YouTube and Reddit are cited more by AI than your own website. Here's the data.

I've been obsessed with how LLMs decide which brands to recommend. So I ran a proper analysis — 1,200 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, covering 1,079 brands in dozens of categories.

Here's what I found:

The bad news:

• 62% of brands are completely absent from AI-generated answers
• Average visibility score across all brands: 27/100
• When a brand is missing, competitors fill the gap — 65% of all citations go to competing brands

Which LLM is the hardest to crack:

• ChatGPT is the most generous — 42% of brands get at least a mention
• Perplexity: 39%
• Gemini is the toughest at 34%

The biggest surprise — what LLMs actually cite:

The top sources LLMs pull from aren't brand websites. They're:

1. YouTube
2. Reddit
3. Wikipedia
4. G2
5. Forbes
6. Capterra

YouTube and Reddit appeared in almost every single run. Your company blog? Barely registers.

What actually seems to correlate with higher visibility:

• Active Reddit threads mentioning the brand (not self-promo, actual user discussions)
• YouTube reviews and comparisons
• Structured data (Schema.org) on the website
• Comparison/listicle content ("X vs Y" pages)
• Third-party reviews on G2/Capterra

What doesn't seem to matter much:

• Traditional backlink profile
• Domain authority alone
• Paid ads (obviously)
• Social media followers

The brands scoring 70+ all had one thing in common: they showed up in conversations they didn't control. Reddit threads, YouTube reviews, comparison articles. The LLMs are pulling from "real people talking about you," not from your own marketing.

Curious if this matches what others are seeing. Happy to answer questions about the methodology.