ChatGPT's Most-Cited B2B Source Is Gartner
When I sorted every source ChatGPT had cited across our audits this year, I expected Reddit at the top. That’s what the industry keeps saying. It wasn’t. The most-cited domain was gartner.com, and for B2B software it wasn’t close: Gartner turned up in ChatGPT’s answers about 60 of the 126 software companies we audited.
Then I looked at which Gartner pages ChatGPT was reading. I assumed Magic Quadrants and analyst research. Instead, two out of every three Gartner citations pointed to Gartner Peer Insights, the user-review side of the site. Most of the rest were comparison and “alternatives” pages built from those reviews.
So the Gartner asset with the most influence on ChatGPT isn’t the one SaaS marketing teams spend their analyst-relations budget chasing. It’s the one your customers fill in.
What I measured
At Simplitas we run ChatGPT audits for B2B companies. Each one asks ChatGPT the questions a real buyer asks about a category, then records which brands it names and which pages it cites as sources. Between April and October 2026 that came to 6,310 answers about 599 companies, backed by 59,483 cited sources from 16,677 domains. 126 of those companies are B2B software vendors. The full method is at the bottom.
Gartner against everyone else
Here’s Gartner next to the other sources people usually name when they talk about what AI search trusts. For B2B software companies:
| Gartner | 192 | 6.6% | 60 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 other analyst and consultancy firms combined | 169 | 5.8% | 56 |
| G2 | 130 | 4.4% | 55 |
| Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice and TrustRadius combined | 89 | 3.0% | 30 |
| 52 | 1.8% | 21 | |
| Wikipedia | 16 | 0.5% | 10 |
One domain beat Deloitte, McKinsey, PwC, Forrester, IDC and six other firms put together. It was cited in 3.7 times as many answers as Reddit and 12 times as many as Wikipedia. It reached more software companies than G2.
Across all 599 companies, not just software, Gartner was still the most-cited single domain: 808 citations in 375 answers, covering 162 companies. Only the eleven other analyst and consultancy firms combined appeared in more answers (404).
Source: Simplitas analysis of 2,968 ChatGPT answers about 126 B2B software companies, Apr–Oct 2026
What ChatGPT actually reads on gartner.com
Of the 808 Gartner citations, 65% pointed to Peer Insights review pages. Magic Quadrants and other research documents made up 26%. The rest were newsroom posts and articles.
Within Peer Insights, ChatGPT read four kinds of page:
| Market pages | 41% | “Best Supply Chain Planning Solutions Reviews 2026” |
|---|---|---|
| Head-to-head comparisons | 30% | “Kinaxis vs o9 Solutions 2026” |
| Alternatives and competitors | 16% | “Top Blue Yonder Supply Chain Planning Alternatives & Competitors 2026” |
| Vendor and product pages | 13% | Individual product review pages |
Those comparison and alternatives pages matter. Together they make up 46% of Peer Insights citations, and they’re exactly what a buyer asks ChatGPT for: “X vs Y”, “alternatives to X”. Gartner generates them from reviews, so the pages exist whether or not you’ve ever paid Gartner a cent. Your competitors’ alternatives pages may be sending ChatGPT towards you, or listing everyone except you.
- Peer Insights reviews 65%
- Research, incl. Magic Quadrants 26%
- Newsroom and articles 9%
Source: Simplitas analysis of 808 Gartner citations in ChatGPT answers, Apr–Oct 2026
The research side is growing. In April and May, 97% of Gartner citations were Peer Insights pages. From June to October it was close to an even split, with 200 review pages and 204 research documents. A Magic Quadrant is getting more useful in ChatGPT, but reviews are still half of Gartner’s footprint, and they’re the half you can actually influence.
Gartner shows up when buyers are choosing
The source mix changes with the question. I split the prompts into research questions (“How are finance teams handling…?”) and shortlist questions (anything asking for the best, top, compare, vs or alternatives):
| Gartner | 8.1% | 3.3% |
|---|---|---|
| 9.0% | 1.9% | |
| G2 | 7.0% | 1.7% |
| Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice, TrustRadius | 6.8% | 1.3% |
| Wikipedia | 2.7% | 1.6% |
| Other analysts and consultancies | 3.9% | 10.0% |
Gartner behaves like a review site. It appears in shortlist answers two and a half times as often as in research answers. That’s the moment a SaaS buyer is deciding who to put on the list.
The consultancies are the opposite. Deloitte, McKinsey, PwC and the rest appear mostly when buyers are still working out the problem, through their free insight articles and reports. They shape how the problem is framed, but they rarely pick the vendor.
