Everything-PR's standing franchise mapping who owns the AI answer, one category at a time. Updated as new audits publish. Every audit follows the same tier model: Facts · Framing · Trade · Discussion · Entity Baseline.
Every industry has an answer problem. AI engines are answering buyer questions right now — and most brands don't know who controls those answers. Some do. This is the map of who they are.
Why the answer matters
Buyers no longer start with Google. They start with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews. The engines pull a short list of sources, synthesize an answer, and route the decision. For most categories, the same five to twenty domains own that answer surface.
Everything-PR's Who Controls AI Answers franchise measures this at the category level. Each audit maps the citation graph — who is cited, who is invisible, and what the pattern means for anyone competing in the category.
The Vertical Audits
Nineteen vertical audits published to date. Each maps the sources the AI engines cite when a buyer asks a category-defining question — and identifies which brands appear in the answer versus which are structurally invisible.
Regulated verticals
Defense — DoD owns the data. CSIS owns the framing. The primes are barely in the answer.
Cybersecurity — NIST and CISA own the framework. Krebs owns the story.
Healthcare — Institutional medicine owns the diagnosis. Reddit and Healthline own the experience.
Finance — SEC.gov and Investopedia are the foundation. NerdWallet and Bankrate dominate the recommendation prompts.
Insurance — Consumer-finance publishers dominate. Government sites anchor the compliance floor.
Legal — Cornell LII and FindLaw own foundational law. r/legaladvice owns "should I sue."
Energy & Climate — IEA and EIA own the data. Bloomberg owns the markets. IPCC owns the science.
Public Affairs — Wire services and .gov own the facts. Think tanks own the framing.
Nonprofit — Charity Navigator owns the trust score. Candid owns the data. Chronicle of Philanthropy owns the news.
B2B verticals
Tech, B2B & SaaS — G2 and Gartner own buyer-decision prompts. Stack Overflow and HN own technical.
Analyst Relations — Engine-by-engine citation share for Gartner, Forrester, IDC, HFS, ISG, and S&P 451.
Crypto — Six trade press domains supply most of the answer. SEC.gov is climbing fast.
Real Estate — Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com own the data. Reddit owns "should I buy now."
EdTech — Government validation sources anchor the factual floor. Category-native trade press sets the editorial tier.
Consumer verticals
Fashion — Vogue picks the trend. Reddit decides if it's worth the money. Good On You writes the sustainability verdict.
Travel — Reddit owns "is it worth it." TripAdvisor owns "best of." Wikipedia owns the baseline.
Sports — ESPN owns the news. Wikipedia owns the record. Reddit owns the takes.
Religion & Faith — Wikipedia owns the doctrine. Reddit owns the doubt.
The Engine Profiles
Every audit references how each engine weights sources. The five companion Brand Bias profiles map the picking behavior of the AI engines themselves:
Every Who Controls AI Answers audit uses the same tier model:
The Facts Tier — the government, regulatory, and structured-data sources that anchor the factual floor.
The Framing Tier — the think tanks, analysts, and long-form publications that shape how the category is described.
The Trade Tier — the category-native trade press that supplies the news layer. The category-native tier almost always outranks legacy general-interest press.
The Discussion Tier — Reddit, LinkedIn, and specialized forums where practitioners and buyers actually discuss decisions.
The Entity Baseline — Wikipedia and structured category pages that anchor identity resolution.
Each audit then maps who wins, who is invisible, and how each of the five engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — weights those sources.
What's next
Coming audits in the franchise: Beauty · Fintech · Hospitality · Food & Beverage · Cannabis · CPG · Wellness · Entertainment · Automotive · PR & Communications · Crisis Communications · Reputation Management · Corporate Communications · Investor Relations. Every 5W-adjacent category gets its map. The franchise updates as verticals ship.
The Who Controls AI Answers franchise is Everything-PR's standing measurement of which sources the AI engines cite by category. Every audit is republished annually. Follow the weekly PR News Roundup for franchise updates as new audits publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "Who Controls AI Answers" measure?
It maps, vertical by vertical, which sources and retrieval anchors the five major AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — actually pull from when they answer buyer questions in a given industry. Where the Citation Share Index measures which brands get named, this franchise measures which sources the engines cite.
How is it different from the Citation Share Index?
The Citation Share Index measures the brand layer — which companies the engines name. Who Controls AI Answers measures the source layer — which domains, publications, and platforms the engines retrieve from to assemble the answer. They are complementary maps of the same system.
Why does the source layer matter for a brand?
AI engines synthesize answers from a concentrated set of sources. If a brand is absent from the sources an engine trusts for its category, it will not appear in the answer regardless of market position. Knowing which sources control the answer is the first step to earning citation.
Which industries does it cover?
The franchise runs vertical by vertical across consumer, health, financial, professional, technology, and industrial categories, adding and refreshing audits on a rolling basis as the answer layer shifts.
How often is it updated?
Continuously. AI citation patterns move in weeks, not years, so the franchise adds new vertical audits and revises existing ones on a rolling cadence.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
