AI research reveals low citation rates for Korean news media

A study by AI marketing firm Trina and analysis from 29percent (operator of Medad) indicate that generative AI services frequently cite blogs and corporate websites rather than news media when providing answers.

Trina’s research found that Naver Blog had zero citations from ChatGPT and Gemini despite high visibility in Google searches. The firm attributed this to robots.txt settings, noting that Naver Blog blocks both training bots and search bots used to generate answers, whereas sites that allow bots see significantly higher citation rates.

Further analysis by 29percent of over 15,000 AI citations showed that Korean news media accounts for only 6.3% of total citations. Among domestic outlets, ZDNet Korea was the most cited, followed by Digital Insight and GTT Korea. The study also noted a discrepancy between being cited as a source and being explicitly mentioned by name in an AI’s response, suggesting that source citation alone may not guarantee brand recognition.