Only 11% of domains cited by ChatGPT show up in Perplexity's answers too. That figure comes from an Averi analysis of 680 million AI citations published in March 2026. If you're running a single "AEO strategy" and calling it done, you're optimizing for one platform and leaving the other three on the table. I've been digging into this for client work at Publicis Sapient and the platform differences are bigger than most guides admit. Here's what each engine actually rewards. Why Platform-Specific AEO Matters Now Over 40% of search queries in 2026 go to AI assistants rather than traditional search engines. ChatGPT alone accounts for 87.4% of all AI referral traffic to brand websites. And 68% of consumers now start product research in ChatGPT or Perplexity before they visit a brand website at all. The problem is that these platforms don't pull from the same source pool. Each has a different retrieval architecture, different freshness requirements, and...