Many people I speak with think Google's AI Mode is just a bigger AI Overview. Same answers, same sources, only longer. It is an easy assumption, because both live inside Google Search. But when you look at which websites AI Mode actually cites, the balance is different in ways that matter for your marketing.
The latest Ahrefs ranking of the most-cited websites in Google AI Mode shows Reddit and YouTube almost exactly tied at the top, Google's own domain taking an eighth of the citations, and a strong showing from shopping sites. It also includes a couple of names most marketers have never thought about.
Let me walk you through how the list was built, what it shows, and how I would use it to decide where your brand needs to be mentioned. This is a source analysis. For the bigger question of what AI Mode means for your SEO in general, read my guide on Google AI Mode and SEO.
Where the AI Mode citation data comes from
Ahrefs collected this data with Brand Radar, its tool for recording AI answers to search-style questions. For AI Mode, it looked at a broad sample of US queries across all topics and counted every domain AI Mode cited. The page is refreshed monthly by Ahrefs' AI agent; the version I am using is the September 2026 update.
The main number is mention share, which is a domain's citations as a share of the combined citations of the top sources. So the percentages describe how the top-source pie is split, not every link AI Mode has ever shown.
| Disclosed on the Ahrefs page | Not disclosed |
|---|---|
| US market, all topics | Number of prompts in the sample |
| Mention share per domain | Total number of citations |
| Distinct pages cited per domain | Exact start and end dates |
| Domain Rating and monthly rank change | Any split by industry or intent |
That is enough to see the big pattern, but not enough to treat small differences as meaningful. A domain at 0.9% and one at 1.1% are, for practical purposes, in the same place.
Reddit and YouTube neck and neck: the AI Mode leaders
Here are the first twelve domains in the September 2026 snapshot. The source-type labels are mine.
| Rank | Domain | Mention share | Pages cited | Source type (my label) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reddit.com | 17.9% | 1,204,712 | Community / forums |
| 2 | youtube.com | 17.8% | 1,553,020 | Video |
| 3 | google.com | 12.5% | 2,963,109 | Google's own pages |
| 4 | facebook.com | 10.2% | 655,267 | Social network |
| 5 | instagram.com | 5.7% | 356,810 | Social network |
| 6 | en.wikipedia.org | 4.0% | 100,864 | Encyclopedia |
| 7 | quora.com | 3.0% | 142,486 | Q&A community |
| 8 | amazon.com | 3.0% | 174,857 | Marketplace |
| 9 | tiktok.com | 2.7% | 144,505 | Short video |
| 10 | walmart.com | 1.5% | 88,508 | Retailer |
| 11 | ebay.com | 1.1% | 66,338 | Marketplace |
| 12 | forbes.com | 1.0% | 18,713 | Publisher |
Source: Ahrefs, September 2026 snapshot, US queries. Labels are mine.
“The leader is www.reddit.com, capturing 17.9% of citations.”
— Ahrefs, The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Google AI Mode (September 2026)
A few things stand out to me:
- The top is crowded. By my addition of Ahrefs' numbers, the top 15 domains hold about 75% of the top-50 share. Places 43 to 50 each have 0.3% or less.
- Breadth is enormous. Google's own domain had nearly 3 million distinct pages cited, more than any other domain in the list.
- Publishers are small. Forbes is the first traditional publisher, at 1.0%.
The health, money and car clusters further down the list
Below the top 15, the AI Mode list breaks into clear topic clusters. Health has Healthline, WebMD, GoodRx and the NIH's PMC archive. Money has NerdWallet and Yahoo Finance. Cars have Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, Cars.com, CarGurus and Consumer Reports. News and tech coverage comes from sites like the New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC and CNET.
Each of these has a small share of the all-topics average. But averages hide a lot. If you sell car insurance, a site with 0.5% share overall may be one of the three most important sources in your corner of AI Mode. That is why I never use the Ahrefs list as a final target list. I use it to learn which types of sites Google trusts, then check my own niche with real prompts.
One more detail from Google's help page is worth knowing here. Google says AI Mode may show a plain list of links instead of an AI answer when it isn't confident in a response. So for some sensitive or unclear questions in these niches, the "citation" you are competing for may look much more like a normal search result.
Why google.com takes an eighth of AI Mode citations
Google's own domain has 12.5% share in AI Mode, compared with 8.8% in AI Overviews. Ahrefs doesn't say which Google pages are being cited, and I won't pretend to know. What I can tell you is the practical lesson: Google trusts its own properties, and in AI Mode it leans on them even more than in AI Overviews.
