United States Research

US research built to change the next operating decision

CiteAngle tracks how brands are discovered, named, cited and converted across the US market, and every source and denominator stays explicit.

Featured operating research

One evidence system for SEO, AEO, GEO and AIO

See the state model, denominator rules, owned-platform evidence, controlled observations and the boundary between automated diagnosis, the publishing activation gate and expert-led external work.

Read the evidence framework

SEOAEOGEOAIO7 states3 action boundaries

Read in decision order

  1. 1. MarketThe 2026 US AI Search Surface Map: Where Buyers Actually Meet AI Answers
  2. 2. DemandOne Keyword Is Now Dozens of Questions: What Query Fan-Out Means for Demand Measurement
  3. 3. Sources & citationsWhat Actually Gets Cited by AI Search: A Sober Review of the Controlled Evidence
  4. 4. Sources & citationsWhich Domains US AI Answers Actually Cite — 15 Surfaces, 1,987 Domains, and the Fifth You Can Publish To
  5. 5. Sources & citationsA Single Run Is a Point Estimate, Not a Number: The Published Evidence
  6. 6. Due DiligenceA Lift in What, Exactly? The Denominator Questions That Sort Real Metrics From Vanity Metrics
  7. 7. ActionBefore You Buy an AI Visibility Tool: Stand Up the Official Rails Google and Bing Already Give You
  8. 8. MarketAds Have Arrived in AI Answers — Here's What Money Can and Can't Buy There
  9. 9. MarketA Falling Ad-to-Revenue Ratio Often Means Revenue Moved Faster
  10. 10. MarketTwenty-Nine Quarters, Three Phases: What an Ad Budget Looks Like When You Rebuild It Quarter by Quarter

Series · Side by Side: public-page comparisons

AI-visibility measurement products, lined up on the same axes using only what each vendor states on its own public pages. Every fact is scoped to "public pages, access date noted"; if a fact changes after publication, the installment carries a correction block.

  1. Part 1: What to verify before you buy AI visibility measurement (the comparison grid and five questions) grid accessed 2026-07-16

Series · Verify Before You Buy: reading AI-visibility claims

One reporting pattern per part, converted into questions a buyer can ask in writing. It names practices, never vendors, and every quoted sales line is labeled as a format example and our own figures logged in the public claims registry.

  1. Part 1: When a lift claim lands on your desk, the first question is the denominator published 2026-07-17
  2. Reference anchor: A single run is a point estimate, not a number published 2026-07-17

New research

Side by Side Public-page comparison

Hiring an AI Visibility Vendor: What to Verify Before You Buy — a Public-Page Comparison

Eight global vendors, lined up on the axes their own public pages disclose: pricing, engines, repeats and confidence intervals, raw data, verification artifacts. Plus five questions to ask before you buy.

Market

The 2026 US AI Search Surface Map: Where Buyers Actually Meet AI Answers

Google and Bing now publish official AI exposure telemetry. Here is a market map of the US AI answer surfaces and what each one actually reports.

Demand

One Keyword Is Now Dozens of Questions: What Query Fan-Out Means for Demand Measurement

AI search breaks one query into parallel sub-questions. If you still measure demand in keywords, you are counting the wrong unit.

Sources & citations

What Actually Gets Cited by AI Search: A Sober Review of the Controlled Evidence

Controlled benchmarks stress-tested dozens of popular citation tactics. What survived, what didn't, and where AI citation is really decided.

Sources & citations

Which Domains US AI Answers Actually Cite — 15 Surfaces, 1,987 Domains, and the Fifth You Can Publish To

One full pass over 50 US questions across all 15 answer surfaces: 8,662 citations, 1,987 domains, a head of ten that carries 27.2% of the total, and a tail of 1,088 domains cited exactly once.

Sources & citations

A Single Run Is a Point Estimate, Not a Number: The Published Evidence

Academic preprints, a vendor's own blog and search-industry guidance now point the same way: one pass over an AI engine yields a point estimate, not a number you can budget on. Here is the published evidence, with links and dates.

Due Diligence

A Lift in What, Exactly? The Denominator Questions That Sort Real Metrics From Vanity Metrics

One deck says your AI mentions will triple. Before that number reaches a budget, four denominator questions decide whether it is a procurement-grade metric or a vanity figure, and published panel data shows the denominator itself moves. Verify Before You Buy, Part 1.

Action

Before You Buy an AI Visibility Tool: Stand Up the Official Rails Google and Bing Already Give You

Google and Bing already run free, official telemetry on your site. Stand these rails up first, then buy measurement that answers what they can't.

Market

Ads Have Arrived in AI Answers — Here's What Money Can and Can't Buy There

OpenAI, Google, and others now sell ad space around AI answers. None of them sell the answer itself, and that changes what to measure before you spend.

Market

A Falling Ad-to-Revenue Ratio Often Means Revenue Moved Faster

One listed company's filings show advertising falling from 29.16% of revenue to 17.46% over six years while the advertising line itself multiplied 4.16 times. The share moved because revenue moved faster.

Market

Twenty-Nine Quarters, Three Phases: What an Ad Budget Looks Like When You Rebuild It Quarter by Quarter

One listed company's advertising ran in phases: a push peaking at 35.08% of revenue in the only loss-making quarter of 29, then 13 quarters in a row where revenue outgrew advertising, then a second push.

Research programs

US buyer-question architecture

Separate unaided category demand, reputation, comparison and purchase-stage questions.

Source selection and citation paths

Trace direct citations, retrieved sources, organic candidates, news and video occurrence.

Entity and misinformation monitoring

Turn conflicting names, products, locations and claims into a verified action queue.

Intervention evaluation

Register target, held-out and delayed cohorts before collection and bind change receipts to remeasurement.

US state opportunity mapping

Keep the national baseline and selected state denominators, location receipts and action queues distinct.

Measurement reliability

Study how repeatable AI-answer visibility measurement is: repeated runs, sampling variance and confidence-interval reporting, grounded in the published literature and held to our published protocol.

Documents meant to be cited, such as market maps, baselines and verification reports, are archived in the reports library, where every report keeps a permanent URL and revisions are dated on the page. The measured figures themselves are packaged for reuse in the open aggregates dataset, downloadable as JSON.

Evidence with a declared population

Customer-owned Google and Bing aggregates, controlled AI-answer observations, and owned conversion records remain separate. That makes every finding usable for a specific operating decision.

Read the research, then run it on your own brand

Every brief above ends in a measurable move. A free AI visibility check shows the measured format on your own buyer questions, on the same protocol, before any money moves.

Written by , measurement lead at CiteAngle. Every number on this page is checked against its source before it goes out. As of .

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