---
title: "ChatGPT Cites PDFs in 5.7% of Its Sources vs 0.32% for Google AI Overviews - Suff Digital"
url: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/pdfs-in-ai-search
description: "We turn websites into predictable revenue engines. Web design and SEO that drives revenue, not clicks. Nashville-based, senior US team."
lang: en
---

ChatGPT Cites PDFs in 5.7% of Its Sources vs 0.32% for Google AI Overviews (https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/pdfs-in-ai-search)

5.7% of the sources ChatGPT cites are PDF documents, against 0.32% for Google AI Overviews and 0.42% for Google AI Mode. Across five AI engines, 1.5% of citations are documents rather than web pages, and 57% of the PDFs cited come from government, university or military websites.

Citations that are documents by AI engine

ChatGPT

5.7%

Perplexity

1.62%

Gemini

0.57%

Google AI Mode

0.42%

Google AI Overviews

0.32%

All five engines

1.51%

Source: Suff Digital analysis of 155,312 cited URLs · answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, September 2026

Cited PDFs by website

consumerfinance.gov

86

noaa.gov

78

usda.gov

69

naic.org

55

medicare.gov

53

irs.gov

52

nih.gov

51

wisc.edu

37

cdc.gov

35

fda.gov

32

energy.gov

29

who.int

27

Source: ChatGPT Cites PDFs in 5.7% of Its Sources vs 0.32% for Google AI Overviews - Suff Digital (https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/pdfs-in-ai-search)

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