What do ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini cite when a small business asks?

Do the assistants cite the same sites?

ChatGPT and Claude mostly do not. On the 107 questions both answered, they cited at least one site in common on 34 (31.8%). ChatGPT and Gemini did on 37 of 48 (77.1%), Claude and Gemini on 22 of 48 (45.8%), and all three on 10 of 48 (20.8%).

So "what ChatGPT cites" and "what Claude cites" are two questions, not one. A page one assistant cites is often not one the other cites.

Does the same question get the same sources a day later?

About half the time. We asked the storefront's 48 questions again on the evening of 20 October, a day after the first time. Of the 970 sites the three assistants had cited, 510 were cited again by the same assistant for the same question: 52.6%. ChatGPT 53.2% (191 of 359), Claude 54.6% (183 of 335), Gemini 49.3% (136 of 276).

One reading is a sample of what an assistant might cite, not a fixed list. That is why a single answer, good or bad, says little about a business, and why we read the same questions every month and treat a change of two or fewer between readings as noise.

What did they cite for the questions about AI and search?

Six of the questions behind the 262 answers are about getting found by the assistants themselves. For each, the sites each assistant cited, in full. Gemini answered only the last one: the first five are on Appear's list, which Gemini did not answer in this read (see the method).

How do I get my small business recommended by ChatGPT?

ChatGPT cited 6 sites: business.gov.au, developers.google.com, developers.openai.com, google.com.au, help.openai.com, support.google.com.

Claude cited 10: beancount.io, bigeyeagency.com, brightlocal.com, dynamicbusiness.com, eseospace.com, lilachbullock.com, localfalcon.com, pbjmarketing.com, smartcompany.com.au, whitespark.ca.

ChatGPT sent the asker to the platforms' own help, Google's and OpenAI's, and to the government's site for business. Claude cited none of those. Our own steps, from an earlier and smaller read, are in how to get recommended by ChatGPT.

What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?

ChatGPT cited 3: arxiv.org, blog.google, developers.google.com.

Claude cited 16: brixongroup.com, conductor.com, devcommx.com, devdiggers.com, developer.tenten.co, hi.multilipi.com, itwire.com, localiq.com, lseo.com, pwd.com.au, rocketagency.com.au, sayenkodesign.com, shoutdigital.com.au, topify.ai, truefuturemedia.com, webmastersgroup.com.au.

GEO, generative engine optimisation, is making a business easy for an AI assistant to find and name in an answer; SEO aims at a search engine's list of results. Most of the groundwork is shared (our glossary has both). This count adds one difference: the assistants do not cite the same pages as each other, so GEO is three targets, not one.

How do I check if ChatGPT knows about my business?

ChatGPT cited 6: abr.business.gov.au, asic.gov.au, developers.openai.com, google.com, help.openai.com, support.google.com.

Claude cited 12: adsmurai.com, ahrefs.com, apify.com, dev.to, dynamicbusiness.com, getapp.co.uk, omnionlinestrategies.com, practicalecommerce.com, seocom.agency, seomator.com, seranking.com, zarla.com.

ChatGPT cited the business registers (ABN Lookup at abr.business.gov.au, and ASIC) beside OpenAI's and Google's help; Claude cited none of them. The plain way to check: ask what a customer would ask, the way they would ask it, more than once, and count how often you are named. The free check asks one such question for you.

How do I get my business mentioned in Google's AI Overviews?

ChatGPT cited 2: developers.google.com, support.google.com.

Claude cited 11: beancount.io, blog.google, cloutly.com, distl.com.au, fileroom.com, gripped.io, insideretail.com.au, pickr.com.au, profiletree.com, senso.ai, zarla.com.

On Google's own product, ChatGPT cited only Google. Claude cited Google's blog once among ten others. What an AI Overview is, in a sentence, is in our glossary.

Should I block AI crawlers like GPTBot from my business website?

ChatGPT cited 4: ai.gov.au, developers.google.com, developers.openai.com, oaic.gov.au.

Claude cited 11: allens.com.au, canberratimes.com.au, dageno.ai, gpp.io, metricspot.com, originality.ai, ppca.com.au, spruson.com, stm-assoc.org, thinkprofits.com, xseek.io.

The choice is narrower than it sounds. GPTBot collects pages to train OpenAI's models; OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT's search, and a site can let one in and keep the other out. Blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps your pages out of what ChatGPT can show when it searches. This site lets every AI crawler read every page.

What are the best free business directories to list on in Australia?

Asked on the storefront's list (on Appear's since 21 October), so all three assistants answered.

ChatGPT cited 10: apple.com, bing.com, birdeye.com, business.localsearch.com.au, google.com.au, hotfrog.com.au, support.google.com, thelocallist.com.au, yellow.com.au, yelp-support.com.

Claude cited 9: birdeye.com, bloggerspassion.com, crucial.com.au, invoiceberry.com, marginmedia.com.au, putty.nsw.au, sitecentre.com.au, w3era.com, warrumbungle.nsw.gov.au.

Gemini cited 5: brightlocal.com, hotfrog.com.au, localsearch.com.au, truelocal.com.au, yellowpages.com.au.

ChatGPT and Gemini cited the directories themselves (Localsearch, Hotfrog, Yellow, True Local), and ChatGPT also Apple's, Bing's and Google's own pages for businesses; Claude cited articles that list directories, and two local directory pages. Across every question, a directory or review site was cited in at least 20.2% of answers (53 of 262), and in Claude's, at least 29.0% (31 of 107).

