AI Assistants Cite Photo and Video Businesses’ Own Websites Far More Often Than Most
In Diib's latest AI visibility scans, 68% of photo and video service websites had their own site cited by an AI assistant, compared with 40% of websites in other industries. Their overall AI visibility scores were about average.
For photo and video businesses, AI assistants already cite the business's own website more often than in most industries. That means your site is often where an AI answer sends a potential client, so what's on it matters as much as how often you get mentioned.
Google now gives site owners generative AI performance reports in Search Console, showing how often a site appears in Google’s AI features. Diib runs its own scans of a different set of AI answers, from assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude. One thing those scans show is whether an assistant points people to a business’s own website, or to someone else’s.
What the data shows
Diib looked at the most recent AI visibility scan for about 105,000 websites, run between September 15 and October 2, 2026. Parked domains were left out. 437 of the websites were in the photo and video services industry.
- 68% of photo and video service websites had their own site among the sources the assistants cited, compared with 40% of websites in other industries.
- ChatGPT cited the business’s own site for 67% of photo and video service websites, versus 38% for other industries.
- Claude did so for 22%, versus 13%.
- Overall AI visibility scores were about the same: an average of 12 out of 100 for photo and video services, and 12 for everyone else.
Other hands-on service industries were also well above the overall rate, including dental practices (60%), auto repair shops (59%) and wedding businesses (58%). Online-only businesses ranked much lower. E-commerce services websites, for example, had their own site cited 24% of the time.
What this does and doesn’t tell you
This is aggregated Diib data from a single round of scans, so it’s a snapshot, not a trend. It shows a pattern, not a cause. One possible explanation is that photo and video work is shown best on the business’s own site, where the portfolio, packages and contact details live. Being cited also isn’t the same as being visible more often: these sites didn’t score higher overall, but when an assistant did mention them, it was more likely to link to them directly.
Source: View the original source