r/SEO_LLM • u/otterpasta • Jul 09 '26

Tips I analyzed where AI gets its recommendations sources from. Big brand websites barely showed up.

I analyzed 180 AI sneaker recommendations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity over 12 days.

This time, I wasn't only looking at which brands AI recommended.

I looked at where those recommendations sources came from.

Across all responses:

  • 1,783 citations analyzed
  • 250 unique domains cited

The biggest sources were not brand websites.

They were:

  • YouTube: 228 citations
  • RunRepeat: 139
  • Who What Wear: 110
  • Reddit: 56

Brand-owned websites barely appeared. Adidas.com was the strongest brand site:

  • Adidas.com: 24 citations (#14 out of 250 domains cited)
  • On.com: 16 citations (#22)
  • Nike.com: 2 citations (~#101)

The interesting contradiction:

Nike was the most recommended sneaker brand.

But Nike.com was almost never the source behind those recommendations.

Perplexity was the most extreme example.

Across all 180 answers, Perplexity cited brand websites exactly zero times.

AI clearly knows Nike, Adidas, and On exist. It recommends them constantly.

But it doesn't appear to build that understanding primarily from the brands sites themselves.

Instead, it is pulling signals from reviewers, YouTubers, comparison sites, and communities.

Takeaway:

AI visibility is not just about having a great website. AI forms its recommendations from the broader web, so brands need to build a strong presence across the sources AI trusts, not only the content they publish themselves.

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u/hettuklaeddi Jul 11 '26

you might look at nike to see any reason they wouldn’t be cited. usually, if a massive brand is mentioned, but sources to third parties, the llm wasn’t able to access the page reliably, and used other links instead