TL;DR

  • Brand sites generate 57% of citations globally across all models, but Gemini relies on them 69% of the time while ChatGPT uses them least at 47%.
  • Industry norms vary dramatically: pharma sees 33% brand citations versus 72% in marketing software; cybersecurity is highest at 74% and government/non-profit lowest at 15.9%.
  • Know which citation buckets drive your sector, then publish or partner to shift the mix: social media drives 16.5% of citations in fashion but only 5% in pharma.

Citation-mix is different for every industry

Citation composition reflects how each industry produces content. Pharma and biotech companies, whose own content passes through regulatory review and multi-party approval, see a median 59% of citations go to earned media. SaaS companies, which publish constantly, see only 11.4% earned. The mix an engine uses is shaped by what the web makes available.

Median earned-media citation share by industry
  • Pharma / biotech59%
  • Financial services~30%
  • Fintech15%
  • SaaS11.4%
Brand-site citation share, selected industries
  • Cybersecurity74%
  • Marketing software72%
  • All industries (global)57%
  • Pharma / biotech33%
  • Government / non-profit15.9%
Source: Flowgen, 11.84B citations, Apr–Jul 2026.

Where the information comes from depends on which model answers

Each LLM has its own information universe, shaped by search partners and data licensing. ChatGPT leans most on earned media (30% of citations); Google AI Overviews least (17%). Google's surfaces cite social sources heavily, AI Overviews at 15.3% and AI Mode at 14.4%, while Microsoft Copilot sits near 3.4%.

Median citation mix by model
  • ChatGPT47% brand
  • Claude58%
  • Google AI Mode56%
  • Google AI Overviews57%
  • Google Gemini69%
  • Grok55%
  • Microsoft Copilot62%
  • Perplexity54%
BrandEarnedSocialOther
Reported anchors: ChatGPT 47% brand / 30% earned; Gemini 69% brand; AI Overviews 17% earned / 15.3% social; AI Mode 14.4% social; Copilot ~3.4% social. Other segments illustrative.
Social media usage varies drastically by model
  • Google AI Overviews15.3%
  • Google AI Mode14.4%
  • Microsoft Copilot3.4%

What does this mean for marketers?

Industry benchmarks are baselines, not ceilings. Within a single industry the gap between the 75th and 25th percentile company can exceed 43 percentage points of earned-media citation share. A pharma brand with 30% earned citations is underperforming its 59% median; a fintech brand at 30% is beating its 15% median by double. Competitive position only makes sense inside the category.

P25, median and P75 earned-media citation share
IndustryP25MedianP75
Pharma / biotech~38%59%~81%
Fintech~7%15%~31%
SaaS~5%11.4%~24%
Percentiles beyond the medians are illustrative of the >43 pp interquartile spread reported.
Understand your industry's citation mix, identify which buckets drive it, then publish strategically or partner with the publishers that engines already trust.

Methodology

We analyzed 11.84 billion citations across 8 models (ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Google Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity) from April to July 2026, covering 8,061 categories (7,542 with at least 100 citations) in 29 industries. Domain classification mapped 3.02 million domains (98.3% coverage) into three buckets: brand, earned and social. Categories were weighted equally regardless of citation volume; regional and demographic variation is out of scope.

Jasman SinghLead AI Analyst, Flowgen Research