AI Citation Index Run 4: Which Sources ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity Cited on October 28, 2026

On October 28, 2026, the fourth run of Anobee's AI citation index produced the same headline as the first three. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cited anobee.com for the fixed prompt. Google AI Mode did not. Under that headline, 25 cited URLs changed since run 3 on September 18, and the union of cited Anobee pages reached 16, the highest so far.

The September 9 pilot set the prompt and the counting rules, and the September 14 repeat tested whether the result reproduced. Run 3 began a list of durable pages. Run 4 changes one condition on purpose: every product was used signed out.

How run 4 of the AI citation index was done

Each product received the same sentence in a new conversation or search: Search the web for Anobee and cite the sources you use.

What counts as a citation: an anobee.com URL the answer displays as a citation chip, a reference entry, a source-list entry or a link in the answer text. URLs are normalized before comparison: tracking parameters such as utm_source=chatgpt.com are removed, and trailing-slash variants of one page are merged. For ChatGPT, each chip's destination was read from the conversation's own citation references, not guessed from the label "Anobee +1".

What changed: in runs 1 to 3, ChatGPT ran in a signed-in Plus account, and Gemini and Google AI Mode ran in a signed-in Google account. Perplexity was signed out every time. All four products now allow this. For example, OpenAI says people who are not signed in can also use ChatGPT web search [1]. So run 4 measures what a first-time visitor sees, which is closer to how most people meet a brand. However, it also means that part of any change since run 3 may come from the session, not from the products. The tables flag this where it matters.

AI citation index run 4 results at a glance

The three product counts add up to 19. After removing overlaps, 16 distinct Anobee pages were cited, up from 14 in run 3. For the first time since September 14, the homepage reached all three successful products. Still, ChatGPT linked it in the answer text rather than as a chip. The Privacy Policy reached two products, ChatGPT and Perplexity. The other 14 pages appeared in one product only.

Which sources does ChatGPT cite for Anobee now?

Eight Anobee URLs appeared in ChatGPT's answer. Its citation chips pointed to About (three chips), the Privacy Policy (two), the Editorial Policy, the Fact-Checking Policy and three category hubs: AI Tools, Digital Marketing and Productivity. The homepage appeared as a plain link and in a "Useful links" list.

The answer also changed shape. It added a section headed "Is Anobee trustworthy?" and built it from the editorial, fact-checking and privacy policies. It said these were "positive signs of transparency" but did not establish accuracy on their own. In run 3, ChatGPT cited the SEO hub, the AI citation guide and run 2 of this index. This time it cited none of them and did not mention the index.

Behind the answer, the search retrieved pages it did not show. The search returned the Cookie Policy, three posts from Anobee's LinkedIn company page and four unrelated results, including a site about "anibee.tv" and two PDFs. None of those reached the answer. It is the first run in which an Anobee-owned page outside anobee.com, the LinkedIn page, entered ChatGPT's retrieval set.

Perplexity sources: the index starts citing itself

Perplexity listed 10 sources, all on anobee.com, with no unrelated pages. That matches the interim Perplexity-only check on October 14, which also returned 10 sources, all from anobee.com.

The content of the answer is the bigger change. Perplexity gave the AI Citation Index its own heading, quoted the fixed prompt and reported that "Google AI Mode did not" cite anobee.com. To do so, it cited all three earlier runs of this index, the Perplexity SEO guide and the guide to checking AI citations. Published first-party data has become one of the things Perplexity reaches for when it describes the site.

One source is a technical note for site owners. Perplexity cited anobee.com/search, Anobee's site search page, which carries a noindex, follow robots tag. A noindex tag did not keep that page out of Perplexity's source list.

Gemini and Google AI Mode

Gemini cited the homepage again, the only page it has cited in every run. Signed out, it answered with an APA-style reference list of two entries: anobee.com and a Tracxn company profile. Google notes that not all Gemini responses include sources [2], so a short list is within normal behavior. The Tracxn entry is the first business-directory source in the series. Gemini's run 3 note that Anobee is not Amobee did not return.

Google AI Mode misread the prompt for the fourth time. It showed "10 sites" under the line "Here are top web results for exploring this topic", and every result was a citation-format guide, from Scribbr to two university library pages. Anobee was not mentioned. Run 4 rules out one explanation: AI Mode fails the same way signed out as it did signed in. Google's help page offers a better one. It says AI Mode shows a set of web links instead of a response when it is not confident in an answer [3]. Four runs of link lists fit that description.

What changed since run 3

Forty days separate run 3 and run 4 of the AI citation index, longer than any earlier gap.

That is 25 URL-level changes in three products, behind a pass rate that has not moved in four runs.

The move toward policy pages and category hubs in ChatGPT coincides with the switch to a signed-out session. With one run, it is not possible to say whether the session or a product update caused it. By contrast, Perplexity's change does not have that problem, because it was signed out in every run.

Two pages have survived all four runs

After run 3, four product and page pairs had a perfect record. ChatGPT dropped two of them in run 4, the SEO hub and the AI citation guide. Of the 32 Anobee URLs cited in any run by any product, 17 have appeared exactly once.

Complete run 4 dataset

The table below is the complete normalized first-party dataset for October 28, 2026. Google AI Mode cited no Anobee page and is left out.

Non-Anobee sources shown in answers: Gemini cited a Tracxn company profile. ChatGPT retrieved Anobee's LinkedIn posts, a lookalike-domain page and three unrelated documents but did not show them. Perplexity showed none.

What this AI citation index run means for site owners

Four runs are still a small sample of one branded prompt. Within that limit, three patterns have now held every time.

1. Presence is stable and the page set is not. Three products cited the site in every run, yet most cited URLs changed between runs. Tracking only "were we cited" would show a flat line.
2. Trust pages get cited when a model judges a brand. About, privacy, editorial and fact-checking pages carried ChatGPT's answer this time. A clear entity record and honest policy pages do real work here.
3. Specific first-party data gets reused. Perplexity described Anobee partly through this index. A dated, reproducible dataset gives an answer engine something concrete to cite.

Google AI Mode remains the exception. Google's guidance says optimizing for its AI features is "still SEO" and that SEO best practices continue to be relevant [4]. Yet AI Mode keeps treating "cite the sources" as the topic rather than the instruction. A branded prompt worded differently may behave differently, and that is a question for a separate test, not a change to this one.

The next run will use the same prompt, signed out again, so that run 5 can separate session effects from product changes. To get it when it is published, join the Anobee newsletter from the sign-up box on the homepage. The method for checking AI citations explains how to run the same test on your own site.