Top of PromptCategory data · Professional services · Sydney
Which sources do AI assistants cite about personal injury lawyers in Sydney?
The directories still lead on ChatGPT, but two firms have closed to within one citation. ChatGPT's two most cited sources are still comparison and rankings sites, bestinhood.com and sydney-lawyers.au, though Garling & Co and Withstand Lawyers now sit just behind them, and Google AI Overviews returned no overview at all for five of the seventeen questions.
Measured 2026-09-21 · Previous measurement 2026-09-07
Across 17 buying-journey prompts about personal injury lawyers that named Sydney, NSW or Australia, these are the sources each AI engine cited most in its answers. A citation is a source the engine actually linked in a response, which makes this list a map of who each engine trusts in this category right now.
The top 3 cited sources, by engine
| Engine | #1 cited source | #2 | #3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | bestinhood.com cited in 29.4% of answers | sydney-lawyers.au cited in 29.4% of answers | garlingandco.com.au cited in 23.5% of answers |
| Perplexity | lawconnect.com cited in 94.1% of answers | garlingandco.com.au cited in 70.6% of answers | bpclaw.com.au cited in 58.8% of answers |
| Google AI Overviews | lawconnect.com cited in 16.7% of answers | mauriceblackburn.com.au cited in 16.7% of answers | slatergordon.com.au cited in 16.7% of answers |
Sample: 17 prompts, responses collected 2026-09-21 to 2026-09-21 (17 from ChatGPT, 17 from Perplexity, 12 from Google AI Overviews). Google AI Overviews has a lower response count because some prompts returned no AI Overview, and those are excluded from that engine's denominator. Excluded from citation counts: 36 prompts naming a specific business, per the TOP Score rules, and 163 prompts that stated no location (see the correction note below). Percentages are the share of that engine's responses containing at least one citation of the domain. Google AI Overviews answered all 17 questions but linked no source at all in 9 of them, which is why its counts sit so low. Ties: ChatGPT's first place is shared at 5 citations by bestinhood.com and sydney-lawyers.au, and its third place is cut from a tie at 4 between garlingandco.com.au and withstandlawyers.com.au; Perplexity's third place is cut from a tie at 10 between bpclaw.com.au and slatergordon.com.au; Google AI Overviews' three places are all shared at 2 citations by lawconnect.com, mauriceblackburn.com.au and slatergordon.com.au, with twelve further domains on a single citation.
Small sample: only 17 prompts in this category named a location, so treat these figures as a first sounding rather than a settled ranking. The sample grows at the next collection and the page will be updated with its own date stamp.
What we said last time, and what the fortnight showed
The 7 September version of this page led with the line that ChatGPT had flipped from firms to directories, and a fortnight later that reads as too strong. The directories did hold the top of ChatGPT's list and they still do, but the firms didn't stay down: Garling & Co and Withstand Lawyers are now within a single citation of the lead, and comparepersonalinjurylawyers.com.au has slipped from second place to fifth.
On a base of seventeen questions those are one and two answer movements, which is the honest size of them, so we're retiring the directional claim rather than replacing it with a new one pointing the other way. We're leaving the original wording on the record here rather than editing it away quietly, because that's the standard this site holds itself to, and because a measurement that moves around inside its own margin is exactly the thing a date stamp is for.
Correction and rebaseline, 26 August 2026
The first version of this page, published earlier the same day, included prompts that didn't name a location. Our own checking showed engines answer location-less questions with largely overseas sources, which distorted the picture of what a Sydney buyer's question returns. We rebaselined the page the same day to count only prompts naming Sydney, NSW or Australia, and we're saying so here rather than editing silently, because that's the standard this site holds itself to. The location-less results remain interesting, and we'll publish them separately as their own finding.
What the data says
Two collections a fortnight apart now point much the same way on ChatGPT, with comparison and rankings sites at the top of the list and the firms that publish their own guides sitting just behind, and what changed this fortnight is smaller than it looks: on a base of seventeen questions a move from six citations to five is a single answer, so we're not going to read a trend into it, and we'd rather say that plainly than dress it up.
The clearer movement is on Google AI Overviews, which returned no overview at all for five of the seventeen questions, and of the twelve it did answer it linked nothing in four, so its citation list is now thin enough that all three of its top places rest on two citations each. Perplexity went the other way and concentrated further, with LawConnect cited in sixteen of its seventeen answers and Garling & Co in twelve, so if you're looking for the engine where publishing your own answers still pays most visibly, it's that one.
How to read this page
- 1Citations are not mentions. This page measures which sources the engines link when they answer, not which businesses they name. Who gets named is the TOP Score, and it's measured separately.
- 2Engines disagree, so we never pool them. Each engine is reported on its own row because an average hides a total absence on the engine your buyers actually use. Pooling the three engines here would show firms leading and the directories gone, which is not what any single engine actually did.
- 3This is a measurement with a date on it. Models and retrieval change; a source moving between collections has not necessarily done anything. The method, cadence and limits are on the standard page.
- 4Ties are shown alphabetically and single-page sources are named. Where sources tie on citations, the table orders them alphabetically and the tie is stated under it. A domain's count can rest on a single page, often a "best of" listicle, and that concentration is itself part of what this site measures, so where it's true of a listed source we say so. Domains are counted by exact hostname, so government subdomains count separately.
Are you cited in your category?
A free Namecheck shows whether AI engines name and cite your business, with the actual answers we saw. If the measurement on this page looks wrong, the corrections process applies to it like everything else here.