Credit: Joshua Hibbert via Unsplash.
Linkedin is the second most cited source by AI models, behind YouTube, according to analysis by Meltwater, an intelligence platform specialising in PR, communications and marketing analysis.
The finding comes from an study of 9.5 million AI citations across 16 B2B categories using Meltwater's GenAI Lens, which found authentic, expert-driven content is becoming an increasingly important driver of B2B brand visibility.
Meltwater identified the platform as performing especially well in AI citations, where questions were professional, technical or decision-driven.
It ranked LinkedIn in the top five for citations in B2B searches across industries including technology and SaaS, consulting and professional services, financial services and fintech, marketing and advertising, and HR and talent.
Meltwater found platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube accounted for 47.5% of AI citations, compared with 15% from peer review sites and 18.7% from company websites.
Within app, about 75% of LinkedIn AI citations were identified as coming from individual member profiles, compared with 25% from company pages.
The most frequently cited content included articles and posts that featured clear formatting, including bullet points and numbered lists, strong headings, named entities and quantitative data.
Structured content performed best out of all formats within Linkedin.
More than half of citations (51%) came from members with fewer than 10,000 followers, something Meltwater attributed to AI models prioritising clarity, expertise and usefulness over popularity alone.
"For the last twenty years, the job of a brand was to be discoverable. In an AI-first world, the job is to be the answer,” said Chris Hackney, chief product officer at Meltwater.
“LLMs are now the first stop for decisions that used to take hours of research – and if your brand isn't being cited, you're not in the consideration set. What this data makes clear is that AI models aren't looking for the loudest voice in the room – they're looking for the most credible voice.
“Organisations that are discoverable in reputable earned media, credible with structured, factual content, and consistent with the channels they engage on, are the ones that will show up when decisions are being made.”
Davang Shah, vice president of marketing at LinkedIn, said AI visibility was essential to influencing purchasing behaviour.
“Product and brand discovery doesn’t happen in stages anymore – it starts with a question and ends with an AI assistant’s answer,” said Davang Shah, Vice President of Marketing at LinkedIn.
“If your brand isn’t showing up in LLMs, you’re not just missing awareness, you're missing the moment of decision. That’s why being discoverable, credible and consistently cited isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s what defines your buyability and determines whether your products or solutions get considered and ultimately get bought.”
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