Intro
ChatGPT now spreads its citations across more of the long tail of the web. Websites outside the 10,000 it cited most in mid-October made up 48.4% of the pages it cited between November 3 and 9, 2026, up from 43.9% between October 17 and 21. The share they gained came from Reddit and from every tier of bigger website.
Reddit is the clearest loser. Its share of ChatGPT's cited pages fell by two thirds (66%), from 0.42% to 0.14%, and it has not come back. High-authority news sites lost more than half their share, most of it on October 22, two days before Reddit fell, while lower-authority news sites lost far less.
Pages ChatGPT cited, October 17 to November 9, 2026
- Smaller websites picked up the share Reddit and the big websites lost: websites outside the 10,000 ChatGPT cited most in mid-October went from 43.9% to 48.4% of the pages it cites, while every tier of bigger website lost share.
- Reddit's share of the pages ChatGPT cites is still two thirds lower than before October 24: it was 0.14% between November 3 and 9, against 0.42% between October 17 and 21.
- High-authority news sites lost more than half their share (59%): most of the fall came on October 22, and the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Reuters each fell by between 87% and 94%.
- Lower-authority news sites lost 17%: the biggest news sites took most of the fall, in line with the shift towards smaller websites.
Table of Contents
Smaller websites picked up the share Reddit and the big websites lost
We ranked every website by how often ChatGPT cited it between October 10 and 15, before any of these changes, and tracked each tier's share of the pages ChatGPT cited before and after Reddit's fall.
Every tier of the 10,000 most-cited websites lost share. The ten ChatGPT cited most, led by the US National Institutes of Health, gov.uk and the NHS, lost 14% of theirs, and websites ranked 11 to 100 lost 15%. Everything outside the top 10,000 gained 4.5 percentage points, rising from 43.9% to 48.4% of ChatGPT's cited pages.
The shift came in one step. The long tail's share held between 42.8% and 43.8% from October 17 to 21, and was 47.5% on October 25. It has stayed there since.
Change in each tier of website's share of the pages ChatGPT cited
Change in share of the pages ChatGPT cited, in percentage points, November 3 to 9 against October 17 to 21, 2026. Websites ranked by how often ChatGPT cited them October 10 to 15.
No single website took Reddit's place. On the questions where ChatGPT cited Reddit before the fall, Reddit lost nearly two percentage points of share (1.89), and the most any one website gained there over what it gained on other questions was 0.2 points.
Reddit is still two thirds below where it was before October 24
Reddit's fall came after a brief rise. On October 22 its share of ChatGPT's cited pages doubled, from 0.43% to 0.86%, and it stayed near that level for three days. On October 25 it was 0.09%.
It has edged up since, to between 0.11% and 0.13% a day from November 5 to 9, with one higher day on November 3 (0.21%). That still leaves it two thirds below its level in mid-October.
Share of the pages ChatGPT cited that came from Reddit, high-authority news sites and high-authority magazines, by day
Share of the pages ChatGPT cited each day, October 17 to November 9, 2026. High authority means a million or more visits a month from organic search. Dashed lines mark October 22 and 24.
High-authority news sites started losing share two days before Reddit
High-authority news sites made up 1.14% of the pages ChatGPT cited between October 17 and 21. Their share fell by 40% in a single day on October 22, the same day Reddit's doubled, and fell further by October 25. Between November 3 and 9 it was 0.47%, and it has stayed flat since the end of October.
Among individual titles, the Financial Times lost 94% of its share, the Wall Street Journal 90% and Reuters 87%. A few high-authority news sites went the other way, among them NBC News, which gained 8%.
High-authority news sites whose share of ChatGPT's cited pages fell most
Change in each site's share of the pages ChatGPT cited, November 3 to 9 against October 17 to 21, 2026. High authority means a million or more visits a month from organic search.
Lower-authority news sites lost far less share than high-authority ones
The fall was concentrated in the biggest news sites. Lower-authority news sites, from regional papers to trade titles, lost 17% of their share, against 59% for high-authority news sites, though most of their smaller fall also came on October 22.
Magazines followed the same pattern on a smaller scale. High-authority magazines lost nearly a quarter of their share (24%) and lower-authority magazines 18%, and high-authority magazines have started to come back, rising from 0.65% of ChatGPT's cited pages on November 4 to 0.77% on November 9.
Brand and retail websites split the same way. The high-authority groups lost share and the lower-authority groups gained it, and among review sites the lower-authority group gained slightly more.
Change in each type of website's share of the pages ChatGPT cited, by authority
Change in each group's share of the pages ChatGPT cited, November 3 to 9 against October 17 to 21, 2026. High authority means a million or more visits a month from organic search.
Among other high-authority websites, Wikipedia lost 71% of its share and YouTube 74%, slightly more than Reddit, while academic websites gained 10%.
What it means for brands
- Specialist and smaller websites are a bigger part of what ChatGPT cites: websites outside its 10,000 most-cited now make up nearly half the pages it cites (48.4%), so coverage on niche and trade sites in your category is a bigger part of what ChatGPT draws on than it was in mid-October.
- High-authority news sites now hold just over two fifths of the share they did: high-authority news sites fell from 1.14% to 0.47% of the pages ChatGPT cites, while coverage on smaller news and trade titles held up far better.
- There is no single new Reddit to target: no one website picked up Reddit's share, so moving effort into one replacement platform has nothing in the data to support it.
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Methodology
We analyzed 12.8 million pages that ChatGPT listed as sources for its answers between October 17 and November 9, 2026, across the questions Searchable customers track. We kept the questions ChatGPT answered in all three periods compared (October 17 to 21, October 25 to 31 and November 3 to 9), so every figure compares the same questions, and gave each question equal weight when comparing types and tiers of website. Websites were ranked by how often ChatGPT cited them between October 10 and 15, grouped by type, and split into high authority (a million or more visits a month from organic search, as estimated by Ahrefs) and lower authority.