New research from Depra exposes a stark divergence in how major LLMs source information for Indian consumers. While Perplexity acts as a video-heavy aggregator, ChatGPT operates as a curated index of brand-owned content and traditional news outlets. The study, conducted on August 14, 2026, analyzed 480 skincare and fashion queries to map citation patterns across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, revealing that no single engine dominates the citation landscape uniformly.

The ChatGPT Citation Gap

ChatGPT’s behavior is notably conservative and specific. Across 160 answers, it generated only 408 citations, averaging a mere 2.5 links per response. Unlike its competitors, ChatGPT almost entirely bypassed social forums and video platforms. It cited YouTube twice and Reddit three times in the entire dataset. Instead, it favored direct brand websites like beminimalist.co (29 citations) and Indian news shopping pages such as ndtvshopping.com and hindustantimes.com (25 citations each). This suggests OpenAI’s retrieval strategy prioritizes authoritative, first-party sources over community-generated content for this specific demographic.

Perplexity’s Video and Forum Dominance

In sharp contrast, Perplexity accounted for 66.1% of all citations in the study, producing 3,068 links. Its top source was YouTube, which it cited 518 times, followed by Reddit with 182 citations. This heavy reliance on social platforms is engine-specific; 97% of all YouTube citations in the study came from Perplexity alone. The Reddit citations were equally localized, drawn exclusively from Indian communities like r/IndianSkincareAddicts and r/IndianFashionAddicts. For brands, this means visibility on Perplexity is inextricably linked to video reviews and forum engagement, a completely different strategy than the one required for ChatGPT.

The Hinglish Variable

Language choice significantly alters citation patterns, particularly for Gemini and Perplexity. When queries were switched from English to Hinglish, Gemini’s citation volume dropped from 749 to 415 links. More critically, the overlap in cited websites between English and Hinglish answers was minimal for Gemini (10.8%) and Perplexity (52.8%), compared to ChatGPT’s high consistency (30.3% overlap). This indicates that AI engines are not merely translating queries but are accessing entirely different retrieval pools based on linguistic cues, making a one-size-fits-all SEO strategy ineffective for the Indian market.

Key Takeaways

  • ChatGPT cites brand websites and news outlets, ignoring social platforms like YouTube and Reddit for Indian shopping queries.
  • Perplexity is the primary driver of video and forum citations, accounting for over 95% of all YouTube and Reddit links in the study.
  • Hinglish queries cause Gemini to cite significantly fewer sources and shift its recommendations away from English-centric lists.
  • Marketplaces like Nykaa are the only consistent cross-engine winners, cited frequently by all three platforms.

The Bottom Line

Brands targeting the Indian market cannot rely on a single AI visibility strategy. To capture ChatGPT's traffic, you must optimize first-party brand pages and news listings, whereas Perplexity demands active presence in YouTube reviews and Reddit communities. Ignoring this engine-specific fragmentation means leaving significant visibility on the table.