An analysis by analytics provider Otterly AI evaluated 379,321 Claude citations across 16,406 domains in June 2026. The central finding: Claude cites brands’ own websites directly almost two-thirds of the time (64.0%) — not Wikipedia, not social media, but brand-owned pages. Here’s what that means for your GEO strategy.
What was studied?
Otterly AI tracked daily, over a full month, which domains Claude cites for SaaS and tech queries, and classified each cited domain into one of eleven source categories — from brand-owned pages to news media to social media platforms. The study is one of the most extensive publicly available analyses of Claude’s citation behavior specifically, not AI systems in general.
Which source types does Claude cite most often?
- Brand-owned pages: 64.0% (10,842 domains)
- News/media: 14.9% (1,688 domains)
- Blogs/personal sites: 5.4% (1,041 domains)
- Other: 3.7%
- Education: 2.7%
- Government/NGO: 2.4%
- Encyclopedias: 2.1%
- Forums/communities: 1.3%
- Social media: 0.9% (37 domains)
- Video: 0.3%
By far the largest share goes to the cited brand’s own website — a clear signal that well-maintained, clearly structured owned content matters more for Claude visibility than presence on third-party platforms.
The long tail: Claude spreads across thousands of sources
It’s also notable how broadly Claude spreads its citations, rather than concentrating on a few authority sites:
- The top 10 domains account for only 9.5% of all citations
- The top 500 domains together account for 59.9%
- 32.9% of cited domains were cited only once during the entire study period
For brands, this means: it’s not enough to hope for one or two major press placements. Broad, distributed presence across many relevant, topically fitting sources contributes more to citation likelihood than chasing a single authority site.
Social media plays almost no role for Claude
With only 0.9% of all citations, social media is a niche channel for Claude. Within that small share, LinkedIn dominates (43.1%), followed by Facebook (14.1%) and TikTok (9.1%). Especially notable: Reddit accounted for 0% of citations in the sample — even though Reddit regularly appears as an important source for other AI systems like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews. This suggests that optimization tactics don’t transfer 1:1 between AI platforms.
What this means for your GEO strategy
Three conclusions can be drawn from the study for practical work, which also align with our own anyway Framework, particularly the Source Influence dimension:
First: invest first in your own website as a citable reference source — clear structure, current facts, unambiguous entity signals — before putting budget into third-party placements. For Claude, this appears to be the most important lever.
Second: focus on breadth rather than individual prestige placements. Many smaller, topically relevant mentions seem to matter more than a single large PR push.
Third: don’t generalize tactics across platforms. What works for ChatGPT (like Reddit presence) doesn’t necessarily apply to Claude — which is why monitoring across multiple AI platforms is worthwhile rather than optimizing for just one.
Whoever optimizes for only one platform ends up optimizing for the wrong half of the queries.
How to use this for your brand
An AI Visibility Audit shows how your own website and third-party sources currently perform across multiple AI platforms — not just Claude. That can be built on deliberately, for example as part of a Sharp Positioning project that strengthens your website as a citable reference source. More background on this topic in What Is AI Visibility? and GEO vs. SEO: What’s Changing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Claude’s citation behavior differ from ChatGPT?
One notable difference concerns Reddit: while Reddit is frequently cited by other AI systems like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews, it accounted for 0% of social media citations in the sample analyzed for Claude. Claude appears to rely more heavily on brand-owned and editorial sources.
What does the “long tail” mean for smaller brands?
Since 32.9% of cited domains appeared only once, Claude spreads its citations very broadly. This is an opportunity for smaller brands with specific, well-structured content, rather than favoring only a handful of large publishers.
Should we focus on social media for AI visibility?
For Claude specifically, it appears to matter little — social media accounted for only 0.9% of all citations in the study. Other platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity may look different, which is why multi-platform monitoring remains important.
How current is the study?
The data comes from Otterly AI and was collected over a full month in June 2026. AI citation behavior can change with new model versions, which is why recurring monitoring makes more sense than a one-time snapshot.
Study data source: Otterly AI, "Claude Citation Study Reveals What Actually Gets Cited", June 2026.
