# 23% of the citations behind the answers point at a vendor's own site, and 5% at a review site.

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/research/what-the-answers-cite/

Five of the fourteen models return the sources they read before answering. Across the 10,283 answers that carry a source list, 139,660 citations name 755 sites. This page counts them: which sites the answers cite, how much of the citing goes to the vendors themselves, and how much to the review sites that sell placement. It is a fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

## The sites cited most

- g2.com: 3661 citations in 2129 answers (review site)
- guideflow.com: 1343 citations in 1290 answers (vendor: Guideflow)
- expertinsights.com: 1022 citations in 927 answers
- gartner.com: 1017 citations in 772 answers (review site)
- cybersecuritynews.com: 854 citations in 661 answers
- learn.g2.com: 853 citations in 807 answers (review site)
- sourceforge.net: 716 citations in 483 answers (vendor: SourceForge)
- cyberpress.org: 635 citations in 500 answers (vendor: CyberPress)
- motadata.com: 434 citations in 403 answers (vendor: Motadata)
- itechguides.com: 426 citations in 275 answers
- aimultiple.com: 398 citations in 372 answers
- us.fitgap.com: 368 citations in 291 answers
- radware.com: 360 citations in 187 answers (vendor: Radware WAF)
- peerspot.com: 360 citations in 276 answers (review site)
- paloaltonetworks.com: 350 citations in 254 answers (vendor: Palo Alto Prisma Cloud / Cortex Cloud)
- thectoclub.com: 350 citations in 338 answers
- securityboulevard.com: 349 citations in 269 answers
- comparitech.com: 348 citations in 291 answers
- dev.to: 336 citations in 244 answers
- underdefense.com: 333 citations in 218 answers (vendor: UnderDefense MDR)
- upguard.com: 329 citations in 227 answers (vendor: UpGuard Breach Risk Self-Service)
- worldmetrics.org: 328 citations in 253 answers
- gbhackers.com: 316 citations in 279 answers
- it-ai-index.com: 288 citations in 207 answers
- checkthat.ai: 284 citations in 242 answers
- startupstash.com: 279 citations in 272 answers
- venn.com: 264 citations in 173 answers (vendor: Venn)
- startwithidentity.com: 259 citations in 187 answers
- ciopages.com: 252 citations in 250 answers
- techrepublic.com: 252 citations in 232 answers

31948 of 139660 citations (23%) to a vendor's own site; 6390 (5%) to a review site.

Published under CC BY 4.0. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.