Directories supply 41% of AI citations on supplier-selection prompts, new GEO and AEO study finds

A study of 3,850 commercial prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews finds sector directories cited more than twice as often as brand-owned pages when buyers ask an assistant to recommend a provider.

London, England, United Kingdom, September 15, 2026 /MarketersMEDIA/ -- London, 15 September 2026. Sector directories accounted for 41% of the citations behind AI-generated provider recommendations, against 18% for brand-owned pages, according to a study published today by Citations.press. The research, Sector Directories Are Driving AI Overview Citations , analysed 3,850 commercial prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews between 10 June and 22 August 2026.

The study reports that brand homepages appeared in 14% of all responses and in 6% of responses to prompts that named a category rather than a company. In the engineering category, directory citations exceeded brand-site citations by 4.2 to 1.