How Often Does AI Cite Best-Of and Comparison Pages? (October 2026)

Name: How Often Does AI Cite Best-Of and Comparison Pages?
Creator: Catalyst

12.1% of the pages AI cites are best-of, alternatives or comparison pages, and 36.1% of answers that link to pages cite at least one. Google AI Overviews leans on them most, at 17.4% of its citations.

CatalystLast updated October 15, 2026

A best-of page ranks the options for a buyer, which is the question AI is answering. This report counts how often the pages AI cites are best-of lists, alternatives pages or comparisons. Based on 15,319 cited pages from ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, July 17, 2026 to October 15, 2026.

Google AI Overviews leans on best-of pages most, ChatGPT least

12.1% of all cited pages are best-of, alternatives or comparison pages, and 36.1% of answers that link to pages cite at least one. Google AI Overviews at 17.4% and ChatGPT at 7.7%.

Most of them are plain best and top lists, between 73.9% and 75% depending on the LLM. Vs pages come second at 15.1% to 16.3%, and alternatives and comparison pages make up the rest.

What Kind of List Page Each LLM Cites

ChatGPT73.9%7.3%15.1%

Google AI Overviews75%16.3%

Each LLM's best-of, alternatives and comparison citations, split by the kind of page.

Sites Behind the Most Cited Best-Of Pages

linkedin.com2.1%
reddit.com1.7%
lunyb.com0.9%
techradar.com0.6%
nerdwallet.com0.4%
tourscoop.com0.4%
forbes.com0.4%
quora.com0.4%
ustechautomations.com0.4%
wifitalents.com0.4%
oxmaint.com0.4%
scalerrs.co0.4%
cnbc.com0.4%
guidde.com0.4%
worksbuddy.ai0.3%

Share of all 1,846 best-of, alternatives and comparison citations.

No single publisher owns the list

The 15 sites behind the most cited best-of pages hold 9.6% of those citations between them, and none holds more than 2.1%. The rest are spread across many smaller sites.

Where to show up

Find the best-of pages AI already cites for your category and get onto them. 36.1% of answers that link to pages cite one.
Publish your own comparison page for each competitor buyers ask about, with a verdict, a dated table and sources.
Write for Google AI Overviews first if it matters to your buyers. It cites these pages for 17.4% of its sources.

How we collect this data

Every AI visibility audit we run writes buying questions for a company’s market and puts each one to every LLM through its API, with web search on. We record the answer and the pages it cites, and these reports add them up, one audit per company.

Buying questions per market

Written by the audit for each company's own market.

21,918 answers

Every answer and every source it cites, from the last 90 days.

Rebuilt monthly

Each report keeps its earlier editions, so you can see what moved.

Free and public

Added up across companies. No single company's results are shown.

Method notes

Window: July 17, 2026 to October 15, 2026, rebuilt October 15, 2026.
Sample: 517 companies across 199 categories, one audit per company, its latest in the window. Each audit writes buying questions for that company's market with an LLM and puts each one to every LLM through its API.
Models: ChatGPT means GPT-4o mini with web search, through the OpenAI API. Claude means Claude Haiku 4.5 with web search, through the Anthropic API. Gemini means Gemini 2.5 Flash with Google Search grounding, through the Gemini API. Perplexity means Perplexity Sonar, through the Perplexity API. Google AI Overviews means the AI Overview on a live Google results page, read through DataForSEO.
How it is counted: A cited page counts as a best-of or comparison page when its URL path contains best, top, a top-N number, alternatives, vs or comparison. Only the path is read, so a site whose name contains one of those words does not count on its name alone. Links to Google Maps, Google search and product viewers, and image servers are dropped first, because none of them is a page a reader can check.
Citation figures: Cover ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, counting only the pages each answer cites. Claude, Gemini and Perplexity join once 300 of their answers are recorded with cited pages alone, which started on October 15, 2026. Until then their answers count toward the totals only.