Is LinkedIn the second most cited domain in AI? In our data, it is ninth
A claim going around this week says LinkedIn is now the second most cited domain in AI Overviews, ahead of YouTube. We do not measure AI Overviews. We do measure four engines, and we store every citation with its URL.
Across 30,774 answers in Spanish measured between 26 June and 20 September 2026, linkedin.com is the 9th most cited domain, with 1,445 citations. YouTube is 1st, with 8,084. LinkedIn shows up in 7.5% of Perplexity answers and almost never in ChatGPT or Copilot. And only 20.1% of LinkedIn citations go to a post: the rest are company pages, articles and profiles.
- Sample
- 30,774 answers from four engines about 34 brands, with 262,109 citations to websites other than the measured brand's own
- Period
- 26 June to 20 September 2026
- Method
- Each citation is grouped by domain (es.linkedin.com and www.linkedin.com count as linkedin.com) and ranked by number of citations, leaving out the website of the brand the question was about. LinkedIn URLs are classified by their path: /posts/, /pulse/, /company/, /in/, /learning/ and /jobs/. ChatGPT is counted separately with and without web search.
- Language
- Spanish: questions and answers
Where it comes from
This week a post on LinkedIn claimed that LinkedIn itself is now the second most cited domain in AI Overviews, ahead of YouTube. It links no study and does not say how many answers it was calculated on. It came with three tips for making a post rank in Google and in AI: the hashtags form the URL in the order you write them, Google takes the first 6 to 12 words as the title, and the URL Google crawls is the one from "copy link to post".
We do not measure AI Overviews, so we cannot say whether it holds there. What we have is every citation from four engines, stored with its full URL, and we counted them.
LinkedIn's rank, engine by engine
| Engine | Answers | Answers citing LinkedIn | Rank of linkedin.com | Citations to LinkedIn | Citations to YouTube |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | 10,600 | 7.5 % | 8th | 1,060 | 3,281 |
| Google AI Mode | 8,867 | 3.3 % | 11th | 340 | 4,798 |
| ChatGPT with search | 2,205 | 0.7 % | 24th | 17 | 1 |
| ChatGPT without search | 8,114 | 0.3 % | 53rd | 27 | 4 |
| Copilot | 988 | 0.1 % | — | 1 | 0 |
| All four engines | 30,774 | 3.7 % | 9th | 1,445 | 8,084 |
The rank leaves out the website of the brand the question was about. If we counted it, the measured brands themselves would top the ranking, and the question is which third-party sources AI relies on.
The Google engine we measure is Google AI Mode, the closest to AI Overviews. There, YouTube gets 14 times as many citations as LinkedIn (4,798 against 340), and LinkedIn is the 11th domain.
Where LinkedIn matters is Perplexity: it appears in 7.5% of its answers and is its 8th source. ChatGPT, with or without search, hardly cites it, and Copilot cited it once in 988 answers.
Which part of LinkedIn gets cited
| Kind of page | Citations | Share of LinkedIn citations | Distinct pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company pages | 493 | 34.1 % | 168 |
| Articles (Pulse) | 356 | 24.6 % | 152 |
| Posts | 290 | 20.1 % | 101 |
| Personal profiles | 177 | 12.2 % | 97 |
| Learning and jobs | 60 | 4.2 % | 23 |
| Other pages | 69 | 4.8 % | 21 |
The tips going around are about posts, and posts are one in five LinkedIn citations. Company pages are cited more than anything else, and long LinkedIn articles (Pulse) are cited more than posts.
What the URLs say about the three tips
The post URLs the engines cite carry some words from the post after the author's name. They almost always arrive in the format es.linkedin.com/posts/author_words-activity-…, while the share link carries share-…. Both carry the same post number, so they are the same post.
That confirms the post's words end up in the URL the engines read. It does not say whether they affect the citation: that would take an experiment, and this is an observation. About the 6-to-12-word title, this data says nothing.
How much of that LinkedIn belongs to the brand itself
Of the 1,445 LinkedIn citations, 169 (11.7%) went to a page of the measured brand itself: its company page, one of its posts or an article signed with its name. The rest is other people's LinkedIn talking about the sector. The spread across brands is very uneven: 11 of the 34 had not a single answer citing LinkedIn, the median is 1.5% and the highest 23.3%.
There is a risk that shows clearly in the monitor of our founder, José Redondo, a name shared by many people. The engines cited 9 LinkedIn profiles of people with that name, 36 times. Only 1 is his, with 4 citations. If your website does not say which profile is yours, for example through the sameAs in your structured data, the engine may settle on someone else's.
What we changed in the engine
The cited sources view in the dashboard now splits LinkedIn citations by kind of page and by engine, and shows separately the brand's own LinkedIn pages that AI cites, with the question that brought them up. Profiles, company pages and posts are attributed by their ID when the brand declares it. Articles only carry the author's name in the URL, so they are attributed by name and the dashboard says so. These citations are not added to the Share of Answer.
What this finding does NOT prove
- We do not measure AI Overviews. The claim going around is about that Google product, and this data neither confirms nor refutes it there.
- This is a Spanish-language corpus of 34 brands, heavy on B2B and home services. In other sectors or languages LinkedIn's rank can be very different, and even among our brands it ranges from 0% to 23.3% of answers.
- The rank depends on the questions we measure: buying questions about each sector. For questions about people, jobs or training, LinkedIn would weigh much more.
- It does not prove that ordering hashtags or working on the first words of a post changes whether AI cites it. We see the cited URLs, not the effect of changing them.
- Articles are attributed to the brand by the author's name, so the 11.7% may include some namesakes.
Frequently asked questions
Is LinkedIn the second most cited domain in AI?
Not in the engines we measure. Across 30,774 answers from Perplexity, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Copilot, linkedin.com is the 9th most cited domain and YouTube the 1st. We do not measure AI Overviews, which is where the second place is claimed.
Which AI search engine cites LinkedIn the most?
Perplexity. LinkedIn appears in 7.5% of its answers, against 3.3% for Google AI Mode. ChatGPT and Copilot hardly cite it.
Which LinkedIn pages does AI cite?
Mostly company pages (34.1% of LinkedIn citations) and long Pulse articles (24.6%). Posts are 20.1%.
Does posting on LinkedIn help you appear in ChatGPT?
In our data, not much. ChatGPT with web search cited LinkedIn in 0.7% of its answers. Where LinkedIn counts is Perplexity.
How do I stop AI from confusing my LinkedIn profile with someone else's?
Link your profile from your website and declare it in the sameAs of your structured data, with the exact URL. In our founder's monitor, the engines cited nine profiles of people with his name, and only one was his.