We logged every major AI engine cited across 120 buyer questions. Official sites almost never made the list.

When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "what's the best X for Y", the engine reads a handful of web sources, then writes an answer naming 3–5 brands. We wanted to know: which sources actually get read?

So we logged them. 120 B2B buyer questions, 5 engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews), every cited URL recorded and tallied by host. Three findings surprised us.

If your AEO plan is "optimize our own site," you're optimizing the minority channel.

If you've ever screenshotted "ChatGPT recommends us!" — run it twice more before you celebrate.

The fix is simple: fetch each redirect with redirect: 'manual' and read the Location header. No body download, one round-trip, real source URLs. (If you're on Vercel, do it server-side with a timeout — some of them hang.)

The practical takeaway: find your citation gaps A citation gap is a source your category's AI answers repeatedly cite — but that never mentions you. Since the engine already trusts that source, getting genuinely listed there is usually the fastest route into AI answers. The DIY version:

Ask 6–10 real buyer questions on Perplexity and Google AI Overviews (they cite most consistently) Record every cited URL, tally by host Cross out hosts that already name you What's left, ranked by count, is your to-do list No engine sells positions inside organic answers. Anyone guaranteeing an AI ranking is guessing with your budget.