Source: Simplitas analysis of 6,310 ChatGPT answers, Apr–Oct 2026. Shortlist questions ask for the best, top, compare, vs or alternatives
Gartner against G2, which bought Gartner’s other review sites
There’s a twist in the review-site story. Gartner used to own three of them. It bought Software Advice in March 2014[1] for $103.2 million in cash, plus up to $31.9 million more in contingent payments. In 2015 it added GetApp, through Barcelona-based Nubera (about $27.7 million), and Capterra ($179.2 million)[2], and ran all three as Gartner Digital Markets. That came to more than $310 million in upfront cash.
On 29 January 2026, G2 announced it would buy Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp from Gartner[3]. G2’s CEO, Godard Abel, called it “transformational” and promised “the definitive system of record for B2B software in the age of AI”, with nearly 6 million verified reviews and more than 200 million software buyers a year across the four sites. The deal closed on 5 February 2026. Gartner’s annual report puts the price at approximately $110 million[4], about a third of what it paid a decade earlier.
Gartner kept Peer Insights. Its review pages still sit on gartner.com, and ChatGPT was citing them throughout our data. So since February, the B2B software review market has two big owners: Gartner, with Peer Insights next to its research, and G2, with four of the five software review sites in this analysis.
That’s how they line up in ChatGPT:
| G2 network (G2, Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice) | 483 | 161 | 11.8% |
|---|---|---|---|
| gartner.com (Peer Insights and research) | 375 | 162 | 8.1% |
| Gartner Peer Insights only | 269 | 128 | 6.8% |
| TrustRadius | 27 | 20 | 0.6% |
Counted as one business, G2’s network now appears in more ChatGPT answers than gartner.com, and much more often when buyers ask for a shortlist. For B2B software companies the two are effectively tied: gartner.com in 192 answers about 60 companies, the G2 network in 185 answers about 62. Since June, the G2 network has edged ahead for software (6.3% of answers against Gartner’s 5.4%). Gartner is still the single most-cited domain. G2 got there by owning four of them.
Within the network, G2 itself does the heavy lifting. It appeared in 294 answers, ahead of Peer Insights (269), and it lost the least ground after spring. ChatGPT mostly reads G2’s aggregate pages: category pages made up 36% of G2 citations and product pages 22%, followed by comparison and “Top 10 Alternatives” pages and a growing set of editorial listicles on learn.g2.com. Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice still get cited, but far less than they were in April and May.
- Gartner
- G2
- Independent
- MAR 2014Gartner buys Software Advice $103.2M
- 2015Gartner buys GetApp, through Nubera $27.7M
- 2015Gartner buys Capterra $179.2M
- FEB 2026G2 buys all three from Gartner ~$110M
Source: Gartner SEC filings and G2 (deal prices are cash at closing); Simplitas analysis of 6,310 ChatGPT answers, Apr–Oct 2026
Gartner against Reddit and Wikipedia
Reddit and Wikipedia are the two sources most often called the backbone of AI answers. In our data, the backbone gave way:
| 26.7% | 2.7% | |
| Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice, TrustRadius | 18.2% | 2.3% |
| Gartner | 16.1% | 4.5% |
| Wikipedia | 10.0% | 1.0% |
| G2 | 9.2% | 4.1% |
| Other analysts and consultancies | 2.3% | 7.2% |
ChatGPT also got more selective. Answers since June cite fewer than 9 sources each, down from about 16 in April and May. But the cut wasn’t even. ChatGPT dropped community and review sites and went to primary sources instead:
| Official documentation | 2.6% | 19.8% | 0.2% | 6.7% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Government sites | 0.4% | 11.8% | 0.1% | 5.0% |
| Analysts and consultancies (excluding Gartner) | 2.3% | 7.2% | 0.3% | 2.9% |
| Academic papers and journals | 7.8% | 9.2% | 0.9% | 2.5% |
| 26.7% | 2.7% | 3.0% | 0.6% | |
| Software review sites | 22.2% | 5.5% | 2.6% | 1.1% |
| Tech press | 20.7% | 4.8% | 2.2% | 0.7% |
Official documentation went from 3% of answers to 20%: Microsoft Learn, AWS docs, SAP Help, Google’s support pages. Government sites went from almost nothing to 12%, and analyst and consultancy firms tripled. The same shift shows up as a share of every source ChatGPT cited, so it isn’t just fewer citations per answer. ChatGPT now reads the source itself more often than people talking about it.
Since June, gartner.com has been the single most-cited domain in our data, ahead of Microsoft’s documentation, Deloitte, G2 and McKinsey, with Reddit down in seventh. For B2B software from June onwards, Gartner appeared in 5.4% of answers, more than any other single domain. Only the eleven other analyst and consultancy firms counted together edged past it (5.8%).
- Gartner
- Gained share
- Lost share
- Apr–May
- Jun–Oct
Source: Simplitas analysis of 6,310 ChatGPT answers, Apr–Oct 2026
What this means for B2B SaaS companies
Treat Gartner Peer Insights as an AI search channel. It’s the most-read Gartner property in ChatGPT, and unlike a Magic Quadrant you can influence it this quarter. Make sure you’re listed in the right market, ask happy customers for reviews regularly, and keep your product information current.
