How Consistent Are AI Answers? We Asked 3 Times
Ask Google's AI the same question three times and the cited sources stay fully stable only 86% of the time — about 2.3 sources shift on every repeat.
CiteLens Research · 48 prompts · 2026-06-21Key findings
- Across 3 immediate repeats, the set of cited domains is fully stable only 86% of the time.
- On average ~2.3 cited domains change between repeats, even with identical wording.
- The average pairwise similarity of source sets is 89% — high, but not deterministic. A single snapshot can mislead you.
What this means for you
Because answers shift between asks, a single check of "does AI mention me?" is noise. You need repeated sampling to know your true visibility.
This is why CiteLens runs every prompt multiple times and reports a rate with a confidence interval — not a one-off yes/no.
Methodology
Each English prompt was queried three times (cache disabled on repeats). We compared the set of AI-cited domains across the three runs: "fully stable" is the share of domains present in all three; similarity is the average pairwise Jaccard across runs.
Download the data (JSON)Measure your own brand in AI answers
Run the same engine that produced this data on your own brand — see where you're cited and where you're missing.