← Who writes the AI shelf

Editorial source · measured July 2026

How ChatGPT uses petco.com to recommend products

petco.com is editorial — the kind of best-of article and buying guide ChatGPT leans on to build a shelf. We saw it cited 2,757 times across just one category.

Citations
2,757
Most-cited rank
#16
Categories
1 of 18
Cited mostly as
Other

Which shelves cite petco.com

The categories where ChatGPT pulled from this source when building a shopping answer. It shows up in only one — a specialist, not a generalist.

What ChatGPT cites it for

The kind of page ChatGPT pulled from this domain. Best-of lists dominate the shelf across the board — the model reaches for a ranked list far more than a comparison or a product page.

  • Other 100%
  • Best-of list 0%

The pages ChatGPT pulls from

A few of the most-cited petco.com pages behind these answers.

How we measured this

  • We asked ChatGPT brand-free shopping questions across 18 product categories and recorded every source URL it cited — 293,240 citations in all.
  • This page counts how often petco.com showed up among them. Citation counts are for the public category studies only, not any private client work.
  • A citation is ChatGPT surfacing the source. It is not an endorsement, a link, or traffic.
  • One engine, one country, one point in time. The shelf, and who writes it, moves.

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Other sources that write the shelf