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In short
Four findings, strongest first- 73.5%
of citation URLs appear once and never return in the 177-day window. The median lifespan is 0 days.
Figure 2 - 31 days
for the median brand to fall to half its peak citation count. 47.1% halve within a week.
Figure 3 - 13.2%
of brands tracked for 90+ days hold a steady presence. They average 74% presence; the rest cycle through decay and rebound.
Figure 4 - 51.8%
is the typical week-over-week swing in a brand’s citation count, even without a peak to fall from.
Figure 5
When ChatGPT cites a New York Times article today, does it cite the same article tomorrow? When Perplexity mentions Nike five times this week, does it mention Nike five times next week?
We ran the same brand queries every day for 10 months across 8 AI models to find out. At the URL level, citations rarely repeat: most sources appear once and don’t come back. At the brand level, mention counts swing week to week.
AI visibility behaves nothing like SEO rankings. What you earn today isn’t what you keep tomorrow.
Most citations are ghosts.
We tracked 108,650 citation URLs across 960 brands to answer one question: when an AI model cites a URL, how long does that citation persist?
The answer is stark. 73.5% of citation URLs appear exactly once and don’t return in our observation window. The median lifespan is zero days. The citations your brand earned yesterday may already be out of rotation today.
Most citations are gone by the next day
Share of citation URLs from the first observation window that still appear after a number of days.
108,650 URLs · 200 brands
| Point | Value |
|---|---|
| First seen | 100% |
| Day 1 | 35% |
| Day 2 | 34% |
| Day 3 | 33% |
| Day 5 | 31% |
| Day 7 | 29% |
| Day 10 | 26% |
| Day 14 | 23% |
- Appear once, never return
- 73.5%
- Still cited on day 7
- 29%
- Still cited on day 14
- 23%
- Median lifespan
- 0 days
Brand presence halves in 31 days.
URL-level churn is one lens. But brands have many URLs, and some of them stay. Across 857K daily reports covering 10,991 brands over 10 months, we tracked how long brand-level citation counts hold their peak. The median brand drops to half in 31 days.
That is the decay from a peak. Even without one, a typical brand’s week-over-week citation count swings by 51.8%. Whatever baseline a brand earns, the next week rarely looks the same.
Half of brands lose half their peak within 31 days
Days from a brand’s observed peak to its first 50% drop
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| 1 to 7 days (260 brands) | 47.1% |
| 8 to 14 days (58 brands) | 10.5% |
| 15 to 30 days (66 brands) | 12% |
| 31 to 60 days (79 brands) | 14.3% |
| 61 to 90 days (27 brands) | 4.9% |
| Over 90 days (62 brands) | 11.2% |
Few brands hold steady.
Of 1,314 brands tracked for 90+ days, only 173 hold a steady citation presence. The stable few average 74.2% presence; everyone else cycles through decay and rebound.
Stability improves sharply as brands move from the small to the medium tier, then plateaus. A large brand is no steadier than a medium one, and the biggest brands sit in the same volatility band as large ones. Past a certain scale, more citations stop buying more stability.
Only 13.2% of brands hold a steady presence
Share of brands tracked for 90 days or more, by how much their weekly citation count swings (coefficient of variation).
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| Very stable (173 brands · <10% swing · 74.2% average presence) | 13.2% |
| Stable (310 brands · 10-20% swing · 47.9% average presence) | 23.6% |
| Moderate (220 brands · 20-30% swing · 31.1% average presence) | 16.7% |
| Volatile (322 brands · 30-50% swing · 18% average presence) | 24.5% |
| Highly volatile (289 brands · 50%+ swing · 9.1% average presence) | 22% |
Stability is bought between small and medium
Average weekly swing in citation count by brand size. Lower is steadier.
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| Small · 1-10 citations (1,086 brands · 4.1 average citations) | 59% |
| Medium · 11-25 citations (631 brands · 16.6 average citations) | 33% |
| Large · 26-50 citations (247 brands · 31.8 average citations) | 31% |
| Mega · 50+ citations (90 brands · 105.8 average citations) | 39% |
Stop reading AI visibility as a ranking you reach. Read it as a position you run.
Visibility is a running position.
If most citations appear once, the brand half-life is a month and only 13% of brands hold steady, then visibility is not a milestone to reach. A single citation win is evidence, not a finish line, and a quarterly audit sees two half-lives of drift before the next review.
Measure continuously
A quarterly audit cannot see a 31-day half-life. Run the same queries weekly or daily, so losses and recoveries show up while you can still act on them.
Watch the pair, not the snapshot
One-and-done rate (73.5%) plus brand half-life (31 days) is the working pair. URL churn tells you whether wins stick; half-life tells you whether your position holds.
Separate spikes from wins
A 51.8% week-over-week swing is normal noise, not a trend. Treat new citations as provisional and count a win once it lasts several cycles.
