76% of Domains Cited by AI Appeared Only Once
Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Featured/HARO sits down with Gini Dietrich, host of Spin Sucks to discuss the ways in which AI visibility has changed how we pitch to publications.
Takeaways
- 34%A third of AI citations come from sites that would never make a media list. Featured analyzed a little over 22,000 citations across more than 400 GEO audits and found about 34% came from websites with a Moz domain authority under 40 — the kind of "mom and pop" blog no agency would put on a pitch list.
- 76%The long tail is extremely long. 76% of cited domains appeared exactly once, while the top 100 domains (YouTube, Reddit and the usual players) accounted for only about 25% of citations. Brett Farmiloe's read: the rewards come less from one big hit and more from breadth, which means redesigning standard operating procedures around one-and-done placements.
- 33%Don't throw out the Tier 1 list. The distribution is close to a mirror image: roughly 33% of citations came from sites with domain authority above 80. AI engines, like Google before them, still weight authority and history — and because of licensing deals, a site cited heavily in ChatGPT may be absent from Perplexity or Claude. Audit each engine separately.
- 3x21% of HARO pitches are 100% AI-generated, and human-written pitches are three times more successful. Featured runs every pitch across HARO and Connectively through Pangram's AI detection and has scored more than 1.4 million pitches since the revival. About 35% of journalists opt out of AI-generated pitches entirely. AI is the baseline; the human's experience is what gets a pitch over the finish line.
- 80%Measure it, then double down on what works. Reddit citations dropped roughly 80% overnight in 2026, so what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Brett Farmiloe's one change for Q4: make AI visibility the North Star and re-engineer team structure, SOPs and tooling around it, using frequent audits, manual spot checks, and "how did you hear about us?" as the most reliable signal.
“The sites with authority and the ability to manufacture AI visibility are websites you probably have never heard of.”
Companies discussed: Featured, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), Connectively
Episode notes and full transcript: featured.com/press/podcast/76-of-domains-cited-by-ai-appeared-only-once
Cite as: Brett Farmiloe on , “76% of Domains Cited by AI Appeared Only Once,” October 15, 2026.
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