When AI models answer questions, they increasingly turn to social platforms as sources of truth. Reddit threads, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube channels.
We analyzed approximately 238,000 social platform citations from ChatGPT responses (October 2025–December 2025, U.S. English users) to understand which platforms win, how they get cited, and what it means for brands deciding where to invest their community-building efforts.
Within ChatGPT, YouTube and LinkedIn citations point to people: channels and profiles that represent sustained authority. Reddit and Instagram citations point to content: individual threads and posts that answer specific questions.
The Bottom Line
Three insights that matter most:
Reddit dominates, but it's about the threads. Reddit captures 3-4% of all ChatGPT citations. This is 10× more than any other social platform. But 99% of citations are individual discussion threads, not subreddit pages or user profiles. Reddit rewards self-contained, structured posts that answer questions completely.
YouTube and LinkedIn reward authority, not just individual content. YouTube citations are 65% channel pages (vs. just 2.3% individual videos). LinkedIn citations are 47% personal profiles (vs. 21% company pages).
Instagram is the opposite: content beats profile. Individual posts (29%) and reels (36%) combine for 65% of citations versus 30% for profiles. Instagram rewards individual content pieces over channel authority. It's a "post > person" platform on ChatGPT.
Platform Share: Reddit's Dominance, X's Absence
The social citation economy has a clear hierarchy. Reddit sits atop the pyramid.
What this means: Reddit is winning by an order of magnitude. The platform captures more than 10× the citations of any other social platform. Linkedin is a far-off second.
The X/Twitter's absence is particularly striking. Despite being central to real-time news and discourse, it barely registers in AI citations.
How Each Platform Gets Cited: Format Matters
The way platforms get cited reveals what ChatGPT actually values.
Youtube: Channels Over Content
The insight: YouTube citations in ChatGPT are about creators, not content. When ChatGPT cites YouTube, it's citing a channel page 65% of the time not a specific video (just 2.3%). Channel subpages (the /videos, /shorts, /community tabs) add another 14%. Combined, channel-level citations account for nearly 80% of YouTube's total.
Reddit: Threads are everything
The insight: Reddit's citation power lives entirely in specific discussions/comments. Subreddit homepages, profile pages, even Reddit's corporate pages are citation footnotes.
LinkedIn: People Beat Companies
The insight: Personal profiles drive nearly half of LinkedIn citations, more than double company pages. LinkedIn articles (the "Pulse" platform) capture 14%, suggesting written content matters, but individual authority trumps corporate presence.
Instagram: Reels and Posts Split the Stage
The insight: Instagram ChatGPT citations split almost evenly across three buckets: reels (36.5%), profiles (30.4%), and posts (29.1%). Unlike YouTube where channel pages dominate at 65%, or Reddit where threads account for 99%, Instagram has no single dominant format. ChatGPT is citing individual pieces of content (reels + posts = 65.6%) slightly more than profiles, but the split is remarkably balanced.
The contrast with YouTube is stark: YouTube is a "channel-first" platform in ChatGPT citations (80% channel-level), while Instagram is genuinely "content-first" (66% content-level).
Strategic Takeaways: Where to Build for ChatGPT Visibility
Important caveat: This analysis reflects ChatGPT citation patterns only. Other models (Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, SearchGPT) may have different preferences. Gemini, with its YouTube integration, may cite individual videos more heavily. Claude may favor different formats. Perplexity's real-time search may weight recency differently. These findings show what works for ChatGPT, which is a dominant player, but not the only one.
Recommendations:
Reddit: Threads are everything
Recommendation: Invest in creating or contributing to high-quality discussion threads in relevant subreddits.
Instagram: Format diversity is the strategy
No dominant format means different AIs can cite what works for their retrieval logic. This balance makes Instagram resilient across models. Recommendation: Maintain a balanced content strategy across reels, posts, and profile optimization.
YouTube: Optimize channels AND videos
ChatGPT heavily cites channel pages over individual videos. This is a surprising finding it suggests channel-level authority matters more than most realize. But Gemini may cite videos directly given YouTube integration. Recommendation: The data says optimize both.
LinkedIn: Pulse articles matter
Recommendation: While personal profiles dominate in ChatGPT (47%), enterprise AI models may favor articles differently. Pulse articles have strong citation presence and work across both consumer and B2B contexts. Recommendation: Invest in thought leadership articles on LinkedIn, especially for B2B brands.
Methodology Notes
Scope: ~238,000 social platform citations extracted from ChatGPT LLM response URLs, October 2025–December 2026, U.S.-based English-language users
Platform classification: Citations matched against known social media domain patterns. URLs parsed into archetypes (thread, channel, profile, etc.) based on path structure.
Limitations: Data reflects citation frequency, not citation quality or conversion value. A cited URL may appear in 100 responses with minimal user engagement, while an uncited source drives meaningful traffic. This analysis measures AI behavior, not business outcomes.
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