For example, when someone searches for "best pourover coffee near me," — a subjective, unbranded, location-based question — the AI isn't pulling from Wikipedia; it's pulling from individual listings, review platforms, and local pages. In fact, general forums like Reddit made up just 2% of citations in our study. That's a far cry from what brand-level analysis alone might suggest.
The bottom line: Customers — and the AI tools they consult — make a lot of purchase decisions at the location level. Managing only at the national or brand level risks losing customers "at the sidewalk" where purchase decisions actually happen.
3. Marketers need to be everywhere AI looks
Another truth about changing search behavior in the AI era? People are using more channels than ever. A search journey might start with a conversation with ChatGPT, an answer from Google Gemini, or even a scroll on TikTok — or all three. And behind each of those experiences, AI platforms are crafting answers from many different sources — often in mere seconds.
Our research confirms what many marketers already feel: a one-channel strategy won't cut it anymore. Here are a few of the citation nuances we discovered:
Gemini favors first-party websites
OpenAI leans heavily on third-party listings
Perplexity diversifies across a mix of sources, including review platforms and local pages
The common thread? These sources live across your brand's entire digital footprint. If your information isn't structured and consistent everywhere, you risk being misrepresented or overlooked entirely.
Visibility isn't about playing favorites with channels anymore. It's about being trusted by all of them.
How brands can take action today
The good news: AI citations aren't random. They're earned through data that's complete, consistent, and easy for machines to understand. That means you can take control starting today.
Here's what to do:
Measure visibility across platforms and locations. You can't improve what you can't see. Benchmark where your brand is being cited — and where it's missing. (Yext Scout makes this simple.)
Structure your brand facts in one central source of truth. AI rewards clarity. Centralizing data — like locations, services, providers — makes it easier for AI to understand, trust, and cite your brand. (Hint: you can power all of this with the Yext Knowledge Graph.)
Distribute information everywhere AI looks. From websites and local pages to listings, reviews, and directories — coverage and consistency across trusted sources is the new visibility strategy. (Enter, the Yext Brand Visibility Platform.)
The brands that win in AI search aren't guessing. They're structuring their data, distributing it strategically, and tracking performance.
Staying visible in an AI-first world
AI doesn't rank brands — it cites them. And when it comes to those citations, brands have more control than they think. Whether you're in charge of 5 locations or 5,000, our research shows a path forward that's clear, scalable, and grounded in data — so you can stop chasing mystery metrics and start shaping how your brand shows up in AI-generated answers.
Click here to read the full AI citations report.
*Survey details: The results in this report are from an online survey of 2,237 adults who made a purchase online within the past three months and used voice search (e.g., Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa) or conversational AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) to find information online. The survey was conducted from March 20 to April 6, 2025, by Researchscape International on behalf of Yext. Results were weighted by country population, age, and gender. Respondents were from four countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
