in LQ Vision, our purpose-built AI insights platform. For this research, we looked at more than 200,000 social citations across five AI engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity) based on our unique mix of clients. Here is where each engine goes for social proof.
What We Found
Which network leads depends on the engine. Reddit is the top social source on ChatGPT and Perplexity. YouTube leads on both of Google's AI surfaces, AI Overviews and AI Mode. Gemini is the outlier, where Facebook has recently moved into first place.
Same Question, Different Social Sources
ChatGPT is the starkest case. In September, 78% of the social citations it pulled came from Reddit, and Reddit has been its top social source in every month we measured. No other engine leans on a single platform that heavily.
On Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, the answer is the same: YouTube first, Reddit second.
Gemini is one to watch. Facebook barely registered until August, then climbed fast and now leads, ahead of both YouTube and Reddit.
Perplexity made the biggest move of any engine. YouTube supplied nearly all of its social citations in April and May, but Reddit now leads, with LinkedIn rising into a strong second.
What This Means for Your Strategy
Social isn't limited to one channel in AI search. Instead, where it shows up depends on the engine. Optimizing your own website is one lever for AI visibility. Building real content and community presence on the social networks AI engines actually cite is an impactful alternative avenue.
Get the Full Picture
This post only scratches the surface. Our white paper, Social in AI Search: Which Networks Matter?, covers all five engines month by month, with the full trend for each platform. It also reveals the style of post AI engines cite most often, with real examples of what it looks like.
Download the Report [add link to the white paper landing page]
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