Somantra has released an AI Search Ranking Factors study of the Australian insurance category, tracking 2,437,107 citation records across 28,725 domains on ChatGPT and Google over seven months. The study found that 57.2 percent of domains appeared in exactly one month and never surfaced again, with only 2.7 percent holding a citation in all seven.
57.2% of domains cited in AI search appeared only once in seven months.
Only 2.7% of domains were cited in all seven months.
Discount/savings pages and comparison formats persisted at twice the rate.
FAQ and how-to pages correlated with long-term citation persistence.
"Complete guide" content was 3.5x more common among one-citation domains.
Content format, not domain authority, determined citation persistence.
Across the seven-month period, 57.2 percent of domains appeared in exactly one month and never surfaced again. Only 2.7 percent held a citation in all seven. Somantra describes the space between those two figures as the content graveyard. The study's more consequential result is what separates the domains on either side of it. It is not size. Domain authority, brand recognition, and publishing volume did little to explain which domains persisted. Content format did a great deal.
Pages using discount or savings language appeared among long-term survivors at roughly twice the rate at which they appeared among one-citation URLs. Comparison-format content showed a similar advantage, and FAQ and how-to pages correlated with persistence across the seven-month window. Content labelled a "complete guide" was three and a half times more common among domains that vanished after a single citation than among domains cited in every month of the study. The pattern is consistent with how conversational engines assemble answers: comparison tables, FAQ blocks, and priced offers resolve a specific question in one extractable passage.
"If a content team is still producing long-form guides because that is what won on Google in 2020, the data suggests those pages are being cited once and then left behind," said Arun Prasad, Founder of Somantra. "Discount pages, comparison pages and FAQs are the formats holding their citations. Brands that make that switch keep their visibility. Brands that do not lose it one citation cycle at a time."
"Marketing teams are being measured on what they published this quarter," said Prasad. "The question that matters now is what is still being cited two quarters later."
About Somantra
Somantra is a Sydney-based AI search brand visibility and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) platform that helps enterprise brands understand how they are represented in AI-generated answers. Somantra measures brand performance through proprietary, customer-intent-driven metrics including Brand Mindshare, Brand Consideration, and Brand Engagement across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Perplexity. Somantra works with enterprise brands across financial services, insurance, and other high-consideration categories.
