The Gemini app is not AI Overviews, and its US citation list does not look like one. Ahrefs Brand Radar, updated 2 September 2026, over 3 million US queries: Reddit 28.5% of the top-source pool, YouTube 14.6%, English Wikipedia 8.8%, then retailers and review publishers. www.google.com is not in that top 50. Facebook and Instagram are not in it either.
- Reddit is 28.5% of the Gemini app's US top-source pool, with 388,496 pages cited. That concentration is higher than Reddit's share on AI Overviews or AI Mode in the same vendor's September tables.
- google.com is absent from the published top 50. The only Google property in the table is play.google.com at 1.0%, rank 21.
- Wikipedia's mention share fell from 12.7% in a republished June snapshot to 8.8% in September, while Reddit and YouTube held their ranks.
- A second tracker ranks google.com first and includes Spanish comparison sites in its top ten. Country is unstated. Do not blend it into the US list.
- Mention share is a share of the top 50's citations. It will always look more concentrated than a share of every citation. Ahrefs does not say what fraction of all Gemini citations the top 50 represent.
The US list for the app
Ahrefs treats this as the Gemini product. The article cites the app passing 750 million monthly users on Alphabet's Q4 2025 call, and it uses a chart that is separate from AI Overviews and AI Mode. The measurement note is "responses AI platforms give." It does not say whether Brand Radar is the consumer app with grounding, the API, or both. The user-count framing points at the app. The setup beyond that is unspecified, so the grade stays Partial .
| Rank | Domain | Mention share of the top 50 | Pages cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reddit.com | 28.5% | 388,496 |
| 2 | youtube.com | 14.6% | 187,970 |
| 3 | en.wikipedia.org | 8.8% | 72,435 |
| 4 | walmart.com | 2.8% | 36,230 |
| 5 | forbes.com | 2.7% | 5,497 |
| 6 | edmunds.com | 1.9% | 16,153 |
| 7 | healthline.com | 1.8% | 6,542 |
| 8 | kbb.com | 1.8% | 15,744 |
| 9 | pcmag.com | 1.6% | 4,721 |
| 10 | target.com | 1.6% | 18,618 |
The diet under the top three is commerce and reviews: Lemon8 at 1.4% (rank 13), Trustpilot at 1.0% (rank 19), the Apple app store at 0.8% (rank 28). Forbes reaches fifth with only 5,497 pages. A few URLs, cited often. That is a different shape from Reddit's hundreds of thousands of threads.
Why this is not an AI Overview list
Google's own pages draw the line. A Search PDF says AI Overviews use a customized Gemini model and are a different experience from an LLM chatbot. On 27 January 2026, Robby Stein wrote that Gemini 3 was becoming the default model for AI Overviews globally. Search Central, last updated 10 December 2025, says AI Mode and AI Overviews may use different models, and that the links they show will vary. Sundar Pichai, in an August 2026 note, listed AI Mode, AI Overviews, and the Gemini app as separate places.
The September domain tables follow that split. On AI Overviews the same month, YouTube leads and google.com is fourth. On the app, Reddit leads by a wide margin and google.com is outside the top 50. Averaging "Google AI" into one column hides the only difference a publisher can actually plan around. The Search lists are on AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Nothing opened from Google updates the overview model from Gemini 3 to a later version. A 2 September 2026 post names Gemini 3.8 Flash for the app, AI Mode, and Sheets. It does not name AI Overviews. Absence is not proof the overview model is still Gemini 3. It is proof that no newer public assignment was found.
The other Gemini tracker disagrees
LLM Pulse, updated 30 September 2026, counts the share of answers in a 7-day window that cite a domain at least once. Its Gemini top ten starts google.com 9.74%, reddit.com 4.79%, youtube.com 2.47%, facebook.com 1.65%, trustpilot.com 0.96%. Rankia and Rastreator, both Spanish, are in the ten. Country is not stated.
That can be a multi-country panel, or a panel that counts Google-hosted cards the Ahrefs US table does not. It cannot be merged with 28.5%. Report both. Use the Ahrefs list when the question is a large US all-topic sample of the product Ahrefs separated from Search.
Smaller panels are a third thing. AmICited's 1,905 prompts, 24 June to 23 July 2026, put reddit.com in 2.6% of 5,123 Gemini responses and google.com in 2.4%, then affiliate and software domains. Searlo's 30 commercial questions on one day put zapier.com in 6 of 30 Gemini answers. Those describe their prompt sets. They are not a replacement for the US table.
What this does not prove
Open question Ahrefs does not confirm that "Gemini" in Brand Radar is only the consumer app. A ranking of API grounding could look different, and no opened study splits the app's citations into Google Business Profiles versus the open web, because google.com is not in the table to split.
It also does not say the app is accurate. A Resonance audit of almost 50,000 answers on 116 B2B technology companies, April to September 2026, found an error in 83% of Gemini answers and a serious error in 27%. The authors say their AI Mode and AI Overview samples were too small to compare. That 83% stays on the app. It is not an AI Overview error rate. The broader retrieval page is Gemini citation statistics.
How to use the list
For a US all-topic question, the app's citation diet is Reddit, then YouTube, then Wikipedia, then a long commerce and review tail. A publisher who only earns links from Google's own cards is playing a Search game. That game is visible on AI Overviews and AI Mode. It is not the head of this list.
Wikipedia still matters here, at 8.8% of the top-source pool, more than on the Search surfaces in the same month. The reference cut, including the figures that must not be averaged, is on most-cited reference domains.
On the Gemini app's US list, Reddit is 28.5% of the top-source pool. google.com is not in the top 50.
Share on XVerification status
The ranked table is Ahrefs' US September 2026 page. The June comparison is a republished copy of that series. LLM Pulse is reported as a conflicting tracker, not folded into the ranks. Google's product pages are used only for the claim that the app and AI Overviews are different surfaces. No Gemini top ten was constructed by blending vendors.
Namdev, R. (2026). Most-cited domains in the Gemini app (v1). Retrieved from https://ritiknamdev.com/blog/most-cited-domains-gemini Published under CC BY 4.0 — reuse freely with attribution.
AI Overviews and AI Mode are separate lists. Gemini's retrieval behaviour is on Gemini citation statistics.