New research from marketing agency Ten Speed shows AI tools mostly cite business websites, not Reddit, when people compare options.
If you’ve been told your business needs a Reddit strategy to show up in AI search results, new research suggests that advice may be pointing you in the wrong direction.
The analysis, from marketing agency Ten Speed and written up by Nelson Brassell, looked specifically at what AI tools cite when someone is in the process of comparing or evaluating options, rather than just researching a topic broadly. Think questions like “best CRM for a small sales team” or “how does this software handle security,” the kind of question people ask once they’re seriously weighing up a purchase, not just learning about a category.
Ten Speed tracked citation data through a tool called Peec AI, which monitors how AI systems including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini reference specific web pages in their answers. The analysis covered just over 7,000 citations across 170 evaluation-stage questions, drawn from Ten Speed’s own client base across industries including SaaS, professional services, hospitality and manufacturing.
Where AI actually looks
The pattern in the data was clear and consistent, according to Ten Speed. When people ask AI tools to compare or evaluate specific options, the tools overwhelmingly cite content businesses already control: product pages, blog articles, comparison guides, how-to content and homepages. Together, that kind of owned content made up around 88 percent of all citations Ten Speed tracked.
Product pages alone accounted for roughly a quarter of all citations, the largest single category. Ten Speed’s analysis suggests this is because AI tools often need to explain what a product actually does or who it’s for, and a dedicated product page is generally the clearest source for that information.
Homepages showed up more often than expected too, in around 8 percent of citations. Ten Speed’s read is that AI tools use a business’s homepage to establish the basics, who the company is, what it sells, who it’s for, before answering a more specific question. The practical takeaway is that a homepage should state plainly what a business does and offers, rather than relying on vague or overly clever positioning that leaves an AI tool with less to work with.
Why Reddit matters less than you’d think
Despite widespread advice that businesses need a presence on Reddit and YouTube to show up in AI search, Ten Speed’s data told a different story at this stage of the buying process. Community platforms including Reddit, YouTube and forums accounted for only around 4 percent of citations combined. YouTube specifically was almost entirely absent, at roughly 1 percent.
Ten Speed did note that when a Reddit thread was cited, AI tools tended to lean on it fairly heavily. But the firm was cautious about reading too much into that. “The question we consistently ask is whether Reddit is the right place for B2B marketing teams to invest,” Brassell wrote, arguing the small overall share of citations doesn’t support treating Reddit as a priority channel for businesses at this stage.
What this means for a small business
Two other findings are worth noting for any business with an online presence. Comparison-style content, pages that directly weigh up one option against another, punched well above its weight, generating around 27 percent of citations from just 20 percent of the questions asked. And listings on review and directory sites such as G2 and Capterra weren’t just about star ratings. Ten Speed’s analysis found the written profile, category tags and product descriptions on those platforms functioned as content in their own right, feeding directly into what AI tools cite.
A few honest caveats
Ten Speed was upfront about the limits of its own findings. The data reflects its own client base of B2B SaaS and professional services businesses, not a random sample of companies generally, and results may look different for other types of businesses or industries. The firm also cautioned that being cited by an AI tool isn’t the same as being clicked on or leading to a sale, and that citation patterns are changing quickly as AI platforms continue to update.
Still, the core message is a relatively simple one for any business trying to figure out where to invest time online: a clear, well-written website that plainly explains what you do may matter more for AI visibility than trying to build a presence on community platforms.
Full data and breakdown here: https://www.tenspeed.io/blog/what-ai-cites-b2b-evaluation-stage
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