Trustpilot has published research showing that brands with an active review profile and regular responses were cited in 75.3% of AI-generated answers. The study examined more than 800,000 responses across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode.
The findings point to a sharp gap between businesses with visible review activity and those without. Brands with no active Trustpilot profile were cited in just 1% of answers, while those that simply established a presence on the platform lifted that rate to 53.5%.
Review and trust sites now account for 14% of all citations in AI responses, making them the second-largest source type after general brand websites, according to the research. Among review platforms, Trustpilot pages were cited most often across the four systems analysed.
The analysis grouped brands into four categories, from those with no active profile to those with high review volume and active management. The highest citation rate was recorded for brands with more than 80 reviews and regular responses to customer feedback.
The study also found that AI tools can treat the absence of a Trustpilot profile as a negative signal. In some answers, a missing profile was described as a warning sign for consumers, suggesting that brands without public trust markers may struggle to appear prominently in AI-generated recommendations.
That matters as consumers increasingly use generative AI to research products and services before making purchases. Trustpilot cited external research showing that 58% of consumers already use AI tools during that process.
Citation shift
The report offers a picture of how large AI systems gather and rank evidence when answering consumer questions. Nearly all Trustpilot citations in AI answers, 99.5%, came from pages appearing in organic search results rather than through a direct commercial arrangement.
Trustpilot argued that this reflects three factors behind visibility in AI results: relevance, recency and ranking. Reviews often contain detailed first-hand descriptions of products and services, which can help AI systems answer specific questions. A steady flow of new reviews also gives the systems fresh material to draw from.
Trustpilot said its platform received an average of 200,000 reviews a day in 2025. It also pointed to strong domain authority in search rankings as another reason its pages are repeatedly surfaced by AI systems.
In practical terms, the research suggests AI tools do more than count ratings. The company said the systems use review data to construct narratives about brands by checking TrustScores, identifying recurring themes in customer feedback and paraphrasing comments.
That means review management may now affect not only a company's reputation with human buyers, but also how automated tools describe the brand. Businesses that collect regular feedback and reply to customers may give AI systems a broader, more current pool of information, while those with little or no visible review activity may leave gaps that affect how they are represented.
Alicia Skubick, Chief Customer Officer at Trustpilot, said the findings show that trust signals are becoming measurable inputs in AI-driven discovery. "In an era of AI-powered buying journeys, trust is a quantifiable, high-value asset for businesses. Trustpilot turns authentic customer sentiment into the trust signals brands need to earn AI citations.
"Now, our latest tools provide precise insights into how brands' trust signals are driving citations in AI answers, empowering them to design strategies to stay visible - and trusted - as AI continues to shift how consumers discover and choose brands," Skubick said.
Broader implications
The report adds to a growing debate over how generative AI platforms choose sources and which brands become visible when consumers ask for recommendations. Search engines have long rewarded websites that publish fresh, relevant and authoritative content, but AI tools increasingly summarise and reframe that material instead of sending users directly to a company's own site.
For consumer-facing brands, that creates another layer of competition. It is no longer only a question of ranking well in traditional search results or maintaining a polished website. Businesses must also consider how third-party information, especially reviews, shapes the summaries and citations produced by AI systems.
Trustpilot said this creates a competitive divide between brands that actively maintain trust signals and those largely absent from public review platforms. In the company's view, businesses that fail to build those signals risk becoming hard to find in AI-assisted buying journeys.
The underlying study was carried out on behalf of Trustpilot by Seer Interactive. It replicated buying journeys across a range of products and services using more than 15,000 likely prompts. The sample covered 437 brands with no active Trustpilot profile and nearly 1,500 more across low, moderate and high review activity groups.
The strongest signal in the data was simple visibility: brands that had built a substantial review base and replied regularly to customers appeared far more often in AI answers than those with no profile at all.