B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
64%
64% -- share of ai citations from third party publishers for AI citations (2026-03)
64% of AI citations originated from third-party publisher sources rather than the brand's own domain.
Attribution:
View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
64%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026-03
Entity
Sample Size
87
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
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Stacker/Scrunch
Primary
Tier B
https://www.visibilitystack.ai/academy/content-engineering/content-formatting-for-ai-platforms-what-… ↗
Source Article
Why AI Cites You but Recommends Competitors
TL;DR
- AI citations and AI brand mentions are separate trust evaluations. Citations mean AI trusts your content as evidence. Mentions mean AI trusts your brand enough to recommend. Fewer than 1 in 5 brands earn both.
- Content quality earns citations. Brand entity authority earns mentions. If your …
Original Research
Stacker/Scrunch
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Stacker/Scrunch GEO study of 87 stories across 30 brands
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
AI citations: 64% share of ai citations from third party publishers. Source: Stacker/Scrunch (2026-03). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/third-party-ai-citations-share-2026
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/third-party-ai-citations-share-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>64%</strong> -- share of ai citations from third party publishers for AI citations<br><small>Source: Stacker/Scrunch (2026-03) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/third-party-ai-citations-share-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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