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PractitionerLily Ray, 17 Aug 2026

The number of unique domains cited per ChatGPT response dropped from 19 to 15 after the 5.3 update, even as more pages are retrieved.

Citation & visibility tracking

15

unique domains cited per ChatGPT response after 5.3 update, down from 19 previously

Reader Note:
From Olivier de Segonzac and the Resoneo team, measured across the 5.3 update. The point of the pairing is the direction: retrieval counts grew while citation counts fell, so more pages are being read and fewer sites credited. No sample size is published for this measurement, and it covers a different version change from the 5.6 figures elsewhere in the piece.
Evidence:
Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:
Low
Sample:
Mixed and not standardized. The article combines the author's own observations with third-party studies, including about 4,000 prompts in one cited dataset, 27 conversations and 3,554 retrieved pages in another, and roughly 20 prompts in one of the author's examples.

Good for

Comparing yourself against a similar segment, and choosing what to test next.

Not for

  • Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
  • This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
  • The source never says how this number was measured.
  • The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

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BrightEdge, 12 Feb 2026

Only about 17% of AI Overview citations also rank in the organic top 10, while just over half are somewhere in the top 100.

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