B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
44%
44% -- share of ai citations from top 30 percent of page for AI answer engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT) (2026)
AI tools cite content from the first 30% of a page 44% of the time.
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
44%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
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
50
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
p0stman
Primary
Tier C
https://p0stman.com/how-ai-agents-discover-websites ↗
Source Article
How AI Agents Discover Websites | The Agent Discovery Sequence
How AI Agents Discover Websites
The complete agent discovery sequence — from robots.txt to A2A handshakes
Last updated: March 2026
AI agents discover websites through a layered sequence: first checking robots.txt permissions, then reading discovery files like llms.txt and agents.md for context, scan…
Original Research
p0stman
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Stated as an observed pattern in AI citation behavior; no named study or methodology provided
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
AI answer engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT): 44% share of ai citations from top 30 percent of page. Source: p0stman (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-citations-first-30-percent-of-page-44
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-citations-first-30-percent-of-page-44" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>44%</strong> -- share of ai citations from top 30 percent of page for AI answer engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT)<br><small>Source: p0stman (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-citations-first-30-percent-of-page-44" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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