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In one 2025 comparison, ChatGPT was reported to cite news sources more heavily than Gemini or Claude—but the widely repeated 49% figure is not a ChatGPT-only rate. It applies to objective queries in a Muck Rack study reported by Axios. Semrush’s studies track AI citations and changes in cited domains, but they do not establish that same cross-platform news ranking.
What the comparison actually found
On July 24, 2025, Axios reported on Muck Rack’s analysis of more than one million realistic prompts submitted to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The prompts covered advice and opinion, fact searches, current-event updates, comparisons, instructions, brainstorming, and creative or task-completion requests. Axios described ChatGPT as the heaviest user of news citations among the three assistants, citing Reuters, the Associated Press, the Financial Times, Time, and Axios as examples of outlets it referenced. Axios’s report does not provide a ChatGPT-only news citation rate.
The 49% statistic refers to objective queries seeking recent updates or facts: in that query category, news sources were cited 49% of the time. It is not the share of all ChatGPT answers containing a news citation, nor a ChatGPT-versus-Gemini-versus-Claude score. The same report gives two other figures with different denominators: 27% of inquiries cited news stories produced by journalistic entities, while 37% cited external corporate blogs or content. Those figures describe source categories in the study and should not be merged with the 49% result.
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What Semrush’s studies do—and don’t—show
Semrush has published research on AI citations, cited domains, and how those patterns change, but its studies are not the source of the specific three-assistant news comparison described above.
Three-month citation tracking
Semrush analyzed more than 230,000 prompts across ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, taking 13 weekly snapshots from July 14 to October 12, 2025. Its analysis examined the 25 most frequently cited domains each week and more than 100 million citations. It found that citations to Reddit and Wikipedia in ChatGPT fell sharply in mid-September, although both remained among ChatGPT’s most-cited domains as of October 2025. This shows that the mix of sources can shift; it does not establish that news outlets outrank other source types. See Semrush’s three-month study.
Domain frequency in selected topics
A separate Semrush analysis published September 3, 2025 examined ChatGPT and Google AI Mode across finance, digital technology, business services, consumer electronics, and fashion. It highlighted frequent citations to community and reference sites. For example, Wikipedia had a 167.08% citation frequency in ChatGPT digital-technology responses, and Reddit had a 176.89% citation frequency in ChatGPT finance queries. These figures mean the domains appeared more than once per prompt on average in those measured sets—not that they accounted for 167.08% or 176.89% of all citations. They are not measures of news-site share. Details appear in Semrush’s topic analysis.
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Why news citation rates are difficult to compare
A “news citation rate” depends on what counts as news, which prompts were asked, and what the denominator represents. A study of requests for current facts will naturally test something different from one that includes brainstorming or creative tasks. Likewise, a figure may count prompts with at least one news source, citations per prompt, or the share of all citations that come from news outlets. These measures are not interchangeable.
- Prompt category: Muck Rack’s 49% applies to objective queries seeking recent updates or facts, not every prompt in the study.
- Platform and mode: ChatGPT Search is not automatically equivalent to every ChatGPT experience, and comparisons involving Google AI Mode or Perplexity measure different products and systems.
- Time: Citation patterns shift. Semrush’s weekly tracking recorded a marked change in ChatGPT’s Reddit and Wikipedia citations during September 2025.
- Source definition: A publisher’s news story, a corporate blog, a reference page, and a community post belong to different categories; the reported result depends on how researchers classify them.
- Metric: Citation frequency can exceed 100% when a source appears more than once per prompt on average. That is not a percentage share of citations.
Muck Rack’s own Generative Pulse page currently says it has prompted AI systems more than 25 million times since July 2025 and that 84% of citations in AI answers come from earned media. Those are vendor-reported rolling aggregates. The page does not specify a ChatGPT-only rate for news citations, a sampling frame, or a source breakdown on its face, so the figures cannot be used as a substitute for the Axios-reported comparison. See Muck Rack’s Generative Pulse page.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A citation does not prove a news answer is accurate or current
Finding a citation in an answer shows that a source appeared; it does not prove that the response selected the right story, represented it accurately, or retrieved the latest reporting.
A 2024 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism experiment tested a narrow task: asking ChatGPT Enterprise with GPT-4 and Google Bard for the five current headlines from named outlets across ten countries. Across 4,500 requests, 15 outlets, and three waves, ChatGPT returned no news-like response for 54% of requests. Only 8% of all requests produced headlines referring to one of the requested outlet’s top five stories at that moment. The study also found that 30% of requests produced stories from the requested outlet that were not among its current top stories, with some older stories, and a small portion of outputs misattributed information. The results are specific to that 2024 experiment and those systems; they do not measure current ChatGPT behavior. They do illustrate why citation frequency and successful latest-news retrieval are separate questions. Read the Reuters Institute report.
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How to read the headline
The headline’s broad claim needs a source distinction. The available evidence supports saying that Axios reported Muck Rack found ChatGPT to be the heaviest news citer among ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. It does not support attributing that exact finding to Semrush, or saying the 49% statistic is ChatGPT’s overall news citation rate. Semrush’s research adds evidence about which domains appear in AI answers and how citation patterns move over time, not a direct confirmation of that ranking.
For readers evaluating an AI-generated news answer, open the linked article and check its date, publication, and whether it supports the specific claim in the response. A citation is a lead to verify, not a quality score.
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