GEOforge Research · Citation Data
One in seven of Google’s AI citations points to a “best X”, “top N”, “X vs Y” or “alternatives” page. For ChatGPT it is about one in 77. The gap has not moved in 13 weeks.
Marketers often talk about “AI search” as one channel. For one kind of page it is two. When Google’s AI answers back a claim, they reach for roundups and comparisons far more often than ChatGPT does, and that has been true every week for a quarter.
GEOforge runs each brand’s tracked prompts against ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews on a schedule and stores every source each answer cites. For this piece we used the 13 full weeks from 13 July to 11 October 2026: 327,613 answers that came with a source list, from 786 prompts across 26 brands, citing 3,850,973 sources.
We counted a citation as listicle-style when the path of its URL contains best-, top- followed by a number or word, -vs-, -versus- or alternatives. That is a deliberately narrow, mechanical rule: it reads the address, not the page. It will miss roundups with plain URLs, and it can catch an odd page that happens to use one of those words.
Each week, between 14% and 17% of Google AI citations were listicle-style. For ChatGPT the range was 1.0% to 1.6%. The two lines never came close to each other.
Two engines, one stable gap
Citations to best-of, top-N, versus and alternatives pages as a share of all citations, by week. Hover a point for the counts.
| Week of | Google AI citations | Google AI listicle share | ChatGPT citations | ChatGPT listicle share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Jul | 301,294 | 14.6% | 48,725 | 1.2% |
| 20 Jul | 350,284 | 16.6% | 56,917 | 1.0% |
| 27 Jul | 252,154 | 14.8% | 53,598 | 1.1% |
| 3 Aug | 300,612 | 14.4% | 52,728 | 1.6% |
| 10 Aug | 350,797 | 13.8% | 60,185 | 1.3% |
| 17 Aug | 385,027 | 14.0% | 66,520 | 1.4% |
| 24 Aug | 315,273 | 15.0% | 67,702 | 1.2% |
| 31 Aug | 156,348 | 14.5% | 46,979 | 1.4% |
| 7 Sep | 145,419 | 14.8% | 47,710 | 1.3% |
| 14 Sep | 131,168 | 15.2% | 47,601 | 1.3% |
| 21 Sep | 148,208 | 14.3% | 44,729 | 1.4% |
| 28 Sep | 132,496 | 14.1% | 43,072 | 1.4% |
| 5 Oct | 186,885 | 14.3% | 58,542 | 1.3% |
Google AI figures combine AI Mode and AI Overviews. In June the same measure was 17% for AI Overviews and 1% for ChatGPT, so the pattern predates this window.
That was our first suspicion: Google and ChatGPT might simply be answering different questions. They are not. The same prompts run on every engine. Taking the 247 prompts with at least 50 citations on both ChatGPT and AI Overviews in the last four weeks, AI Overviews’ listicle share was higher for 208 of them and ChatGPT’s was higher for 17. Pooled across those prompts the shares were 15% and 1.4%.
No. Of the 26 brands we track, 18 had at least 500 citations on both ChatGPT and Google AI between 31 August and 11 October. Every one of them showed a higher listicle share on Google. The smallest gap was 5.3 times. Brands in different industries and with different prompt sets all look the same.
| Brand | ChatGPT | Google AI |
|---|---|---|
| Brand A | 1.3% | 29.2% |
| Brand B | 4.5% | 23.7% |
| Brand C | 1.4% | 20.9% |
| Brand D | 1.2% | 18.3% |
| Brand E | 2.2% | 17.6% |
| Brand F | 1.6% | 17.3% |
| Brand G | 1.2% | 16.1% |
| Brand H | 2.8% | 15.2% |
| Brand I | 1.9% | 13.3% |
| Brand J | 0.7% | 13.2% |
| Brand K | 0.4% | 10.2% |
| Brand L | 0.6% | 9.5% |
| Brand M | 0.7% | 6.6% |
| Brand N | 0.3% | 6.5% |
| Brand O | 0.2% | 4.7% |
| Brand P | 0.0% | 3.5% |
| Brand Q | 0.5% | 3.4% |
| Brand R | 0.3% | 2.9% |
All four patterns we looked for are far more common in Google’s citations. “Best” pages are the biggest group on Google, and “versus” and “alternatives” pages show the largest relative gaps, at more than 20 times ChatGPT’s rate.
Every listicle pattern is more common on Google
Share of all citations whose URL carries each pattern, 14 September to 11 October. A page can match more than one pattern.
Bars are scaled to 9%.
We checked. The share did not move when Google AI Mode attached about half as many sources to each answer from the end of August (about 20 per answer before, about 8 after). AI Mode’s listicle share was 15% before and 15% after. Excluding the most recent week, Google’s weekly share stayed within 14–17%. If a collection fault were creating the gap, it would have to leave ChatGPT untouched, hold steady through a change in list length, and show up in every brand. We found no sign of that.
Data. Every answer GEOforge collected between 13 July and 11 October 2026 that carried a list of cited sources: 327,613 answers across 26 brands and 786 prompts. We counted the sources each engine attached to its answer, not links that appear only in the answer text.
Classification. By URL path, as described above. Pages from Google’s own panels were not treated specially because they carry none of these words. Answers whose sources came back as unresolved Google redirect links were excluded.
Normalization. Shares of citations, not counts, because weekly collection volume varies. Weeks start on Monday; the last week runs 5–11 October.
Checks. We split the window by week, compared the same prompts across engines, repeated the comparison brand by brand (18 of 18 agree), looked at each engine on its own, checked that the AI Mode source-list change did not move the share, dropped the latest week, and looked back to June.
Limitations. The prompts are the ones our clients track, so they lean B2B and are not a random sample of all searches. URL classification is mechanical and undercounts listicles with plain URLs. We cannot see why the engines differ, and we did not test whether any listicle placement changes a brand’s own visibility. Every figure is aggregated; no brand, prompt or cited page is identified.
GEOforge tracks every source your brand and your competitors earn across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, week by week. 14-day free trial, no sales call.
Start a free trial →Sources & method. All figures come from the GEOforge production citation database: 13 July to 11 October 2026, 26 brands, 786 prompts, 327,613 AI answers with source lists and 3,850,973 cited sources. Related: Engagement Is a Threshold, Not a Ladder and Google’s AI Cites Your Website Without Naming You 43% of the Time.
