Meltwater: A global leader in actionable intelligence for public relations, communications and marketing teams, released new research showing that real-world expertise is increasingly driving visibility in artificial intelligence (AI) search.

According to BERNAMA News Agency, based on an analysis of 9.5 million AI citations across 16 business-to-business (B2B) industries using Meltwater's GenAI Lens, the study found LinkedIn is now the second most-cited source by AI models, behind only YouTube.

The findings underscore how AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot are reshaping how B2B buyers research products, evaluate brands, and make purchasing decisions, according to Meltwater in a statement.

As generative AI becomes a primary gateway for information discovery, the brands surfaced in AI-generated answers are increasingly influencing awareness, reputation, and buying behavior.

"For the last 20 years, the job of a brand was to be discoverable. In an AI-first world, the job is to be the answer. What this data makes clear is that AI models are not looking for the loudest voice in the room - they are looking for the most credible voice," said Meltwater Chief Product Officer, Chris Hackney.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn Vice President of Marketing, Davang Shah said product and brand discovery does not happen in stages, but it starts with a question and ends with an AI assistant's answer.

According to the report, individual voices account for nearly 75 percent of LinkedIn citations, compared with 25 percent from Company Pages, highlighting the growing role of executive thought leadership and employee-driven expertise in AI discoverability. Structured content featuring bullet points, strong headings, named entities, and quantitative insights also performed best.

The research further found that AI models prioritize relevance and expertise over popularity. More than half of LinkedIn citations analyzed came from users with fewer than 10,000 followers, signaling that clarity, authority, and usefulness matter more than scale alone.

LinkedIn ranked among the top five most-cited platforms across key B2B sectors, including technology and software as a service (SaaS), consulting, fintech, marketing, and human resources.

Third-party and user-generated platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube collectively accounted for 47.5 percent of AI citations, compared with just 18.7 percent from company-owned websites.