In the August set of India beauty answers from ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, 5,990 cited links pointed to online stores. Of those, 2,797 (47%) were articles such as a retailer's beauty magazine or a pharmacy's health guide. 273 (5%) were product pages.
Page kind is read from each link's web address, so a few guides will sit in the wrong group; the method is below.
The September set shows the same shape: 40% articles and 5% product pages across 2,650 store links. Brand websites follow it too. The pages AI sends readers to are the ones that answer a question, not the ones that sell the item.
Stores get cited for the guides they publish
| Website type and set | Cited links | Articles | Collection pages | Product pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online stores, August | 5,990 | 47% | 27% | 5% |
| Online stores, September | 2,650 | 40% | 33% | 5% |
| Brand websites, August | 4,540 | 50% | 22% | 12% |
| Brand websites, September | 1,697 | 46% | 27% | 15% |
Rows do not add to 100%: the rest are search results, bestseller lists and other pages.
A beauty retailer's catalogue is its largest asset, but it is not what AI cites. The links in these answers land on the store's editorial pages: how to pick a vitamin C serum, which toothpaste suits sensitive teeth, what a dermatologist says about hair fall.
Collection and category pages take the next biggest share. Search results and bestseller lists add 14% in August, almost all of it from one large marketplace. Together with articles, these account for about nine in ten store links in August.
The product page is the smallest of the page kinds a store runs. A shopper may end up on one after the answer. The answer itself rarely points there.
Brand websites win citations with guides, not catalogue pages
Half of the brand-site links in August were articles or guides. Many of the most-cited brand sites are Indian direct-to-consumer brands that publish their own "best of" guides for their category, and AI cites those guides.
Collection pages come second and product pages third, in both sets. Product pages rose from 12% to 15% between August and September, and articles still led.
This is mostly a Google AI Overviews pattern. That engine supplied 79% of brand-site links in August and 84% in September, so the finding describes where AI Overviews looks more than where ChatGPT looks. This study did not split brand-site page kinds by engine, so it cannot say whether ChatGPT's brand-site citations follow the same pattern.
Clinics and review sites show the same rule at the extreme
Dermatology, hair-loss and dental clinic sites made up 1,524 links in August and 238 in September. About 95% were articles or buying guides, such as "best toothpaste in India" or "best shampoo for hair fall". Treatment and booking pages, the pages a clinic exists to sell, were close to absent from what AI cited.
Independent review and deal sites went the same way. Of their 997 August links, 883 (89%) were articles, and two of 201 September links were a product or collection page.
For these sites the article is the product, so the figure says less than it does for a store. It does show that across every website channel in the study, the page that answers a question gets the citation.
This does not contradict the product-content studies
Other studies reach what looks like the opposite answer. XFunnel, in a study of 768,000 citations published in February 2026, found that "product content" took 46% to 70% of citations, with about 35% in consumer categories and 3% to 6% for educational blogs.
AirOps, drawing on Wix AI Search Lab data in June 2026, put listicles at 21.9% of citations, articles at 16.7% and product pages at 13.7%.
The difference is mostly definition. XFunnel counts specifications, comparisons and "best of" lists as product content. This study sorts pages by what the web address shows, so a "best toothpaste in India" guide on a store's site counts as an article and a single item's page counts as a product page.
Under that split, the page most people would call a product page is a small share of what AI cites in Indian beauty.
Yext, in an April 2026 retail study, found that about 87% of the sources AI used were places brands control: their own websites, verified directories and structured listings. Yext's figure is about who owns the cited page. It does not sort those pages into articles and product pages, so it neither confirms nor contradicts the split above.
The sorting rules were checked on 540 links
The links are the ones behind Zumi's India beauty industry report. Every link was first sorted by the kind of website it sits on (store, brand website, clinic, publication and so on), then by the kind of page its web address shows.
A hand check compared 540 links against the pages themselves, 30 from each of nine website types in two draws. It found 7 links on the wrong kind of website, all corrected, which puts the remaining error at about 1.5% of sorted links.
The first draw also found that many stores publish guides outside the blog section of their site, so a first version of the rules had undercounted articles. Fixing the rules moved store articles from 41% to 47% and product pages from 7% to 5% in August. The figures here are the corrected ones.
Editorial pages are the first thing to check
For a retailer or brand, the pages these answers cite today are mostly editorial ones. The pages already being cited answer a shopper's question in plain words, such as which product suits which skin type or hair concern.
A useful first check is which of a brand's own pages show up as citations today, and whether any of them is a guide. AI search visibility covers how that is measured per engine.
For the wider picture of what kinds of pages get cited, see what content AI engines cite.
The study does not show whether a cited page sold anything
The data covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews in India beauty and personal care, in two sets of answers that are reported separately and never combined. A difference between August and September is not evidence that an engine changed. Perplexity is not included.
Page kind comes from the web address, so a product page with a "best" slug outside a product path would be counted as an article. Between 5% and 10% of store links fall in an "other page" group. About 7% of links sit on sites that blocked checking, so their kind of website is unverified.
A citation shows where an answer pointed. It does not show reach, clicks or sales, and nothing here measures whether a cited page changed what anyone bought.
Zumi is an AI Search Intelligence Platform that measures how AI engines mention brands and cite sources across category questions. Book a demo to see which of a brand's pages the engines cite today.