Reddit Becomes Fastest-Growing AI Citation Source

Social Media Is Appearing More Often In AI Answers

Generative AI platforms are increasingly referencing social media when generating responses to user prompts. According to data from Profound, social platforms accounted for over 9% of all AI citations in January 2026 across the tools analysed.

The largest growth came from Reddit, whose citation share increased by at least 73% across all tracked industries during the four-month period studied.

YouTube remains the only other social platform consistently exceeding 1% of AI citations, though its share remains significantly smaller. Other networks appear only rarely. For example, TikTok accounted for 0.06% of beauty-related AI citations in January, while its overall citation share across categories was just 0.02%.

The data suggests that community discussions and user-generated insights are increasingly appearing among the sources used by AI systems when responding to commercial queries.

AI Platforms Use Social Sources Very Differently

The influence of social media varies significantly depending on the AI platform.

For example:

• ChatGPT: nearly 7% of citations come from social media

• Google Gemini: just over 3%

• Perplexity: around 31% of all citations

Perplexity stands out in particular. In January, 24% of all its citations came from Reddit, compared with about 3% attributed to YouTube.

Even within Google’s AI products, there are notable differences. Social media accounted for:

• 13% of citations in Google AI Overviews

• 9% in Google AI Mode

• 3% in Google Gemini

Reddit was also almost nine times more influential in AI Overviews than in Gemini, according to the report.

For brands and marketers, this means that visibility in AI responses may depend heavily on which platform users rely on.

Google’s AI Products Show Major Citation Differences

The study also found substantial variation in the number of domains cited across Google’s AI experiences.

In November 2025, Google AI Mode cited 57% more unique domains than AI Overviews. By January 2026, that gap had widened significantly, with AI Mode citing 143% more domains.

One reason is the sharp drop in tracked citations for AI Overviews, which declined 46% between November 2025 and January 2026.

According to the report authors, this may partly reflect technical factors. Because AI Overviews only appear for certain search queries, tracking tools may not always trigger them consistently.

Amazon Still Dominates E-commerce AI Citations

Despite actively blocking many AI crawlers, Amazon remains the most frequently cited e-commerce website in generative AI results. Across the platforms analysed, Amazon accounted for just over 2% of all AI citations for commercial prompts in January 2026.

The figure is notable because Amazon blocks dozens of AI crawlers in its robots.txt, including several associated with OpenAI. Even so, Amazon still represented about 0.3% of citations in ChatGPT.

The influence is significantly larger in Google’s AI tools. In Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, Amazon accounts for roughly 3.3% of citations. Meanwhile, Walmart has overtaken Amazon as the most cited multi-category retailer within ChatGPT responses, reflecting shifts in how different AI platforms gather and prioritise sources.

What This Means For E-commerce And Marketing

The report highlights several clear shifts in how generative AI selects sources:

• Reddit has become one of the fastest-growing citation sources in AI answers

• Different AI platforms rely on very different source ecosystems

• Large e-commerce platforms continue to dominate commercial citations

For e-commerce brands, this suggests that visibility in AI responses will increasingly depend not only on traditional SEO, but also on how brands appear across discussions, reviews and community-driven platforms.