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Peter Jackman
Peter Jackman

Posted on Originally published at leadsnow.ai

Your competitor gets named in AI answers and you don't - what they have that you don't

Usually it is not their website outranking yours. Across 121 AI answers to 24 commercial and comparison-intent prompts polled on ChatGPT and Gemini between 1 and 11 September 2026, the average answer cited 8.5 sources drawn from 541 distinct domains — and in the answers that did cite us, our own site supplied only 18.1% of those sources.

What this covers

  • The citation-source audit, in four steps
  • MAKE MORE SALES.
  • The five-poll rule: how many times to ask before you believe the gap
  • How to run a citation-source audit on the answer that named them
  • What AI engines actually cite on “best provider” questions
  • Why does AI recommend my competitor? Four causes, and the test for each

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the data, tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Your competitor gets named in AI answers and you don't - what they have that you don't*.

LeadsNow AI builds pay-per-result AI lead generation and answer-engine-optimisation systems in Australia.

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