什么是AI阅读？

December 2025 Executive Summary ●Journalism and earned media continue to be important drivers:The majority oflinks cited by AI are non-paid coverage with about25%of citations coming from ●AI prefers sources published in the last year:More than half of all citations observedwere published in the last12 months. The highest citation rate occurs withinseven ●Press release citations have increased 5x since July:Press releases now accountfor1%of citations, up from0.2%in July. ●Outlet authority matters for GEO:AI models take into an account the authority of asource. This can be in a broad sense, like high domain authority sites like Reuters. Or ina more targeted way, like citing industry-specific sources for industry-specific queries. ●Models regularly adjust their citation practices:Between July and December 2025,all models tested made substantial changes to their citation practices. For example,press release citations became more common, management consulting citations Methodology We analyzed 1,000,000+ links from AI responses This study explores how modern generative AI systems citesources in response to realistic user prompts. Our objective was toquantify and characterize the nature of AI-generated citationsacross different use cases and vendor models. This includes theirfrequency, source types, and the prominence of earned and owned We assigned cited links into categories as follows: ●Journalistic:News sites, and other journalistic coverage●Third Party Corporate/Blog (Earned):Third partycorporate blogs and contentnotowned by acompany/product targeted in the query●First Party Party Corporate/Blog (Owned):CorporateContent created by a company/product targeted inthe query Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and ChatGPT were used to execute thequeries, during between July and December 2025. Generative AI systems are rapidly evolving and inherently opaque.The behaviors observed in this study may shift as models are 82% of linkscited come from This figure was about89%in July andthe decline can be attributed to a fewadjustments. Namely the reliance onaggregator/encyclopedicsources Thethird party corporate/blogcitationsalso decreased as modelsrelied less on content from About a quarterof links cited by AI are journalistic Just under25%of all links citedcome from journalistic sources,which underscores the continued While this figure did decrease about 2%since July, journalism’s place inthe mix of citations remainsincredibly strong. Despite small Models pullfrom a diverserange of high The top cited outlets shifted for each ofthe models since the July 2025 study.A few are familiar including Reuters, Across models, there is very littleoverlap. Only CNBC and Bankrate are Half of allcitations are AI models prefer to pull from freshsources for their citations. The first50%of citations are for articlespublished in the last 11 months. The The first seven days For both Claude and ChatGPT,around4%of all citations are fromwithin the last week, which makes To put this in context, the figureincreases to about5%for storiespublished in the last two weeks, When we examine data from theend of November 2025, there issome evidence the pattern may be Niche outlets arestill important forindustry-specific Within each industry, AI models tendto cite unique outlets. Compared toour analysis of data from July, mostindustries still have a healthy mix ofunique outlets with only one big Press releasecitations haveincreased 5x Press releases overall haveincreased from1.2%to about6%from July to December. And specifically citations directly toprnewsire.com, businesswire.com, globnewswire.com have increasedfrom0.2%of all citations in July up Most AI citationsfor a given brandcome from only For PR pros working on their brand’sGEO, the majority of work can beaccomplished by targeting only 20outlets. The catch is that there isn’t a The journalistsAI relies onaren’t the ones When we compare the most pitchedjournalists on Muck Rack with thosemost cited by AI engines for a This insight means an adjustment topitching practices could have majorimpact on a brand’s GEO. Managementconsulting Between July and December, thebiggest change in the citationcategories was a decrease of third This category decreased by35%between July and December. Models’ citationmix is still in flux AI models are constantly tuning theircitation mix. Sometimes these trendschange over night. Sometimes it’s aslow adjustment. But one thing is This chart shows citations acrossChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for threemajor sources. In August, Wikipediawas king, until ChatGPT decreasedtheir reliance on the site. For a fewweeks in November, YouTube receiveda giant spike in Gemini’s mix before 51%of answers whichcontain a Reddit citationalsocite a journalistic source. Reddit is citedfrequentlybut grounded Reddit plays an important role in theoverall AI answer ecosystem. It is inthe top handful of cited domains for the EDUCATIONCitations rely heavily Across