What sources does ChatGPT cite most?

What ChatGPT cites most depends on what you ask it. Ask about a named business, a price or who to hire, and the largest share of its sources is businesses' own sites. Ask about a rule or a deadline, and it cites government sites. Ask about ChatGPT itself, and it cites OpenAI.

We asked ChatGPT the everyday questions Malaysians ask about businesses, and checked every site it cited. Wikipedia came up once. Reddit never did.

Which sources does ChatGPT cite, by type of question?

ChatGPT's main source depended on the type of question we asked it. The table counts each site ChatGPT cited once per answer.

Every answer and every cited site, with an example page: download the CSV.

The named businesses were large companies such as Village Grocer, Jaya Grocer, TNB and Mr DIY. Definitions and how-to questions cited few sites because ChatGPT often answered them from memory: it searched the web for only 5 of 15 definition answers.

Who does ChatGPT cite when customers ask who to hire?

When Malaysians ask who to hire, ChatGPT cites businesses' own sites most, then directories. In our test, businesses' own sites, including free Google Sites pages, were 59% of the sites cited for local recommendations, directories and apps such as recommend.my and WhatClinic 27%, and Google Maps or Business Profile pages 6%.

The mix varied a lot by trade. The wedding photographer question alone accounted for 14 of the 30 own-site citations; for renovation contractors, ChatGPT cited directories and marketplaces and only one contractor's own site.

It also varied from run to run. Asked for a good dentist in Petaling Jaya three times, ChatGPT cited five clinics' own websites in the first run, pages from one dental directory in the second, and Google Maps, a Business Profile and the directory in the third. Each run recommended the clinics it cited.

Which sources does ChatGPT cite for prices?

For price questions, 11 of the 19 sites ChatGPT cited were businesses' own pages, mostly "how much does it cost in Malaysia" guides, and directories and portals such as recommend.my, PropertyGuru and mytuition.my were 6. One question drove that: asked what a business website costs, it cited six web design and hosting firms' cost guides across three runs, 8 of the 11. For renovation, aircon and tuition prices, directories and portals were cited more often than businesses' own pages.

Most of those guides quote market ranges rather than one firm's price list. A clear, dated cost guide for your trade is the kind of page ChatGPT cited when this question came up.

Where does ChatGPT get rules, tax and deadlines?

For rules and dates, ChatGPT went to the source: government and regulator sites were 82% of the sites it cited for time-sensitive questions and 75% for how-to questions. Across rules, dates and definitions, it cited SSM for company registration, the Royal Malaysian Customs Department's SST portal, LHDN's e-invoicing pages, the Labour Department for the minimum wage, and the Cabinet Office and Selangor state government for public holidays.

Apart from Google's own help pages and one public-holiday listing site, nothing else was cited for these questions. If you write about a rule, ChatGPT is likely to cite the government page you'd link to, not your summary of it.

What does ChatGPT cite when you ask how to get cited by ChatGPT?

For questions about ChatGPT itself, ChatGPT cited OpenAI: 33 of the 35 sites were OpenAI's help pages, website or developer docs. The other two were a PR firm's citation audit and a marketing firm's blog post on AI citations, both for "what sources does ChatGPT cite most".

For "how to get cited by ChatGPT" itself, it didn't search at all in any of three runs. The answer came from memory, with no sources.

How often does ChatGPT cite Wikipedia or Reddit?

ChatGPT cited Wikipedia once and Reddit never in our Malaysian test. Wikipedia was cited once in 119 sites for business questions (for "who owns Mr DIY"). Reddit wasn't cited at all, even though in 7 of the 90 business answers ChatGPT's searches returned 45 Reddit threads, 32 of them from Malaysian communities such as r/MalaysianPF and r/malaysiauni. It found them, and cited other pages instead.

US studies found more. Profound's study of about 730,000 US ChatGPT conversations from late 2025 ranked Wikipedia and Reddit as ChatGPT's two most-cited sites, at 5% and 3% of all citations¹. In August 2026, OtterlyAI saw ChatGPT's Reddit citations fall by at least 73% across 16 US brand reports². Why our test cited none, we can't say for sure: it may reflect that change, the model we used, or the questions.

What can't this test tell me about ChatGPT's sources?

This test is small and specific, so four things are outside it:

• The ChatGPT app. We used OpenAI's API with web search, location Malaysia and the gpt-5.4-mini model. The ChatGPT app may use a different model and search setup, so its sources can differ.
• Precise percentages. Each business question type had 3 to 6 questions (the ChatGPT row had 16), each asked three times, and several rows rest on 5 to 19 cited sites. Treat the percentages as a guide.
• Other languages. The business questions were in English; our Malay and Chinese test covers those languages.
• Every industry. Hotels, solar and accounting have their own patterns.

What do ChatGPT's sources mean for my business?

For business questions, most of what ChatGPT cites is something a business can influence: its own site, its directory listings, and the guides it publishes.

Which ChatGPT sources give my business the best opportunity?

Two of the sources ChatGPT cites are ones your business can improve this month:

• Your own website, including a free Google Sites page. Businesses' own sites were the largest group ChatGPT cited for named-business and "who should I hire" questions. A page that states your services, area, hours and prices in plain text gives ChatGPT something to cite.
• The directories for your trade. Directories and apps were 27% of the sites cited for local recommendations. You can claim and complete your listings there.

A third is within reach: for price questions, ChatGPT cited cost guides that businesses wrote about their own trade.

What should I do first about the sources ChatGPT cites?

Do these three things, in this order:

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See which of these sources ChatGPT is actually citing for your customers' questions, then go through the gaps with us on a free call.
2. Fix the source that matters for your trade: your own pages first, then the directory or listing ChatGPT cites for your kind of question.
3. Ask again in a month, the same questions the same way, to see whether ChatGPT now cites you.

EasyFound is an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses. Beyond ChatGPT, it checks what Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google's two AI answer features say too, in English, Bahasa Melayu and Mandarin, and works on the pages they read. Your free check starts below.