AI Source Index · one engine · 2026-W41
The most-cited websites in Google AI Overviews answers — updated weekly
In week 2026-W41, measured 5 October 2026, the websites Google AI Overviews cited most were youtube.com (20 questions, 51%), reddit.com (15 questions, 38%) and facebook.com (5 questions, 13%). Each count is the number of the 39 questions it answered whose answer cited that site at least once. 1 of the 40 panel questions got no answer from it that week.
Week 2026-W41, measured 5 October 2026. One sample per engine per question; a difference of one or two questions is noise, not a trend.
What stands out
AI Overviews are not asked through a chat API: we read the overview Google shows on its results page for the same question. Google’s own search and shopping links next to it are not counted as sources.
This week its 39 answers cited 140 different websites, 5.1 per answer on average (across the 6 engines: 3.4 to 10.7).
10 of its 39 answers cited no website at all.
Among the source types we classify, social sites were its largest group, at 18% of its citations (a domain counts once per answer); 62% matched no type — retailers, vendors’ own sites and the rest.
The 25 most-cited websites
| Domain | Type | Questions | Share (95% interval) | vs week before |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | social | 20 / 39 | 51% (36–66%) | — |
| reddit.com | community | 15 / 39 | 38% (25–54%) | — |
| facebook.com | social | 5 / 39 | 13% (6–27%) | — |
| instagram.com | social | 5 / 39 | 13% (6–27%) | — |
| quora.com | community | 4 / 39 | 10% (4–24%) | — |
| cnbc.com | media | 3 / 39 | 8% (3–20%) | — |
| cnet.com | media | 3 / 39 | 8% (3–20%) | — |
| tiktok.com | social | 3 / 39 | 8% (3–20%) | — |
| zapier.com | other | 3 / 39 | 8% (3–20%) | — |
| finance.yahoo.com | other | 2 / 39 | 5% (1–17%) | — |
| linkedin.com | social | 2 / 39 | 5% (1–17%) | — |
| nytimes.com | media | 2 / 39 | 5% (1–17%) | — |
| pcmag.com | media | 2 / 39 | 5% (1–17%) | — |
| sleepfoundation.org | other | 2 / 39 | 5% (1–17%) | — |
| aarp.org | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| abacuswealth.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| adobe.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| ahrefs.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| americanvisitorinsurance.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| architecturaldigest.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| bearmattress.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| behindrankings.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| benq.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| biltritefurniture.com | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
| blaze.ai | other | 1 / 39 | 3% (0–13%) | — |
Share = questions whose answer cited the site at least once, out of the 39 this engine answered. The interval is a 95% Wilson score interval; “thin sample” marks an interval wider than a third of the scale, where the rate cannot be read off the sample.
No change column this week: Google AI Overviews answered a different number of questions this week than the week before, and a count compared across two denominators is not a change.
Method
A fixed, published panel of 40 buyer questions in English is put once to each of 6 answer engines every Monday. Every URL an answer cites is stored, and a domain counts once per question per engine. One sample per engine per question.
How we measureEvery observation behind 2026-W41, as JSON (this engine’s rows carry "engine": "aioverviews")
The same week, other engines
Most-cited sites in PerplexityMost-cited sites in ChatGPTMost-cited sites in GeminiMost-cited sites in ClaudeMost-cited sites in Google AI Mode