A question about a brand and a general how-to question pull from different pages. On October 19, 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Google 48 questions about 24 brands, such as "is Gusto worth it" and "what are the biggest complaints about Ruggable." Their answers cited 54 pages from the brands' own websites. None of the 54 was a general how-to blog post.
Help center and FAQ pages were the largest group, 12 of the 54, including the fee articles for Rover and TaskRabbit. Product and collection pages came next with 10, then pricing pages and comparison pages with 7 each, homepages and warranty or returns policies with 5 each, and 8 pages that fit nowhere else. The cited pages were the ones that state something checkable: what it costs, what the fee is, what happens if it breaks. Comparisons were the one blog-style format that got through. A single Google AI Overview (the AI-written answer box above the results) on whether Copper is worth it cited six of Copper's own comparison posts.
Then we flipped the question. We asked 12 general how-to and cost questions, such as how to wash a rug at home and how much a handyman costs per hour. Pages from companies that sell something made up 74% of the 84 sources in Google's AI Overviews, and 11 of the 12 overviews cited at least one brand. Lowe's, Bissell and Whirlpool appeared for washing a rug, and Rover for dog walker costs.
ChatGPT behaved differently. It answered 7 of the 12 how-to questions from memory without citing any source, so no brand got credit however good its guide was. For the 5 it searched, brand pages appeared in 3.
So the order we would build in is reference pages first, meaning pricing, help articles, comparisons and policies, and guides second. A guide can win on Google for a how-to question, but the pages that answer questions about the brand itself were the ones both engines reached for.
This was one day of testing, 48 brand questions and 12 how-to questions, so read the counts as a pattern and not a rate. RankControl, an AI SEO and AEO platform, ran the test. RankControl's AI visibility tracker tracks citations across 7 AI engines, which is how you would check your own pages over time. The numbers behind this page are in the full write-up on Medium.