BrightEdge research comparing citations in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews suggests that AI search engines are doing more than retrieving information. They are assigning different roles to the same sources, treating platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn as authoritative references in some contexts and as social commentary in others. For SEOs, publishers, and business owners, the findings suggest that AI visibility is becoming less about simply appearing in citations and more about understanding how each AI system interprets a source. AI Search Engines Are Not Using The Same Sources The Same Way The most important finding in the research is that the same source can be treated very differently depending on which AI engine is generating the answer. Reddit’s AI Citation Patterns Reddit appears alongside editorial and reference sites such as Mayo Clinic, Healthline, Cleveland Clinic, and Britannica roughly 36% of the time in ChatGPT citations.…