ICODA tested 36 crypto queries across 4 AI engines to find which media they actually cite. This is the ranking, why the top outlets win, and what to do about it.
Crypto.news, CryptoSlate and CoinDesk are the crypto media outlets AI engines cite most, and only crypto.news and CoinDesk were cited by all four engines.
Anyone planning crypto PR wants to know which publications AI pulls from when a user asks about crypto. ICODA ran 36 queries on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini with live web search, collected 144 answers and 1,137 citations, and counted every crypto media outlet that appeared. The list of outlets that matter is short enough to build a generative engine optimization plan around.
Crypto.news ranks first with a 13.9% citation score, followed by CryptoSlate (12.5%) and CoinDesk (11.8%) across 36 queries and four AI engines.
An outlet’s score is the share of the 36 queries where it was cited, averaged across the four engines, so Perplexity (about 23 sources per answer) does not drown out ChatGPT (about 3). In total, 49 crypto media outlets appeared among 355 cited domains and took 24% of all citations.
| # | Outlet | Perplexity | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Score | Rank range* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | crypto.news | 12/36 | 4/36 | 3/36 | 1/36 | 13.9% | 1-5 |
| 2 | cryptoslate.com | 15/36 | 2/36 | 1/36 | 0/36 | 12.5% | 1-4 |
| 3 | coindesk.com | 9/36 | 3/36 | 3/36 | 2/36 | 11.8% | 1-8 |
| 4 | bitcoinfoundation.org | 9/36 | 2/36 | 2/36 | 0/36 | 9.0% | 1-11 |
| 5 | cointelegraph.com | 7/36 | 3/36 | 0/36 | 2/36 | 8.3% | 3-13 |
| 6 | theblock.co | 5/36 | 2/36 | 0/36 | 3/36 | 6.9% | 4-16 |
| 7 | coinbureau.com | 8/36 | 1/36 | 0/36 | 0/36 | 6.2% | 3-16 |
| 8 | coingape.com | 8/36 | 1/36 | 0/36 | 0/36 | 6.2% | 4-14 |
| 9 | coinpedia.org | 7/36 | 1/36 | 0/36 | 0/36 | 5.6% | 4-16 |
| 10 | cryptonews.net | 4/36 | 2/36 | 1/36 | 0/36 | 4.9% | 6-19 |
| 11 | cryptoticker.io | 1/36 | 3/36 | 3/36 | 0/36 | 4.9% | 4-21 |
| 12 | cryptonews.com | 6/36 | 1/36 | 0/36 | 0/36 | 4.9% | 5-21 |
Engine columns show how many of the 36 queries cited the outlet. Rank range is the 95% interval from resampling the 36 queries 2,000 times. Ranks 10 to 12 tie on score.
Read the rank ranges before the ranks. The top three have the best scores, but their ranges overlap with each other and with ranks 4 to 8. In practice, five or six outlets form the top tier, with a long tail behind them. The top five hold 44% of all crypto media citations.
Decrypt, Blockworks and BeInCrypto were cited in none of the 144 answers. BeInCrypto is a large outlet: Ahrefs counts about 5,300 AI citations for it across six platforms. ICODA’s 36 questions did not pull it in, so the ranking reflects this query mix and says little about the wider market.
Each engine reads a different slice of the web: crypto media is 34% of Claude’s citations, 24% of Perplexity’s and 23% of Gemini’s, but only 11% of ChatGPT’s.
Perplexity searched on all 36 queries and cited the broadest set of crypto media, 33 different outlets.
It averaged 23 citations per answer, so most mid-table outlets owe their place in AI search citations to Perplexity alone.
Claude gives crypto media the highest share of its citations (34%) and cited a source in 26 of 36 answers.
It named 26 different outlets, with crypto.news first.
Gemini cited a source in only 12 of 36 answers, but 10 of those 12 included a crypto outlet.
It named 10 different outlets. Twelve answers are too few for a stable ranking.
