Buyer Intent Reshapes AI Citations: Discovery, Shortlist, and Variation Cite Different Webs
When the buyer's intent shifts from discovery to shortlist to variation, the set of cited domains turns over almost completely. Across 25 verticals the average pair-wise overlap is just 13.4%, and only 2.2 of a typical 50.8-domain union appears under all three intents.
Derived from the Q2 2026 AI Search Citation Benchmark. For each vertical the cited-domain union is computed for discovery, shortlist, and variation prompts independently, then Jaccard similarity is computed between each intent pair within the vertical and averaged across all 25 verticals. A per-intent aggregator-vs-vendor lens reuses the parent benchmark's domain taxonomy. Surfaces three different domain personalities AI engines reach for at each funnel stage.