Reddit, YouTube and Quora show up in Google AI Mode’s answers, not ChatGPT’s

01 / 08Summary

Ask an answer engine in India whether to take a drop year for NEET, or which scooter to buy, and the answer may cite what strangers said on Reddit, YouTube or Quora. Whether it does depends almost entirely on which engine you ask. On 5 October 2026 we put 150 everyday decision questions to four engines from India, asked 50 of them from the United States as well, and coded every source the 800 answers cited.

Five results stand out. The first is the size of the gap between engines.

02 / 08Why this matters

A common piece of advice to brands is that AI answers draw on Reddit threads, YouTube explainers and Quora answers, so a brand should be present there. Some answers do. But “AI” is not one reader. The four engines we tested treat community platforms so differently that advice which holds for one is close to irrelevant for another.

We also wanted to test a common assumption: that Indian answers lean on Quora because Indians use Quora. Asking the same questions from two markets lets us check it.¹

Whether an answer cites the crowd depends less on the question than on the engine you ask.

Study 007, Finding 1

03 / 08Method

We wrote 150 decision questions, 15 in each of ten topics, in the words people in India use: “Should I…”, “Is it worth…”, “Which is better…”.² No question named a platform. Each was asked once on each engine, with the request routed from India. Fifty questions with no Indian context were also asked from the United States.³

Answers

800600 from India, 200 from the US

Citations

4,7183,587 in the India answers, from 1,718 domains

Questions

15010 topics × 15; 50 also asked from the US

Engines

ChatGPT (search on), Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode

Markets

India; United States for the shared 50 questions. Set at the network level, never named in the prompt

Fieldwork

5 October 2026, one run per question, engine and market

What counted as a citation

A citation is a URL the engine presented as a source for its answer: ChatGPT’s inline source references, Perplexity’s source list, and the numbered sources in Gemini and Google AI Mode.⁴ Each URL was counted once per answer, after removing tracking parameters and text-highlight fragments. A “community answer” is an answer that cited at least one community platform.

Every cited domain, 1,841 in all, was classified by source type with a published mapping table.⁵ Reddit, YouTube, Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X and Medium were coded by name. Other forums were found by hand and by a scan of every cited URL for forum, thread and Q&A patterns.⁶

Disclosure: some brands that appear in this study are clients of Citation Research. Their results were produced by the same questions, engines and rules as every other brand’s.

04 / 08Findings

1. One engine cites the crowd; one almost never does

Google AI Mode cited a community platform in 117 of its 150 India answers. ChatGPT did so in 3, and none of those three was Reddit, YouTube or Quora: they were a Stack Exchange thread and two industry or course forums. That is a factor of 39. Perplexity sat between them at 73 of 150, and Gemini at 29.

Part of the gap is how often each engine cites anything. Gemini gave 49 of its 150 answers with no sources at all, and Google AI Mode 24.⁷ Counting only answers that cited something, the AI Mode figure rises to 92.9% (of 126) and Gemini’s to 28.7% (of 101). ChatGPT cited sources in 149 of 150 answers; it simply chose others.

Across all 600 India answers, a little over a third cited a community platform.

2. Reddit leads; X is absent

Reddit was cited in 123 of the 600 India answers, more than any other community platform, and supplied 184 of the 661 community citations. YouTube came second at 78 answers and Quora third at 59. X was not cited once in 800 answers.

The Reddit threads cited were often Indian communities. The single most-cited subreddit was r/developersindia, with 20 of the 184 Reddit citations; r/carsindia was next with 8.

3. Each engine has its own crowd

The engines did not just cite community platforms at different rates; they cited different ones. Quora appeared in 58 Google AI Mode answers and in one answer from every other engine combined. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram followed the same pattern. Perplexity’s community sources were Reddit, LinkedIn and smaller forums. Gemini’s were mostly Reddit.

Quora appeared in 58 Google AI Mode answers and in one answer from every other engine combined.

Study 007, Finding 4

4. Which platform leads where

Reddit led outright in eight of the ten topics and tied with Quora in travel. YouTube led only in health and fitness, by one answer. The other platforms had clear home grounds: LinkedIn was cited in 16 of 60 careers answers, Quora in 12 of 60 exam answers, Instagram in 8 of 60 vehicle answers and Facebook in 8 of 60 food answers.

