AI tools often suggest brands without directly linking to their official websites. Shero Commerce’s recent analysis found that only 2.8% of the 1,851 sources cited across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity were brand-owned pages.
Shero, a Shopify agency specializing in SEO and AI services, looked into citation trends, but the analysis doesn’t show why AI systems favor some sources over others.
Third-Party Sites Received Most Citations
Shero examined purchasing questions across 60 product categories, gathering all sources provided by three different AI tools. Most references pointed to websites outside of brand-owned domains. The biggest source category made up 59% of citations, including sites like Good Housekeeping, Verywell Fit, and Reviewed.com. Brand-owned pages accounted for only 2.8%.
This pattern also appeared when AI tools suggested brands by name. Shero found 159 brand recommendations across all platforms, with the brand’s own page cited in 31% of those cases.. For example, both ChatGPT and Perplexity recommended brands such as Gymshark, Alo, and Beyond Yoga for a squat-proof leggings query, citing third-party sites.
Google AI Mode Rarely Named Sampled Brands
Shero found that in its sample, brands were cited or recommended in 9.5% of relevant Google AI Mode store checks across 60 different categories. In around one-third of these categories, no sampled brands were present.
The report also mentions that popular tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity suggested well-known brands, but Shero didn’t offer a comparable recommendation rate for these platforms. So, while the 9.5% figure from Google is useful independently, it shouldn’t be directly compared to other platforms.
Why This Might Be Happening
The citation analysis was part of a broader review of product content across Shopify stores. In checking a stratified sample of product descriptions, Shero found 20% were identical to or very similar to those on other websites. These similarities mostly appeared among retailers or marketplaces reselling the same products, rather than between competing Shopify brands.
The authors suggest that syndication could make attribution more difficult when identical text exists across multiple sites. However, the analysis doesn’t show that duplication resulted in third-party sites receiving more citations.
The report also highlighted that short Shopify description fields may underestimate the actual amount of text on a page. Out of 173 stores Shero could cleanly measure using raw HTML, 27 had fewer than 50 words of product-specific content.
Shero collected 8,573 product descriptions from 883 stores with live product data.
Why This Matters
For ecommerce brands, being recommended and being cited are two separate outcomes. One brand may be highlighted in an AI buying answer, while another site might receive the source link. Shero’s data offers some insight into the difference, but doesn’t confirm why AI tools select those particular sources.
Looking Ahead
The main thing to consider is whether changing the product content affects citation behavior. Shero didn’t test if rewriting syndicated descriptions, adding original copy, or adjusting page structure makes it more likely for a brand’s page to be cited. To really understand this, a specific test focusing on those changes would be necessary. For now, the report just shows where citations occurred, without explaining why those sources were selected.
