ChatGPT looks for brands' own sites more, and cites Reddit 88% less: what brands can do

On 12 October Ahrefs published a study of 66.6 million answers from the free version of ChatGPT, used without an account, in August and September 2026. It looked at the 15 million searches ChatGPT ran to find sources for those answers, which Ahrefs calls fan-out queries (Ahrefs, 12 October). Ahrefs sells an AI visibility tool, Brand Radar, and the citation figures below come from it.

Figure 1Where ChatGPT's searches inside one site went

• Brand sites, such as apple.com and ikea.com75.9%
• Retailers, such as Walmart, Costco and Amazon11.9%
• Reddit and Facebook together1.9%
• Every other site10.3%

What the study found

• Most answers had no searches in them. 14.4% of the 66.6 million answers contained fan-out queries, about 1.6 each on average. Ahrefs first wrote that 14.4% "searched the web", then corrected it to this.
• When ChatGPT searched inside one site, it was mostly the brand's own. 6.8% of its searches named a single site. Apple, IKEA, Nike, Adidas and Samsung were searched that way most often.
• "Official" and "price" came up more. The word "official" was in 10.1% of English searches in August and 13.1% in September. "Price" went from 6.04% to 8.88% of searches, and "reviews" grew by about a third.
• Reddit was cited far less. In Ahrefs' data on US answers, about 1 in 5 ChatGPT answers cited Reddit in March 2026, and about 1 in 43 in late September. Wikipedia went from 1 in 7 answers to 1 in 35. Reddit was still the ninth site ChatGPT searched inside most often.
• Original sources gained. Research bodies, regulators, brand sites and product testers such as RTINGS were cited more. Sites that sum up others' work, such as WebMD and Investopedia, were cited less. PubMed went from 64th to 4th among ChatGPT's most cited sites.
• Publishers with OpenAI deals were cited more. Their share of citations among ChatGPT's 200 most cited sites went from 7.5% in March to 15.8% in July, and was 12.5% in late September.

What the study cannot tell you

It is a snapshot of one model, GPT-5.6 Luna, on the free plan, from August and September. OpenAI moved ChatGPT to GPT-6 from 7 October (our October roundup has the details), and Ahrefs says paid plans and reasoning models search more. Other studies counted many more searches per question, such as 7.61 per prompt in Chris Long's test of about 4,000 prompts through OpenAI's API. Ahrefs' questions came from real searches on every topic and in every country, while many other studies used buying questions such as "best X", which lead to more brand lookups.

The pattern also differs by category. For running shoes, Ahrefs found that "best", "2026", "review" and "vs" came up far more often than "official". In that category, reviews and comparisons weigh more than a brand's own product pages.

What a brand can do now

1. Put your own facts on your own site, in the page text. Prices, plans, specifications and where to buy, each on a page an assistant can read. When ChatGPT searched inside one site, three times in four it was a brand's own.
2. Make the official page easy to find. One clear page for each product or plan, with its name and price in the title and the first lines, so a search for "official" or "price" lands on it.
3. Publish what only you can. Your own research, test results and data. In Ahrefs' figures, sites that sum up others' work lost citations to the original sources.
4. Don't build your plan on Reddit alone. ChatGPT still searches Reddit for opinions, but cited it in far fewer answers in September than in March.
5. Earn coverage where ChatGPT cites more. Reviewers and testers in your field, and the publishers that have deals with OpenAI.
6. Check your own category. Ask ChatGPT the questions your buyers ask, a few times each, and note which sites the answers cite. Your category may not follow the averages.

How ChatGPT and the other assistants find and credit websites is set out in our reference page, with each company's own documentation.