Signal Brand-owned sites account for about 1% of LLM citations in consumer goods

Summary

McKinsey finds that brands have little direct say in how they appear in generative AI answers about consumer goods. Only about 1 percent of the sources that large language models cite for these brands come from the brands' own websites. Even among the ten most frequently cited websites, which together account for roughly 22 percent of all citations, brand sites make up at most 10 percent. Most citations instead come from competitors and other brand sites, publishers, retailers, social platforms such as Reddit and YouTube, and review content, showing how scattered the information ecosystem has become. The report urges brands to pursue visibility inside AI models, known as generative engine optimization, through structured website content, detailed product materials, and stronger third-party validation.