The sources AI engines cite for e-commerce

In one sentence: to be recommended by ChatGPT or Perplexity on a buying question, a brand has to be present on the third-party domains those engines already read, not only on its own site.

How the ranking is produced

• Real buying and tool-selection questions are sent to ChatGPT and Perplexity on a recurring schedule.
• Every source domain cited in the answers is recorded, with the engine and the type of source.
• Citations are aggregated over a rolling 90-day window, excluding the merchants' own domains.
• Nothing is estimated or modelled: the page only shows citations that were actually observed.

Why off-site sources decide recommendation

Most sources behind an AI shopping answer are not brand-owned: comparisons, reviews, marketplaces, communities, media and directories. A store can be technically perfect and still be absent from the answer because none of the cited sources mention it.

Privacy

The ranking is fully anonymized. No store, no account identifier and no prompt text is published — only per-domain, per-engine and per-source-type aggregates.

Frequently asked questions

Where does this data come from?

From MagicGEO's own Share-of-Voice runs against ChatGPT and Perplexity, which record the sources cited in each generated answer.

How often does the ranking change?

It is recomputed from the latest measurements on every load, over a rolling 90-day window.

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