B Evidence Grade B Graded accuracy verified by the review judge Safe to Cite Current

2.7%

2.7% -- share of ai cited pages that are primary research for AI-cited web pages (2026-07)

Name: Share Of AI Cited Pages That Are Primary Research Statistics
Creator: Lighthouse Intelligence
Published: 2026-09-28

2026-07 · n=301 · Growth Memo

Only 2.7% (8 of 301) of AI-cited web pages in the analyzed sample qualified as genuine primary research.

Based on a sample audit of 301 live pages cited by AI systems across 316 prompts and seven verticals

Cite this stat Share How we verify

Attribution: Growth Memo View source

Lighthouse Research Team

Last verified: 2026-09-28 · How we verify data →

Source verified Evidence graded

Value

2.7%

Unit

Percentage

Data Vintage

2026-07

Entity

AI-cited web pages

Sample Size

301

Evidence Quality

Strong, reliable evidence

Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.

64/100 confidence

Single source - not yet corroborated

Score breakdown

Extraction

Source Trust

Citation Chain

Independence

Methodology

Freshness

Source

Growth Memo Primary Tier B

https://arcalea.com/blog/why-most-original-data-never-gets-cited ↗

Confidence: 53/100 Vintage: 2026-07 Channel: Common Crawl

Source Article

Original Data Never Gets Cited (And the One Format That Does)

Original Research

Growth Memo · Original study ↗

Methodology

Growth Memo audit of 301 live pages cited by AI systems across 316 prompts and seven verticals, totaling 1,075 citations

Methodology documented

Segmentation

Industrymarketing

Cite this stat

Plain Text

AI-cited web pages: 2.7% share of ai cited pages that are primary research. Source: Growth Memo (2026-07). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/primary-research-share-ai-cited-pages-2026

HTML Embed

<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/primary-research-share-ai-cited-pages-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>2.7%</strong> -- share of ai cited pages that are primary research for AI-cited web pages<br><small>Source: Growth Memo (2026-07) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/primary-research-share-ai-cited-pages-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>

Share on X Share on LinkedIn

Use this data in your work

Copy the citation, embed the widget, or explore thousands more verified marketing statistics -- all free.

Copy citation Explore similar stats →