Check the comparison and alternatives pages. Nearly half of ChatGPT’s Peer Insights citations are “X vs Y” and “alternatives to X” pages. Look up the pages for your three biggest competitors. If you’re not on them, or you’re buried, that’s the shortlist ChatGPT is likely to repeat. The same goes for G2’s category and alternatives pages.
Treat G2 as four sites, not one. Since buying Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice, G2 owns most of the review pages ChatGPT reads, and that network now rivals gartner.com for shortlist answers. G2 itself lost less ground than any other review site, and your position in its category grid counts for more than any single five-star review. Keep your Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice profiles current too, since G2 plans to feed their data into its own AI recommendations.
Win the research stage through other people’s content. Early in the journey, ChatGPT reads consultancy and analyst articles, not vendor sites. Getting quoted in that content, or in the trade press that sits beside it, is a digital PR job. Our AI brand mentions tool maps the articles ChatGPT cites for your category and finds the people who wrote them. For your own pages, our GEO content editor helps you write the specific, quotable answers these sources are cited for.
Measure the sources, not just the mentions. Reddit fell from a quarter of answers to under 3% in a few months. An AI visibility tracker that records which pages ChatGPT cites for your category, day by day, tells you which sources are worth the effort this quarter.
To see whether ChatGPT puts you on the shortlist for your category, and whether it’s reading Gartner, G2 or something else to decide, run a free AI visibility check. If you’d like help acting on it, that’s what our GEO agency team does. For more data on how brands get mentioned in AI search, see our AI brand mentions statistics.
Methodology
- Data: 6,310 ChatGPT answers to buyer-intent prompts about 599 companies, collected between 4 April and 14 October 2026 through Simplitas GEO audits. 126 of the companies are classified as B2B software vendors, with 2,968 answers between them. Prompts were generated from each company’s category, customer profiles and use cases, averaging about 10 per company. Answers and their cited sources were collected from ChatGPT through the Cloro API.
- Citations are the source URLs ChatGPT attached to each answer: 59,483 across 16,677 domains. Domains were matched exactly, including subdomains. Shares are per answer (did an answer cite the source at least once, among answers that cited any source) unless a raw citation count is given.
- Gartner is gartner.com. Peer Insights pages are those under gartner.com/reviews/; comparison pages contain /compare/ and alternatives pages contain /alternatives.
- “Other analysts and consultancies” covers Forrester, IDC, Deloitte, McKinsey, PwC, EY, KPMG, BCG, Accenture, Bain and Capgemini.
- Review sites: G2 includes learn.g2.com. “Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice and TrustRadius” are counted together in the earlier tables. The “G2 network” is G2, Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice, which G2 has owned since February 2026.
- Ownership and deal figures come from Gartner’s SEC filings (2014 10-Q, 2015 and 2025 10-Ks, the last as reported by The Next Web) and G2’s announcement. Purchase prices are cash paid at closing, excluding contingent and employment-linked payments.
- Research and shortlist questions: a shortlist question contains “best”, “top”, “recommend”, “which”, “compare”, “vs” or “alternative(s)”. Every other prompt counts as a research question.
- Source types: official documentation is any page on a docs., help., support., learn., developer. or developers. subdomain, excluding learn.g2.com. Government sites are .gov and .gov country domains plus europa.eu. Academic sources are .edu domains, PubMed Central, ScienceDirect, doi.org, arXiv, Springer, Wiley, Nature, MDPI and ResearchGate. Tech press covers TechRadar, TechTarget, ZDNet, Forbes, CIO, PCMag, The Verge, VentureBeat and Computer Weekly.
- Periods: April–May runs from 4 April to 31 May 2026, and June–October from 1 June to 14 October 2026. B2B software figures cover the whole period. Each answer is a single ChatGPT response without personalisation or chat history.
References
- [1] Gartner, Inc.. “Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2014.” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2014. Acquisition of Software Advice, Inc.. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000749251/000074925114000020/it-06302014x10q.htm
- [2] Gartner, Inc.. “Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015.” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2016. Acquisitions of Nubera eBusiness S.L. (GetApp) and Capterra, Inc.. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000749251/000074925116000034/it-12312015x10k.htm
- [3] G2. “G2 to Acquire Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp from Gartner.” G2, 29 January 2026. https://company.g2.com/news/g2-acquires-capterra-software-advice-getapp
- [4] “Gartner $110M sale of Digital Markets division in latest SEC filing.” The Next Web, 2026. Reporting Gartner's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. https://thenextweb.com/news/gartner-110m-sale-of-digital-markets-division-in-latest-sec-filing