Careers questions drew the most community citations: 32 of 60 answers, and 42.1% of their 311 citations. Health drew the smallest share of citations, 10.9% of 375, and consumer tech the fewest answers, 17 of 60.

Outside the big platforms, the most-cited forum was Team-BHP, the Indian car owners’ forum, with 15 citations in the India answers.⁹

5. India and the United States look alike

On the 50 questions asked from both markets, 61 of 200 Indian answers and 64 of 200 American answers cited a community platform. Quora appeared in 16 Indian answers and 18 American ones. We found no sign that Indian answers lean on Quora more. Reddit appeared somewhat more often in the US answers: 47 against 36.

Because Perplexity’s sources did not change with the market, the comparison really rests on the other three engines. Without Perplexity the picture is the same: 40 of 150 Indian answers and 43 of 150 American answers cited a community platform.

Within India, Quora was a little more frequent on questions with Indian context (43 of 400 answers) than on the universal ones (16 of 200). That is 10.8% against 8.0%, a small difference.

6. Where the crowd sits among all sources

Community platforms were 18.4% of the 3,587 citations in the India answers. Brand and vendor sites were the largest group, at 41.4%. Yet the five most-cited individual domains were all community platforms: Reddit, YouTube, Quora, Facebook and LinkedIn. The 1,486 brand citations were spread across 965 domains; the 661 community citations came from 34.

05 / 08What it means

Community platforms matter for AI answers in India, but only for some engines, and the platform that matters depends on the engine and the topic.

1. Start with the engine, not the platform.Google AI Mode cited community platforms in 117 of 150 answers, ChatGPT in 3. A plan built on community presence is mainly a plan for Google AI Mode, and to a lesser degree Perplexity.
2. Reddit is the one platform three engines share.AI Mode, Perplexity and Gemini all cited Reddit, often Indian subreddits. Useful, honest answers from named accounts in the threads where your category is already discussed are the obvious response. Planted posts are not.
3. YouTube and Quora are Google AI Mode channels.72 of 78 YouTube answers and 58 of 59 Quora answers came from AI Mode. Work there pays off in one engine.
4. Match the platform to the topic.LinkedIn for careers questions, Team-BHP and Instagram for vehicles, Facebook for food. The leader varied less than the runners-up.
5. For ChatGPT, look elsewhere.Its largest source group was reference and official sources: 112 of its 355 citations. Clear, factual pages on your own site and in official records are more likely routes.

06 / 08Limitations

• One run, one day. Each question was asked once per engine and market, on 5 October 2026. Answers change between runs; the engine-level gaps are large, but single cells in Tables 1 and 2 are small counts.
• Our questions. We wrote the questions. Decision questions phrased differently, or informational ones, may cite community platforms more or less often.
• Access route. Answers were collected through a third-party scraping service, logged out, with default settings. Logged-in users, other models and the apps may differ. Perplexity’s identical sources across markets may reflect the engine or the route; we cannot tell which.
• Missing sources. 24 Google AI Mode answers and 49 Gemini answers from India had no captured sources. Some AI Mode answers may have shown sources we did not capture, which would understate its count.
• Domain-level coding. Types were assigned per domain, with a few URL-level exceptions for forum sections. One researcher coded the map; the 15% re-check was by the same researcher.
• Citation is not influence. We record what was cited, not what shaped the answer, and we do not claim why engines differ.

07 / 08Data and reproducibility

The question list, answer log, coded citations and the domain-to-source-type map are published below under CC BY 4.0. Answer text is not republished. Version 1.0 corresponds to this publication; corrections will be issued as new versions.

• questions.csv150 rowsQuestions
• answers.csv800 rowsAnswers
• citations.csv4,718 rowsCoded citations
• domain-source-types.csv1,851 rowsDomain map
• platform-by-domain.csv10 rowsTable 2 data

For questions about the data, or a reanalysis you would like us to check, write to research@citationresearch.com.

@techreport{citationresearch2026study007,
  author      = {{Citation Research}},
  title       = {Reddit, YouTube and Quora show up in Google AI Mode’s answers, not ChatGPT’s},
  institution = {Citation Research},
  number      = {Study 007},
  year        = {2026},
  url         = {https://citationresearch.com/research/reddit-youtube-quora-ai-citations}
}