{"id":27,"slug":"otterly-third-party-citations-2026","title":"OtterlyAI (Sept 2025): community platforms (Reddit, Quora) capture 52.5% of AI citations vs 47.5% brand domains","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["ai-citation","measurement"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** OtterlyAI's analysis of 1M+ AI citations (Jan-Sept 2025) across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews found:\n\n- **52.5%** of citations go to community platforms (Reddit, Quora)\n- **47.5%** go to brand domains\n- **73%** of audited sites have technical barriers (robots.txt blocks, JS-only rendering) preventing AI crawler access\n\n**Source:** <https://otterly.ai/blog/the-ai-citations-report-2026/>\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (vendor-published; methodology disclosed).\n\n**Caveat:** Headline framing in industry coverage (\"AI Search Engines Depend 95% on Third-Party Sources\") is rhetorically inflated. The actual split is closer to 50/50 — but the 47.5% brand share is concentrated among large publishers, not SMB sites.\n\n**Implication:** Two-track strategy. (1) Make your own site AI-crawlable — see [[rule-server-render-for-ai-crawlers]]. (2) Be a presence on Reddit / Quora / YouTube / authoritative third-party publications, because that's where half the citations live.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"ai-crawlers-do-not-execute-js","title":"AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) generally do not execute JavaScript — client-side React/Vue without SSR is invisible","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"rule-server-render-for-ai-crawlers","title":"RULE: Always server-render or statically generate content for AI crawlers. Never ship client-side-only HTML.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.581Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.581Z"}