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Dofollow Digest #50: The real story behind ChatGPT citations

Dofollow Digest #50: The real story behind ChatGPT citations

Eric Carrell
November 07, 2025

Hey, it's Eric 👋

New data from Ahrefs reveals where ChatGPT is actually pulling its citations from. The findings are more nuanced than the headline suggests, and there's a real opportunity here for SaaS companies willing to do the work.

Most of the coverage focuses on what you can't influence. We're more interested in what you can do about it.

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🔍 DEEP DIVE: The Real Story Behind ChatGPT Citations

Ahrefs analyzed the top 1,000 pages ChatGPT cited in September 2025. The headline finding is that 67% of these citations come from sources you can't easily influence: Wikipedia, homepages, app store listings, and other "dead" citations.

But here's what matters more for SaaS companies: the other 33%.

That third consists of educational content, reviews, news articles, and blog posts. These are pages you can actually influence through traditional link building and PR tactics. And if ChatGPT is citing these pages thousands of times, getting mentioned on them creates compounding visibility across both traditional search and AI assistants.

The data shows something else interesting. Nearly 30% of ChatGPT's most-cited pages have zero organic search visibility. They've never ranked in Google, yet ChatGPT references them regularly. Some of these are genuinely fresh content that hasn't had time to rank. Others are niche pages that answer specific questions accurately without attracting search traffic.

This creates two distinct opportunities.

First, the pages everyone can see and measure. These cited sources have a median Domain Rating of 90, but their individual page authority averages just 6. ChatGPT is pulling from authoritative domains but not necessarily their most linked-to pages. For SaaS companies, this means your path to citation isn't just about building domain authority. It's about creating the specific content that accurately answers questions, even if those pages don't have massive backlink profiles.

Second, the pages that traditional SEO metrics miss entirely. If you're only optimizing for Google rankings, you're missing content opportunities that AI assistants value. These tools appear to prioritize accuracy and recency over popularity signals like backlinks. Fresh content matters here. Among pages with detectable publication dates, over 60% were published within the last two years. And nearly 90% of cited pages were updated in 2025.

The practical takeaway: your content strategy needs to account for both channels now.

For traditional SEO, nothing has changed. High-authority domains, strong backlink profiles, and ranking visibility still matter. But AI citation requires a slightly different approach. The content needs to be accurate, current, and comprehensive, even if it targets topics with limited search volume.

On the "impossible" citations -Wikipedia, major publication homepages, authoritative directories - the conventional wisdom says to ignore them because you can't control them. But if getting mentioned on these pages creates thousands of AI citations, the effort might be justified even if the probability is low. A single Wikipedia mention or inclusion on a major publication's resource page could generate more AI visibility than dozens of standard backlinks.

The bigger opportunity remains the influenceable third. Educational content, industry publications, review sites, and news outlets that ChatGPT already cites. These sources are accessible through quality content, genuine expertise, and relationship building. For SaaS companies, this should be where you focus the majority of your efforts.

The integration is straightforward. The same high-quality content and authoritative backlinks that improve Google rankings also increase your chances of AI citation. You don't need a separate strategy. You need to execute your existing strategy well, with an eye toward accuracy and freshness that AI systems prioritize.

🔗 LINK ROUNDUP

Til next time,

Eric