Minuttia: Vendors Write Up to Half of AI-Cited Best Tools Lists

An analysis of 18,084 software questions across Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity found that 34–47% of cited "alternatives" listicles are written by vendors themselves, rising to 56–65% for "X vs Y" comparisons. 87% of those lists rank the vendor first, and only 16% disclose authorship.

• 311,766 cited pages were read and labelled across 5,983 brands in 196 categories
• Vendor-list share ranges from 12% (audio production) to 76% (AI security operations)
• On alternatives questions, vendor sites make up 42% of ChatGPT citations vs 1–6% elsewhere
• The 20 most-cited vendors account for only 6% of all citations