ChatGPT cited a source in 27 of 36 answers, yet only 6 of those 27 included a crypto outlet.
Regulators (SEC, ESMA, investor.gov) made up 39% of its citations and exchange help pages 29%. The media it did cite were The Block (3 queries), CoinDesk (2) and Cointelegraph (2).
Explainer questions such as “What is blockchain?” rarely trigger web search, so no outlet gets cited.
Claude and Gemini cited nothing on all six explainer queries, and ChatGPT cited a source on one. Only Perplexity searched every time.
Query intent decides the winner: crypto.news leads on news, bitcoinfoundation.org on “best of” questions, and no outlet gets above 4% on explainers.
| Query group | Top outlets (score) |
|---|---|
| News | crypto.news (58%), CoinDesk (46%), Cointelegraph (33%) |
| Regulation | crypto.news, CoinDesk, cryptoticker.io (17% each) |
| Commercial | bitcoinfoundation.org (38%), Coin Bureau (17%), CryptoSlate (13%) |
| Safety | Coin Bureau (17%), cryptonews.com (13%), nftevening.com (8%) |
| Founder | coinpedia.org, coingape.com, cryptoslate.com (21% each) |
| Explainer | no outlet above 4% |
Each group has six queries, so one query moves a score by about 4 points. Differences of a few points are noise.
News is the one group where every engine cites sources every time, and it is where crypto media is strongest. Founder queries are the ones a project asks when it wants coverage, such as “Where can I distribute a crypto press release?”. Perplexity answered them with press-release sections from crypto.news, coingape.com and cryptoslate.com.
On founder queries, 31% of all citations went to press wires and sponsored-content networks, and 22% to agencies’ own sites. Crypto media took 26%. If you sell a service, the ranked lists on those domains help shape how AI describes your category.
Fewer than four in ten cited pages are news articles: most of the rest are homepages, tag pages, directories and review pages.
ICODA classified the 158 distinct URLs cited from the 15 top-ranked outlets:
The pattern points to four reasons: freshness, list-friendly structure, a findable press-release section and fit with each engine’s habits.
ICODA did not test causes directly. These are readings of the pattern.
Size is not on the list. For the 19 outlets ICODA also pulled from Ahrefs, citation score had a rank correlation of 0.20 with Domain Rating (p = 0.42) and 0.07 with monthly organic traffic (p = 0.77). Neither is statistically clear: bigger outlets were not reliably cited more.
Choose outlets by the question you want to be found for, then earn the page types AI actually cites: editorial coverage, directory entries and list placements.
Generative engine optimization for crypto PR comes down to five steps:
ICODA is a crypto PR agency that arranges paid placements, but the ranking rule was fixed before data collection and uses no commercial relationship.
Queries came from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer matching terms (US volume) and were fixed before any run. Each ran once through the OpenRouter API with web search forced to each provider’s native search tool. Before scoring, ICODA resolved Gemini’s redirect links, removed tracking parameters, counted each domain once per answer and sorted every cited domain into one of eleven source types. Domain Rating, traffic and AI citation counts come from Ahrefs, pulled 3 October 2026. ICODA’s own site was cited once, by Perplexity.
ICODA’s earlier study, Google’s AI cites crypto media four times less than rivals, used a prompt set ICODA could not see. This one uses a known query set and adds Claude.
The free AI Visibility Checker shows whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your project today. Check if AI cites your project with the free AI Visibility Checker.
All 36 queries, in six groups of six, ran on every engine.
In ICODA’s test, crypto.news ranked first, then CryptoSlate and CoinDesk. Only crypto.news and CoinDesk were cited by all four engines.
Rarely. Crypto outlets appeared in 6 of its 27 answers that had citations and made up 11% of its citations, while regulators and exchanges made up 68%.
Not in this data. The rank correlation between Domain Rating and citation score was 0.20, which is not statistically clear, on 19 outlets.
Seldom. Press-release pages were 7 of 158 cited URLs from the top 15 outlets, and six of those were section index pages.
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