German AI search follows its own rules. Plan with American numbers and you plan wrong.

Almost everything written about visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Mode is based on English queries and American data. Reddit is the most important source, the advice goes, Forbes and large comparison sites shape the answers. For a retailer in Freiburg or a manufacturer in Westphalia, the question is whether that holds for their customers too.

Otterly has published the largest analysis for Germany so far. For 44 days, from 16 August to 28 September 2026, purchase-oriented questions from 16 industries were put to seven systems: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Claude. The study covers 3.95 million German citations, with 3.73 million American ones as a comparison. Counting was done per individual URL, not per domain.

Almost two thirds of citations carry a German signal

64.9 percent of German citations lead to an address that is recognisably German. Most of that, 51.1 percent, sits on country domains such as .de, .at or .ch. Another 11.9 percent sits on international domains with a German path such as /de/, and 1.9 percent on a German subdomain.

Country domains therefore appear 3.7 times as often as localised paths of international sites. An international company running only an English site with a translation feature competes for the remaining third.

Associations instead of Reddit

By source type, Germany and the US look similar at first. Company-owned pages are the largest group in both markets, 57.2 percent in Germany and 56.3 percent in the US. The differences sit in the smaller groups, and there they are clear.

Reddit barely matters in Germany. What Reddit provides in the US, the independent voice next to the manufacturer, is supplied here by institutions: the consumer advice centres (Verbraucherzentrale) with 3.6 percent of association citations, the automobile club ADAC with 2.8 percent, plus industry bodies, the KfW development bank and the chambers of commerce. Among media, the leaders are not business titles but advice and test publishers: Finanztip, Chip, Handelsblatt and test.de.

Nine of the fourteen most-cited domains in Germany have no measurable share in the American data. A strategy aimed at the top American sources does not narrowly miss the German market; it misses it entirely.

The industry decides how local the answer is

How strongly local sources dominate depends on the industry.

Where law, money and health are involved, the systems reach for German sources. In manufacturing, transport and hospitality, almost two thirds of citations go to international sites without a German signal. For a German machine builder, that means the competition for the answer also takes place in English.

Every engine weighs differently

The systems are 17.5 percentage points apart. Perplexity cites addresses with a German signal 75.2 percent of the time, Claude 57.7 percent. Concentration differs too: in Germany, Google AI Mode needs 588 domains to cover half of all citations, in the US 301. The German market is spread more widely, so the long list of smaller sources matters more here.

Measure your visibility in one system and you measure one of seven truths.

What the study does not say

Otterly analysed only purchase-oriented commercial questions. For informational questions the picture may differ. The German signal is detected only from whole path segments, and 97.4 percent of country domains are .de, so Austria and Switzerland are barely represented. The American figures are meant as a comparison, not a benchmark. And the study comes from a vendor that sells measurement tools itself.

As a direction it still holds, because it measures where there used to be almost nothing but American assumptions.

What follows

For German companies, and for international brands selling in Germany, four points follow.

First: the .de domain is an advantage, and it is wasted if all it holds is a business card. Purchase-oriented questions need pages that answer them, in German and with the depth the German market apparently rewards.

Second: if you operate internationally, build a real German path before thinking about an extra domain. The address needs localising, not just the text on the page.

Third: in Germany, visibility with associations and test portals is what a Reddit discussion is in the US. A test result, a membership, an entry in an association directory are not side issues but sources the systems prefer.

Fourth: measure per market, per language and per system. A global figure across all engines averages away exactly the differences that matter. Anyone monitoring prompts should keep German and English questions separate and report each system on its own.

As of 15 October 2026. Source: Otterly, German AI Search Index 2026, published 5 October 2026, fieldwork 16 August to 28 September 2026.