Key takeaways
- Your own website is only ~9% of the sources behind AI answers about your brand.
- The biggest sources are competitor and peer sites (~38%) and communities like Reddit and YouTube (~19%).
- Review platforms (G2, Capterra, Gartner) are the single most workable place to start.
Where does AI get its answers about a SaaS brand?
Mostly from sources you do not own. Averaged across our cohort, the citations behind AI answers broke down roughly like this:
- Competitor and peer sites — ~38%
- Community platforms (Reddit, YouTube) — ~19%
- Trade press and industry media — ~9%
- Your own website — ~9%
- Review and comparison platforms — ~4%
(The remainder is jobs, reference and uncategorised sources.) The headline is simple: roughly four-fifths of what AI reads about you sits on ground you do not control. Owned content still matters — but it is the minority of the answer.
Why do competitors keep showing up in my AI answers?
Because buyers ask comparative questions, and AI answers them comparatively. The prompts in our data were overwhelmingly “best CRM for…”, “X vs Y” and “top tools for…”. Ask for the best tool and you do not get one name in a vacuum — you get a shortlist, because that is how buyers evaluate. So your competitors appearing alongside you is not a failure; it is the format. The “X vs Y” pages, category round-ups and review profiles where you appear together are exactly the places to make sure you are present and well represented.
Which sources should you actually focus on?
You cannot optimise the whole internet, so start where you have the most leverage:
- Review and comparison platforms (G2, Capterra, GetApp, Gartner, TrustRadius) — the most directly workable of all. Profile completeness and review volume are things your team can manage this month.
- Community platforms. YouTube and Reddit were the two most-cited sources in the entire study. Earned presence here — genuinely useful content and real participation — compounds over time.
- LinkedIn and Medium. high-value surfaces for thought-leadership content that gets pulled into answers.
- Trade press. reached through digital PR — original data, commentary and spokespeople. This is how you get into the industry-media bucket, and it is the same earned-media work that builds authority.
What about your own website?
Your site’s job is to make you eligible to be cited, not to carry the whole answer. Owned content is the foundation, but on its own it does little to grow your presence across the third-party sources that make up most of the answer — that is a separate job. A useful rule of thumb: once your foundational content exists, weight ongoing effort roughly 80/20 toward off-site over on-site. Treat it as a sense-check, not a formula.
What to do this quarter
- Audit and complete your profiles on the top review platforms, and drive a steady flow of reviews.
- Publish two or three genuinely useful resource pages answering the questions buyers actually ask.
- Line up one piece of original data or commentary for digital PR, guest articles or community contribution to earn coverage.
- Track how often your site is cited as a source that makes up the answer
This is the short version. The full research — 1,052,053 citations across six B2B SaaS brands, with the 42 sources that actually matter — is in the B2B SaaS AEO Study.
Want to know where your brand stands in AI search? Book a strategy session with our AI SEO team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does AI get its answers about B2B SaaS brands?
Mostly from third-party sources — competitor and peer sites (~38%), community platforms like Reddit and YouTube (~19%), trade press (~9%) and review platforms (~4%). A brand’s own website accounts for only around 9%.
Can I control what AI says about my brand?
Not directly, but you can influence it — by building presence across the third-party sources AI cites (review platforms, communities and trade press) and by keeping citable resource content on your own site.
This is the short version. The full research — 1,052,053 citations across six B2B SaaS brands, with the 42 sources that actually matter — is in the B2B SaaS AEO Study.
Want to know where your brand stands in AI search? Book a strategy session with our AI SEO team.
