By the numbers: Muck Rack input more than 1 million realistic user prompts into ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude and analyzed the citations.
96% of links cited by AI sit squarely within the purview of communications and corporate affairs, per the report.
37% of inquiries cite external blogs or content (those not owned by the company or product targeted in the query) and 27% cite news stories produced by journalistic entities.
9% cite owned content and government or NGO websites, 7% cite aggregators and 6% cite academic research.
Social media and marketing content each make up 2% of the results, while press releases make up 1%.
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Zoom in: Niche websites, trade publications and web encyclopedias are also permeating AI-generated responses, the report finds.
Wikipedia is cited most across all industry-specific inquiries, according to the Muck Rack report.
Scientific and medical databases are frequently cited in AI-generated responses relating to health care and education, while government sites are most likely to inform responses related to energy.
Inquiries about government will see federal agencies cited in responses from Claude and Gemini, while ChatGPT incorporates news sources as well.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
