Do AI tools favour first-hand experience?

Experiment

We tested whether recommendation queries cause AI platforms to rely more heavily on first-hand experience than traditional publisher or brand-owned content.

September 9, 2026

Why we ran this experiment

We kept seeing Reddit, forums and review-led content appear prominently in recommendation responses. We wanted to know whether this was a repeatable pattern or simply anecdotal.

Our hypothesis

query requires judgement or recommendation.

What we found

First-hand sources accounted for 58% of citations across
recommendation-style prompts…

Results by AI tool

AI tool	First-hand experience	Brand content	News / editorial	Other
ChatGPT	62%	18%	12%	8%
Claude	54%	24%	14%	8%
Perplexity	59%	21%	13%	7%
Gemini	56%	26%	11%	7%

The evidence

A representative result from ChatGPT illustrates the pattern.

Experiment details

Next steps

We will repeat the test across additional verticals and isolate whether source preference changes by platform.

First-hand evidence matters most during consideration.
Brand-owned content remains strong for factual queries.
Third-party presence becomes increasingly important…

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