What does this mean for a small business?

• Match what the cited guidance tells people to check. ChatGPT cited Google's own help pages or government guidance in 67.3% of its answers (72 of 107); its most cited .gov.au sites were accc.gov.au, business.gov.au and oaic.gov.au. No business is on those pages. The practical reading is that your Google listing and your business details should hold up to what those pages tell people to look for.
• Be on the directories the assistants cited most, with the same details everywhere. Claude cited a directory or review site in at least 29.0% of its answers (31 of 107), and the directories in the most-cited lists are oneflare.com.au, easyweddings.com.au and hipages.com.au. Which ones matter depends on your trade, so look at what is cited for your customers' questions.
• Answer your customers' questions on your own site. Outside the official pages and the directories, everything in the lists above is other sites. A clear page on your own site, answering what your customers ask, is the one page in this picture you write yourself.
• Read it as a series. The assistants disagree with each other (ChatGPT and Claude shared a site on 31.8% of questions) and with themselves a day later (52.6% of sites came back).

Nobody controls what an assistant cites, and no one can sell you a place in its answers. This is one reading, of our own questions, in one week of October 2026; the next will differ.

How did we count it?

The questions. Two lists of our own, written to match what our customers ask: Appear's 59 (15 core, 44 wide), asked early on 20 October 2026, and the storefront's 48 (15 core, 33 wide) for creativebyjake.com.au, asked late on 19 October and again late on 20 October. Each answer is tagged with its list's area (trades, wedding, cost, who builds websites and so on), as the data shows.

The assistants. ChatGPT through OpenAI's Codex command-line tool with live web search, as GPT-5.6 Luna at medium reasoning, the consumer model one version behind the ChatGPT app's. Claude through Anthropic's Claude command-line tool with its web search tool, on Sonnet (our reader's setting; the model is not recorded on each answer). Gemini through Google's API with Google Search grounding, as gemini-flash-latest: the closest stand-in we can measure for Google's AI Overviews, because Google's own results page cannot be read by a script.

The prompt. Each said the asker was in Australia, asked the question, asked the assistant to search the web and answer as it normally would, and to list the web addresses it relied on. For ChatGPT and Claude, a cited site is one the assistant listed; it is not proof the page was opened. For Gemini it also includes the pages Google's grounding returned.

Gemini's gap. Appear's read, at 3:51 am on 20 October, has no Gemini answers at all, so Gemini's figures for Appear's 59 questions are missing, not zero. We take the cause to be Gemini's monthly spend cap: the read just before it that night had 15 Gemini questions refused with "exceeded its monthly spending cap". That is an inference, not a recorded reason. Gemini then answered all 48 of the storefront's questions in its re-read late the same day, and every Gemini figure here comes from the storefront's 48.

Counting. A cited site is the web address's host, less "www." and any port, counted once per answer: support.google.com and google.com are two sites. Official is any .gov.au site plus support.google.com and developers.google.com. A directory or review site is one of ten: easyweddings.com.au, hipages.com.au, hotfrog.com.au, localsearch.com.au, oneflare.com.au, productreview.com.au, truelocal.com.au, trustpilot.com, yellow.com.au and yellowpages.com.au, with their subdomains. That figure is a floor, because a directory we did not list (airtasker.com, serviceseeking.com.au, abia.com.au) counts as other; the data marks each row's kind so you can draw the line yourself. Two assistants share a site when, on the same question from the same list, both answers cite it. A site came back when the same assistant cited it again for the same question in the second reading.

What is left out. The same read also gave 321 answers to 112 betting questions for two other sites. They are not in this page's findings or data, because they are not small business questions. On the whole read of 583 answers they do not change the picture: ChatGPT cited an official page in 67.1% of its answers (147 of 219), and ChatGPT and Claude shared a site on 35.6% of questions (78 of 219).

Our study of Australian marriage celebrants counted which businesses the assistants named; this page counts which sites they cite.

What does this count not show?

• Our questions, not everyone's. The lists are ours, written for the businesses we serve, not drawn at random from what people ask. The figures describe these 262 answers; no margin of error is given, because there is no random sample to give one for.
• One reading. A day later about half the cited sites changed. Read every figure here as this week's, and treat a difference of two or fewer answers as noise.
• Sources, not answers. No answer text was kept, only the sources and the businesses named, so nothing here quotes or summarises what an assistant said, and the data holds sites, not business names.
• Not the apps. These are the assistants' command-line tools and API, not the ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini apps a customer opens; ChatGPT's model here is one version behind the app's, and Gemini stands in for AI Overviews.
• Gemini is partial. 48 answers, all to the storefront's questions.

Where is the data?

data.csv, beside this page: 2,754 rows, one for each answer and site it cited, the storefront's questions in both readings. Its columns: read (when the list was asked), site (whose list), list (core or wide), area, assistant, question, measure (always cited_domain), domain, kind (official, directory or other) and cited_us (yes if that answer cited the list's own site; it is no in every row).

It is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. Credit Appear Everywhere (ESK Solutions), with a link to this page.

To cite this page: Appear Everywhere (ESK Solutions), "What do ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini cite when a small business asks?", October 2026, https://appeareverywhere.com/guides/what-the-ai-assistants-cite/. Answers read 19 and 20 October 2026.