B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Recent
60%
60% -- citation failure rate for AI search engines (2025-03)
AI search engines failed to retrieve correct citation information more than 60% of the time across 1,600 test queries.
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
60%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2025-03
Entity
Sample Size
1,600
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
95
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University
Primary
Tier A
https://searchsignal.online/research/ai-search-referrals-citations-2026 ↗
Source Article
2026 AI Search Referrals & Citations Benchmark | SearchSignal
2026 Benchmark Report: AI Search Referrals and Citations for SEO Agencies
AI platforms now send measurable visits to websites — and they also influence discovery without a click. This report aggregates published research from Conductor, Adobe Analytics, Cloudflare, SE Ranking, Ahrefs, BrightEdge, an…
Original Research
Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Tow Center tested 1,600 queries across 8 AI platforms
Methodology documented
Segmentation
IndustryAI
RoleAll marketers
Channelsearch
Cite this stat
Plain Text
AI search engines: 60% citation failure rate. Source: Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University (2025-03). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-citation-failure-rate-60
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-citation-failure-rate-60" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>60%</strong> -- citation failure rate for AI search engines<br><small>Source: Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University (2025-03) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-citation-failure-rate-60" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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