For a business, that means the information you control inside Google's products is worth checking. If you have a physical location, your Business Profile, reviews, photos and opening hours are part of how Google understands you. I explain how place results are chosen in my guide to local businesses in Google AI Mode.
Query fan-out: why AI Mode cites pages you would never see on page one
This is the single most important idea for understanding AI Mode's sources. AI Mode doesn't run one search. Google's help page explains it like this:
“It divides your question into subtopics and searches for each one simultaneously.”
— Google Search Help, AI Mode in Google Search (Google Search Help)
Google's developer documentation adds that AI Mode is meant for harder questions:
“AI Mode is particularly helpful for queries where further exploration, reasoning, or complex comparisons are needed.”
— Google Search Central, AI features and your website
Here is what that means in practice. Imagine someone asks AI Mode: "What's the best sofa for a small apartment with a dog?" AI Mode might quietly search for things like:
- best sofa fabrics for dog hair
- sofa sizes for small living rooms
- performance fabric vs leather durability
- apartment sofa reviews
Each of those sub-searches has its own winners. A Reddit thread about dog-proof fabrics, a YouTube review, an Amazon listing and a retailer's sizing guide could all end up cited in one answer. That is why so much of AI Mode's citation share goes to platforms with millions of narrow pages. I cover how to plan content around these sub-questions in my guide to query fan-out content, and how ChatGPT does something similar in how ChatGPT turns one prompt into many searches.
Shopping signals: marketplaces and two unexpected names
Look past the platforms at the top and AI Mode's list has a clear shopping flavor. Amazon is eighth, Walmart tenth and eBay eleventh. Home Depot sits just below them, and Ahrefs' top 50 also includes retailers such as Target, Best Buy, Etsy and Lowe's.
Two other names in the top 15 surprised me:
- lemon8-app.com at 0.9%, a lifestyle content app's website.
- liberia.ubuy.com at 0.9%, a country subdomain of a cross-border shopping site.
I don't want to read too much into them. They could reflect how Google handles certain product queries, or quirks in the sample. But they are a useful reminder that AI Mode will cite whoever has a matching page, including sites with large catalogs of product pages that a human buyer might never visit.
For an online store, the lesson is that your own product pages and your marketplace listings both feed AI Mode. Complete specifications, clear sizing, real reviews and honest comparisons give AI Mode something to quote. Our ecommerce SEO work focuses heavily on this, and my guide to product page SEO covers the basics.
Which AI Mode sources you can influence, and how fast
When I plan mention work, I find it helps to think not just about whether you can influence a source, but how long it takes. Here is how I sort AI Mode's main source types.
| Source type | Examples | Influence | Typical time to see change | First move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your own social and video profiles | YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok | High | Weeks | Publish clear answers to the sub-questions buyers ask |
| Marketplace listings | Amazon, Walmart, eBay | High if you sell there | Weeks | Complete attributes, sizing, real photos and reviews |
| Google's own products | google.com pages, Business Profile | Medium | Weeks to months | Make sure your business details are accurate and complete |
| Communities | Reddit, Quora | Low to medium | Months | Honest participation; customers sharing real experiences |
| Publishers | Forbes, CNET, NerdWallet | Medium | Months | Digital PR, expert comment, original data |
| Encyclopedias | Wikipedia | Very low | Years | Earn notability through real coverage |
For a full framework across assistants, see my guide to AI citation sources you can actually influence. For the community side, read Reddit and AI search.
How AI Mode's sources differ from AI Overviews and other assistants
Putting AI Mode next to AI Overviews is the most revealing comparison, because both run inside Google Search. Here are the September 2026 numbers for a handful of domains.
| Domain | AI Mode | AI Overviews | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com | 17.9% | 18.5% | −0.6 |
| youtube.com | 17.8% | 22.9% | −5.1 |
| google.com | 12.5% | 8.8% | +3.7 |
| quora.com | 3.0% | 4.7% | −1.7 |
| walmart.com | 1.5% | 1.0% | +0.5 |
| ebay.com | 1.1% | 0.7% | +0.4 |
Sources: Ahrefs lists for AI Mode and AI Overviews, September 2026. Differences are my calculation in percentage points.
In brief: AI Mode moves some weight away from YouTube and Quora and toward Google's own pages and retailers. That fits a tool designed for longer, comparison-style questions, where shopping and product data matter more.
