Which websites does AI cite in Spain?

Key findings

1. AI cites your market, not the press. 72.6% of citations go to company websites (competitors, shops, clinics, manufacturers), 11.6% to directories and marketplaces, and only 4.3% to news and magazines.
2. Every market has its own sources. 57.4% of citations point to domains cited for one brand only. There is no universal list of sites to be on.
3. Google’s AI leans on social networks. Instagram is cited for 40 of 42 brands, and 97.6% of those citations come from AI Overviews and AI Mode. ChatGPT did not cite TikTok once.
4. ChatGPT leans on the press and the state. It accounts for 84.1% of El País citations and 94.4% of those to the BOE, Spain’s official gazette. Public bodies make up 11.7% of its citations.
5. Your own site is a small slice. The tracked brand’s own website gets 4.8% of all citations, from 3.5% in ChatGPT to 6.6% in AI Overviews.

Data from Mencoro, 1 July to 30 September 2026: 23,466 answers to the buyer questions that 42 brands track in Spain, in health, legal and finance, retail, industry, travel and leisure, education, automotive and technology. The brands are not named.

The 50 domains AI cites for the most brands

Ranked by reach: the number of brands whose AI answers cite the domain at least once, and then by citations. Reach says more than raw volume, because one busy market can pile thousands of citations on its own niche sites.

Download every domain cited for three or more brands (CSV).

1. AI cites your market, not the press

The popular picture of AI search is an engine that reads the newspapers and Wikipedia. The citations say otherwise. 72.6% of them go to company websites: the competitors, shops, clinics, law firms and manufacturers in the brand’s own market. Directories, review and comparison sites and marketplaces add 11.6%. News and magazines, together, get 4.3%.

For a brand, that changes the job. The pages that compete for a citation are mostly your competitors’ product and service pages, and the directories and marketplaces of your sector. Being the best-documented option on your own site, and present on the platforms your sector uses, matters more than a press hit that engines rarely read.

2. Every market has its own sources

AI engines cited 22,193 different domains. 57.4% of all citations went to domains that appear for one brand only: the niche retailers, specialist directories and local businesses of that market. Only 50 domains are cited for 9 or more of the 42 brands.

So there is no universal list of websites to be on. The useful list is the one for your own questions, which is what a tracker such as Mencoro builds from the citations of every answer.

3. Google’s AI and ChatGPT read a different web

The four engines agree on very little. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode cite social networks: 3.9% and 3.6% of their citations. Instagram appears in 8.6% of AI Overviews answers, and 97.6% of all Instagram citations come from Google. ChatGPT barely cites social networks (0.2%) and never cited TikTok.

ChatGPT, instead, reads the press, forums and the state. It accounts for 84.1% of the citations to El País, 99.3% of those to Cadena SER, 63.9% of those to Reddit and 94.4% of those to the BOE. Government and public bodies are 11.7% of its citations, against 3.5% in AI Mode. Google’s engines, in turn, send 95.4% of Amazon’s citations.

The practical consequence: a brand can be well covered on one engine and invisible on another. Measure each engine on its own before deciding where to work.

4. Your own site is a small slice

The brand’s own website received 4.8% of all citations in the answers to its own questions: 3.5% in ChatGPT, 5.5% in AI Mode, 5.1% in Perplexity and 6.6% in AI Overviews. Even when an engine names a brand, it usually backs the answer with somebody else’s page. That is why AI visibility is as much off-site work as on-site.

5. ChatGPT cites more sources per answer

A ChatGPT answer with web search cited 9.1 sources on average, against 6.8 in AI Mode, 6.8 in Perplexity and 6.5 in AI Overviews. Part of the gap is how ChatGPT reports sources: its list includes the pages its search retrieved, even when the text does not link them. Either way, more sources per answer means more places where a brand can be cited, and more competitors sharing the answer.

Which sources matter in each sector

Sectors with three or more brands in the data. The two columns in the middle show the source types, other than company websites, that weigh most in that sector.

Legal and finance answers lean on government sources and directories; retail on marketplaces; travel and leisure on directories and booking platforms; health on doctor directories and medical reference sites; industry on accreditation and public bodies.

Results by engine

• Top cited domains in ChatGPT: 8,173 answers for 42 brands.
• Top cited domains in Google AI Overviews: 5,227 answers for 40 brands.
• Top cited domains in Google AI Mode: 8,035 answers for 42 brands.
• Top cited domains in Perplexity: 2,031 answers for 16 brands.

What to do with this

1. Find your own sources. Track the questions your buyers ask and read which domains each engine cites. The free AI visibility checker gives you a first sample.
2. Win the pages you control. Your product, service and pricing pages compete with your competitors’ for most citations. Make them the clearest answer.
3. Be where your sector is listed. Directories, review sites and marketplaces are the second source of citations. Complete and current profiles there are cited.
4. Plan per engine. Social profiles move Google’s AI; national press, Reddit and official sources move ChatGPT. For press, a publishing marketplace such as Growwer, our sister company, gets you into the outlets engines cite.

Methodology

• Data: the answers Mencoro captured between 1 July and 30 September 2026 for the tracked questions of 42 brands whose market includes Spain, in the four AI engines Mencoro tracks. ChatGPT runs with web search. Not every brand tracks every engine: Perplexity covers 16 brands.
• Citations: every source link an engine attached to an answer, rolled up to the registrable domain (es.rs-online.com counts as rs-online.com ).
• Own sites: each brand’s own domains are removed from the rankings and reported separately.
• Source types: assigned from reviewed lists for the most-cited domains and from rules for the rest (public-sector suffixes, universities); anything unlisted counts as a company website, which slightly overstates that group.
• Privacy: the brands are not named, and the rankings only include domains cited for three or more brands (two on Perplexity).
• Limits: the questions are commercial questions chosen by each brand, not a random sample of what people ask AI. The mix of sectors shapes the totals. Only the source list each engine returns with its answer is counted.

How Mencoro captures each answer and detects citations is public on how Mencoro works.

How to cite this study

Mencoro, “Which websites does AI cite in Spain?”, Q3 2026, https://mencoro.com/data-studies/top-cited-domains/. You are welcome to use the figures and the charts with a link to this page.