If a potential customer asks an AI tool for the best CRM, accounting platform, marketing agency, or laptop, the answer will often draw from a listicle.
Several large studies show the same commercial-intent pattern: listicles become much more common sources when AI systems are asked to compare options and recommend what to buy.
One study covering more than 1 million AI citations found that listicles accounted for 40.86% of citations on commercial-intent prompts. A separate Ahrefs analysis of ChatGPT recommendation queries put the figure at 43.8%.
For businesses, that raises a practical question:
When AI builds a shortlist in your market, which pages does it use — and is your brand on them?
Commercial intent nearly doubles the listicle share
The strongest evidence comes from Wix Studio’s AI Search Lab.
Researchers analyzed 75,000 AI answers containing 1,056,727 citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. They divided the prompts into informational, commercial, navigational/local, and transactional groups.
Across the full dataset, listicles accounted for 21.88% of citations.
For commercial-intent prompts, that jumped to 40.86%.
No other content type came close. Category pages accounted for 12.42%, discussions 11.44%, product pages 7.14%, and articles 6.15%.
Listicles also made up just 5.36% of navigational/local citations.
Wix found that query intent predicted the type of content cited better than either industry or AI model.
Ahrefs found a similar figure
Ahrefs approached the question differently.
Researchers studied ChatGPT responses to recommendation prompts covering software, physical products, and agencies. Examples included enterprise CRM software, home treadmills, and web design agencies.
Across 26,283 source URLs, “best X” blog lists represented 43.8% of page types and were the most common format in the dataset.
That lands close to Wix’s 40.86% commercial-intent figure.
The studies weren’t direct replications. Ahrefs deliberately focused on recommendation-style searches, while Wix compared several kinds of query intent inside one larger dataset.
Despite those differences, both put listicles at roughly four in 10 sources when users were comparing options.
A broader study shows where the claim stops
Seer Interactive found a much lower number.
Its researchers analyzed more than 2 million ChatGPT citations across a consistent set of prompts tracked from November 2025 through February 2026.
Listicles accounted for 16.6% of citations.
That result gives the commercial-intent findings useful boundaries.
Seer studied a broader mix of prompts rather than recommendation searches alone. It also used a narrower definition: a URL counted as a listicle only when it contained the word “best” or “top.” A comparison page without either word in its URL wouldn’t qualify.
Within Seer’s own data, industries with stronger consumer and comparison behavior had the highest listicle citation rates. Those industries also contained more prompts asking questions such as “What are the best…”
The denominator changes the story.
A listicle share across millions of broad AI queries tells us something different from a listicle share among searches explicitly asking which product or company to choose.
Evertune adds another commercial data point
Evertune reviewed more than 40,000 URLs that ChatGPT cited heavily over 60 days, covering nearly 50 product categories.
Half were listicles.
Of those listicles, 58% were ranked lists.
Its methodology differs again from Wix, Ahrefs, and Seer. Evertune focused on heavily cited URLs in product categories rather than measuring citation share across a broad population of queries. So the 50% figure shouldn’t be compared directly with the other percentages.
What the evidence supports
Taken together, the research supports a specific claim:
Listicles are disproportionately common sources when AI systems answer commercial comparison and recommendation queries.
These studies are observational. They don’t establish that publishing a listicle causes an AI model to cite it or that getting added to any “10 best” page will improve your visibility.
They show where AI systems frequently encounter information when asked to compare a market.
For businesses, the actionable question is which comparison sources influence the shortlist customers see.
Comparison pages already do part of the AI’s job
Consider two prompts:
“How does accounting software work?”
“What’s the best accounting software for a five-person business?”
The first asks for an explanation.
The second asks the AI to narrow a market.
A good comparison page already organizes the information that task requires. It identifies candidates, establishes criteria, compares strengths and weaknesses, and often connects products to particular customer types or use cases.
Publishers have also spent years creating comparison content for the same commercial questions people are now asking AI systems.
If the comparison pages cited for your market repeatedly recommend competitors and leave you out, your brand is missing from part of the evidence AI surfaces during that buying decision.
The bigger opportunity may be third-party inclusion
Wix examined the 1,000 most-cited URLs in the professional-services portion of its dataset, where listicle citations were especially common.
Among listicle citations in that sample, 80.9% came from third-party pages. Only 19.1% came from self-promotional lists.
That finding applies specifically to professional services, so it shouldn’t be projected across every industry.
Still, inclusion in an independent publication’s shortlist provides a different kind of evidence than a ranking published by the company itself.
Ahrefs found a related pattern. When researchers examined 750 “best” lists appearing alongside ChatGPT recommendations, brands positioned higher on those lists also tended to appear more frequently in the recommendations.
Ahrefs cautioned against treating that relationship as causal. List length and other biases could influence the result.
Separate Ahrefs research across 75,000 brands found that branded web mentions correlated much more strongly with AI visibility than traditional backlink-volume metrics. The researchers again stress that correlation doesn’t prove causation.
Together, those findings give marketers a reason to track where a brand is mentioned and recommended, not just how many links point to its website.
The brand mention may deserve attention alongside the backlink.
Start with the buyer question
The easiest way to misuse this research is to turn it into another volume-based link-building tactic.
A hundred placements on weak “best X” pages aren’t automatically more valuable than a few credible recommendations on sources AI systems already use for your market.
A better starting point is the question your customer asks before choosing a product, service, or provider.
Start by identifying five to 10 prompts a potential customer might use when comparing businesses like yours. Run them across the AI systems your customers are likely to use, then inspect the cited sources.
Look for comparison pages that appear repeatedly, see which competitors are included and how they’re positioned, and ask what would genuinely give the publisher a reason to include your brand. For example: stronger reviews, useful data, distinctive capabilities, expert input, a stronger product, or something else worth mentioning. Then track those prompts and sources over time because AI responses and citations change.
Now “AI visibility” becomes something you can investigate instead of a vague marketing goal.
You can see which recommendation conversations matter, which sources influence them, and whether your brand appears when the shortlist gets built.
The shortlist is the opportunity
Your real opportunity is at the comparison stage.
When someone asks an AI system which products, services, or companies deserve consideration, listicles repeatedly show up among the sources helping it answer.
That puts comparison content close to a valuable moment in the customer journey: deciding who makes the shortlist.
Pick five recommendation prompts that matter to your business and inspect the sources.
If the same comparison pages keep appearing, those pages may deserve as much attention as the rankings, backlinks, and referral traffic you already track.
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