AI SEARCH CITATION ATLAS · OBJECT 01
AI search source overlap changes after hostname normalization.
Removing only a leading www. more than doubled the measured AI Mode–Gemini domain overlap: 4.66% → 10.95%.
OBJECT ID
asca:source-overlap@2026-05.v1OBSERVED
STATUSREPRODUCIBLE
PRIMARY FINDING
A hostname prefix can masquerade as platform disagreement.
The source dataset records hostnames exactly as returned. Gemini frequently emits a leading www. where another platform does not. Treating those as different domains understates shared sources for every Gemini comparison.
NORMALIZATION SENSITIVITY
Selected pairwise Jaccard overlap
| Platform pair | Raw hostnames | Normalized | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Mode × Gemini | 4.66% | 10.95% | ↑ |
| Gemini × Grok | 3.23% | 9.10% | ↑ |
| Gemini × Perplexity | 3.10% | 8.68% | ↑ |
| ChatGPT × Gemini | 1.16% | 3.70% | ↑ |
Jaccard = intersection ÷ union of unique domain sets. The complete 15-pair matrix is in the downloadable CSV.
153,425citation records parsed
6AI search platforms
5,000source queries
15platform pairs
METHOD
Small transformation. Visible consequence.
- Parse the public CSV with a standards-compliant CSV reader.
- Build one unique hostname set for each platform.
- Calculate pairwise intersection, union, and Jaccard overlap.
- Remove only a leading
www.and calculate again.
domain = domain.lower().removeprefix("www.")BOUNDARIES
What this object does not claim
- The source dataset is independently produced and not independently audited here.
- Domain overlap does not measure retrieval quality, clicks, or repeat traffic.
- The snapshot reflects a May 2026 collection and can change by model or interface.
- Only a leading
www.is normalized; no registrable-domain folding is applied.
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CSV SHA-256
51f401fd338823440dcb6be4dc622073134b7c23f608917603748fe227302b66“After removing only a leading www prefix, AI Mode–Gemini domain overlap increased from 4.66% to 10.95%.”— asca:source-overlap@2026-05.v1
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