Google AI Mode linked to Reddit in 70.8% of answers to “is it worth it” and comparison questions

Citation & visibility tracking

Intent Type (sample size)	Google AI (%)	Perplexity (%)	ChatGPT (%)	Claude (%)
Validation (n = 24)	70.8%	45.8%	25%	0%
Informational (n = 30)	43.3%	10%	0%	0%
Transactional (n = 11)	36.4%	27.3%	18.2%	0%
Discovery (n = 29)	34.5%	10.3%	24.1%	0%
Navigational (n = 6)	0%	0%	33.3%	0%

Reddit Citation Rate in Web UI AI Answers by Query Intent Type Across Platforms

Reader Note:: “Validation” questions are opinion or comparison prompts such as “is the Dyson V15 worth it”. The figure covers 24 such questions out of 100 tested; across all question types Google AI Mode linked to Reddit in 44% of answers. On the same validation questions, Perplexity linked to Reddit in 45.8% of answers, ChatGPT in 25.0% and Claude in 0%. Data was collected in February 2026 through each platform’s public website, using one logged-in account per platform, so results may reflect that account and that moment. The source is a not peer-reviewed preprint from an AI consultancy.
Evidence:: Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:: Low
Sample:: Reddit corpus of 12,187 unique posts and 103,696 comments from 60 subreddits across 20 categories; AI side used 50 product recommendation queries across 4 platforms, each run 3 times, plus 15 API queries and 100 web UI queries for citation testing.