What this is
Top-level domain (TLD) is the single coarsest cut of where AI assistants pull citations from. .com dominates everywhere; .gov, .edu, and .org earn outsized representation on specific surfaces. This page is a 2026-05-15 snapshot of how the major AI assistants distribute citations across TLDs and what that means for brand visibility.
Citation Share by TLD (all surfaces aggregated)
| TLD | Share of all AI citations | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| .com | 80%+ | Commercial dominance |
| .org | 11.29% | Wikipedia, non-profits, standards bodies |
| .edu | ~3-4% | Academic + research; Perplexity highest |
| .gov | ~2-3% | Regulatory, statistical, public data |
| Other (.io, .ai, .co, ccTLDs) | ~3% | Spread thin |
Platform-Specific Patterns
| Platform | .gov share | .org share | .edu share | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | ~12% | ~20% | ~3% | Long-tail editorial, flattest distribution |
| Perplexity | ~8% | ~18% | ~3.2% (highest) | Encyclopedia + medical institutional concentration |
| Claude | ~7% | ~16% | ~3% | Long-tail, similar to ChatGPT |
| Google AI Overviews | ~4% | ~10% | ~2% | Dominated by .com SERPs |
| Gemini direct | ~5% | ~12% | ~2.5% | Similar to Google AI Overviews |
Top-Domain Concentration
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Top 10 domain share — ChatGPT | ~18.5% (flat) |
| Top 15 domain share — all platforms combined | ~68% |
| Single most-cited domain peak | Rarely > 5% |
| Reddit share across major AI engines | ~40% |
Six Things the Data Tells You
- .com dominance is not a surprise but the share (80%+) is higher than the open web's TLD distribution. AI assistants over-index on .com relative to baseline.
- ChatGPT is the institutional channel. 12% .gov + 20% .org makes it the most institutional-leaning surface.
- Perplexity leads .edu citations at 3.2%, the highest across major engines.
- Google AI Overviews mirrors SERPs. Lowest .gov/.edu share because Google's SERP distribution is the prior, and SERPs are .com-heavy.
- Top-10 share is flat (~18.5%) on ChatGPT. Long-tail editorial behaviour means many domains can earn citations, not just the top sites.
- Reddit is the universal substrate. 40% citation frequency across engines makes it the single most-leveraged surface for brand visibility, regardless of TLD strategy.
What This Means for AI Visibility
If your brand owns a .com, the volume is there; the difficulty is climbing the top-15 concentration. If your brand operates on .org, .edu, or .gov, you get a disproportionate share inside ChatGPT and Perplexity for institutional queries. A brand on a less-common TLD (.io, .ai, .co) has the steepest climb because of the long tail behaviour AI assistants exhibit on these surfaces.
Methodology
Share figures combine Profound's AI platform citation patterns analysis, Contently's top 10 LLM sources 2026 study, LLM Pulse's top-cited-domains data, 5W's AI Platform Citation Source Index 2026 (680M+ citation analysis), and BrightEdge's citation differences research.
How Presenc AI Helps
Presenc AI shows your domain's citation share by AI surface and TLD context, so you can see exactly where your .com (or .org / .edu / .gov / other) is reaching ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — and where competitors on different TLDs are outranking you on institutional queries.