Across 106 email templates and 13 campaigns, Google, Apple, and Microsoft's AI summaries varied enormously — Microsoft Copilot's averaged 156 words, Google Gemini's just 29. Bullet points were the single formatting technique that most influenced what AI pulled into a summary (up to 92% inclusion Read more

AI citations are wildly fragmented, and prompt type drives citation patterns more than any other domain. Informational prompts pull nearly 3x more citations than brand awareness queries ChatGPT cites far more sources than any Google platform. Reddit, the most-cited site, accounted for just Read more

AI is far more likely to mention a brand than cite that brand’s website. Only 23.1% of brand mentions include a citation, so mentions and citations should be tracked separately. ChatGPT cites fewer URLs than Google’s AI products, but it is much more likely to name the brands it cites. Read more

Prompt type has a major impact on AI citation behavior. ChatGPT cites the most sources, averaging 18.2 citations per query. Informational/exploratory prompts generate the most citations, averaging 23.3 citations per prompt. Evaluative prompts show the highest cross-platform agreement. Our Read more

AI platforms rarely cite the same sources: 76.1% of citations appear on only one platform, and just 0.8% overlap across Google AI Mode, Gemini, AI Overviews, and ChatGPT. Citation behavior varies dramatically across platforms, with even Google's own AI products showing only moderate overlap Read more

AI citations are links or source references that AI platforms use to support and validate their answers in real time. AI mentions reflect how strongly a brand is associated with a topic based on training data and repeated online references. To earn citations, content needs to be easy for AI Read more

Front-load everything — all platforms pull 82-87% of summary content from the first half of your email. Keep it simple — longer, complex emails are more likely to have critical information dropped from summaries. Use bullet points — they're the most reliable formatting tool, influencing Read more

No single site dominates AI citations—Reddit leads at just 3.49%. Prompt type drives citations more than domain. Blog/content makes up 53.46% of all citations, far ahead of news (14.09%) and social (8.71%). Owned content appears in ~40% of brand awareness queries. Earned media accounts Read more

Overall, about 3% of all news citations came from publishers with confirmed OpenAI or Google data partnerships. Less than 1% of citations from Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews came from Google’s confirmed partner, the Associated Press. 28.5% of ChatGPT news citations came from OpenAI partners, Read more

Around 75% of sites blocking OpenAI or Google AI bots still appeared in AI citations. Roughly 95% of the cited pages blocked GPTBot or Google-Extended, the bots used for model training. About 70% of ChatGPT citations came from sites blocking ChatGPT-User or OAI-SearchBot, which power live Read more