Review sites are a thin slice of AI citations, and the famous number is a share inside that slice. In one opened ChatGPT study of 40 software categories, G2 and Capterra received zero citations. In a wider summer 2026 count, one of G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot appeared in 2.6% of ChatGPT responses. An 84% figure describes share among review platforms. It does not describe share of all citations.
- Zero and 2.6% are both measured, on different prompts. DerivateX is software-discovery questions. AmICited is a tracked prompt set that is not limited to software.
- Review aggregators were 1.1% of 188 classified ChatGPT citations in the DerivateX report. Gartner appeared twice, both times as Peer Insights, not as analyst research.
- 84% is the figure most likely to be misread. It is reported by secondary posts as G2's share inside review platforms. The original page was not opened here.
- ChatGPT cited a review domain more often than Perplexity did in the AmICited window: 2.6% of responses against 0.6%. AI Overviews were at 0.2%.
- Several widely repeated review-site percentages, including a 47% GetApp figure and a 22% share of voice, come from pages that were not opened. They are not in the table.
The rates that were actually counted
AmICited counted a response if it cited at least one of g2.com, capterra.com, or trustpilot.com, from 24 June to 23 July 2026. The prompts are theirs. Partial The page was read from a search extract, not a full fetch.
| Engine | Responses citing a tracked review domain | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 133 of 5,119 | 2.6% |
| Gemini | 92 of 5,123 | 1.8% |
| Google AI Mode | 43 of 3,975 | 1.1% |
| Perplexity | 17 of 3,052 | 0.6% |
| Google AI Overviews | 4 of 2,010 | 0.2% |
Inside ChatGPT's 133 citing responses, g2.com appeared in 79, capterra.com in 55, and trustpilot.com in 5. The rate fell from 4.2% in the first half of the window to 2.2% in the second. That is a drop inside one month of one panel. It is not a trend you can take to the bank, and it is the only within-window movement this page has.
The study where G2 and Capterra were zero
DerivateX asked ChatGPT, with web search, in a fresh temporary chat, for one buyer-intent prompt in each of 40 B2B software categories. The opened report describes one pass. A press release describes ten runs and a 0.9% aggregator share. The report's classified set is 233 recommendations, 188 with a clickable citation, 105 domains, 146 URLs, labelled by hand.
| Source class | Citations | Share of 188 |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor-owned | 96 | 51.1% |
| Independent and niche sites | 43 | 22.9% |
| Recognised media | 28 | 14.9% |
| Community, including Reddit and LinkedIn | 18 | 9.6% |
| Review aggregators | 2 | 1.1% |
| Other | 1 | 0.5% |
G2 and Capterra are inside the two, or rather they are not: the two aggregator citations were not them. The authors say this is one surface and one query type. A press-release line that the recommended vendor's own site was the citation 11.6% of the time can sit beside the 51.1%. Vendors as a class write the listicles. The specific vendor being recommended supplies about one citation in nine. That distinction is the SaaS page: most-cited SaaS vendor domains.
Why 84% is the wrong denominator
Secondary posts describe a G2 analysis of roughly 35,000 ChatGPT citation URLs captured by Profound in December 2025. In that telling, G2 plus the Capterra family held 84% of review-platform citations, against Gartner at 13%, SourceForge at 2%, and TrustRadius at 1%. The original was not opened. Partial as a reported within-category share. Broken chain if it is quoted as a share of AI citations.
The arithmetic is the whole point. A dominant share of a 1% class is still about 1%. G2's own later note, 23 October 2025, on 30,000 Profound citations across 500 G2 categories, says categories with more recent reviews get more citations. It does not publish G2's share of all citations. The author notes the study is single-platform.
An Omniscient bottom-of-funnel analysis is often quoted at G2 equals 2.09% of citations. The original page was not opened, so it stays out of the chart. It would, if confirmed, sit near AmICited's response rate and nowhere near 84%.
What this does not prove
Open question It does not say reviews are useless. It says they are a small direct source in the counts that were opened, and that ChatGPT's software answers in one study preferred the vendor's own listicle and a niche blog. A review can still be where a model read the complaint before citing someone else. That indirect path was not measured. DerivateX also does not settle whether the ten-run design or the single pass is the file of record. Both agree on zero for G2 and Capterra.
How to use it
Do not build a citation plan that starts with "get more G2 reviews" and a slide that says 84%. If you sell software, the opened study says the cited URL is usually yours or a niche publisher's. Reviews are a second door, and on the wider count they are open on roughly 3 ChatGPT responses in 100.
Trustpilot's cameo in other lists is a different product. It is nineteenth on the Gemini app's US top 50, at 1.0% of that pool, and it is in LLM Pulse heads that are not US-general. A review domain can matter on reputation queries and still be absent from a software-buying sample.
G2's 84% is a share inside review platforms. In one ChatGPT software study, G2 and Capterra were cited zero times.
Share on XVerification status
DerivateX's report page and AmICited's extract are the counts. The 84% is attributed as a secondary description of a G2 analysis and labelled unopened. Hall, Semrush share-of-voice, and Omniscient figures were left out because the originals were not read.
Namdev, R. (2026). Most-cited review domains in AI search (v1). Retrieved from https://ritiknamdev.com/blog/most-cited-review-domains-ai-search Published under CC BY 4.0 — reuse freely with attribution.
Software-vendor sites, as distinct from review sites, are on SaaS vendor domains.