Outside Google, the gap is bigger. ChatGPT gives YouTube only 2.5% share, while Perplexity gives it 20.8% and Gemini 14.6%, according to the matching Ahrefs lists. You can explore those in my breakdowns of the sites AI Overviews cite most, the sites ChatGPT cites most and the sites Perplexity cites most, and in my comparison of AI Mode vs AI Overviews.
A worked example: an online furniture store maps its AI Mode sources
Here is how I would put this into practice for a hypothetical online furniture store that also sells on two marketplaces.
- Choose 20 complex buyer questions, the kind AI Mode is designed for. For example: "best sofa for a small apartment with a dog," "solid wood vs veneer dining table for a family with kids."
- Write down the sub-questions each one is likely to fan out into. Aim for four to six per question, so about 100 sub-questions in total.
- Run the 20 main questions in AI Mode and log every cited domain. Suppose you get 180 citations: Reddit 30, YouTube 28, Amazon 18, Google pages 16, a home-decor publisher 12, and your own site 4.
- Map gaps. Your site appears for 4 of 180 citations (about 2.2%). Your Amazon listings appear twice, but the listings lack dimensions and fabric details.
- Fix what you control first. Add complete specifications to marketplace listings, publish three short videos on fabric durability and room sizing, and write clear guides for the most common sub-questions.
- Re-run the same 20 questions monthly. If your share rises from 4 to 14 of 180 citations (about 7.8%) over a quarter, the plan is working.
Notice that most of the work goes into places other than your homepage. That is normal for AI Mode.
Caveats specific to the AI Mode data
- No sample size. The AI Mode page does not say how many prompts or citations sit behind the snapshot.
- The page contradicts itself. Its introduction says the top five include Wikipedia and a Google blog. The table shows Reddit, YouTube, google.com, Facebook and Instagram. I trust the table.
- US only. AI Mode is available in many countries and languages, but this data covers US queries.
- Relative share only. Percentages describe the top sources, not all citations.
- Measurement is mixed with normal search. Search Console counts AI Mode inside the Performance report, using standard rules.
“Clicking a link to an external page in AI Mode counts as a click.”
— Google Search Console Help, Performance report (Search Console Help)
So you will see AI Mode clicks in your normal data, but you need prompt tracking to understand which sources AI Mode trusts in your niche.
Questions marketers ask about Google AI Mode's sources
Which website does Google AI Mode cite most?
Reddit, by a hair. In Ahrefs' September 2026 snapshot of US queries, Reddit had 17.9% mention share in AI Mode and YouTube had 17.8%. Google's own domain was third at 12.5%.
Does AI Mode cite the same sites as AI Overviews?
Mostly the same platforms, in a different balance. Both lean on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook and google.com. AI Mode gives more weight to google.com, Reddit and marketplaces like Walmart and eBay, while AI Overviews give more weight to YouTube and Quora.
Why does AI Mode cite pages that don't rank for my keyword?
Because of query fan-out. Google says AI Mode splits a question into subtopics and searches for each one at the same time, so a page that ranks for a sub-question can be cited even if it doesn't rank for the original query.
Can I see AI Mode clicks in Search Console?
Yes, as part of the Performance report. Google says a click on an external link in AI Mode counts as a click, standard impression rules apply, and position follows the same method as a normal results page.
Is there anything special I need to add to my site for AI Mode?
No. Google's documentation says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations for AI Mode. Your pages need to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet.
Where I would focus first for AI Mode visibility
AI Mode rewards brands that are present across many small answers, not just one big ranking. The data shows it trusts communities, video, Google's own products and retailers, and that it pulls in pages through sub-questions you might never target directly.
My suggestion: pick your 20 most valuable buyer questions, list the sub-questions behind them, and make sure your brand has a clear, accurate presence on the platforms that keep coming up. Then measure monthly.
If you would like a hand with this, our SEO team can map your AI Mode sources and build the plan with you. Get a quote and tell us what you sell.
Further reading on websites Google AI Mode cites most
- The Websites Perplexity Cites Most
- The Websites Gemini Cites Most
- The Websites Microsoft Copilot Cites Most
Sources for this AI Mode citation analysis
- The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Google AI Mode (September 2026) (Ahrefs)
- AI Mode in Google Search (Google Search Help)
- AI features and your website (Google Search Central)
- Performance report (Search Console Help)
- The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Google AI Overviews (Ahrefs)
- The 50 Most-Cited Websites in ChatGPT (Ahrefs)
- The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Perplexity (Ahrefs)
- The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Gemini (Ahrefs)
