Businesses that actively collect and respond to customer reviews are dramatically more likely to appear in AI-generated answers, according to new research commissioned by Trustpilot, highlighting the growing importance of digital trust signals in online discovery.

The analysis, based on more than 800,000 responses across major AI platforms, found that businesses with active review engagement were cited in 75.3 per cent of AI-generated answers. By contrast, firms with no active review presence appeared in just 1 per cent of responses.

Even establishing a basic review profile appears to improve visibility significantly. The study found that brands could increase citation rates from 1 per cent to 53.5 per cent simply by creating a Trustpilot presence, with further gains achieved by collecting large volumes of reviews and responding consistently to customer feedback.

The findings suggest AI systems are increasingly treating review activity as a proxy for credibility and relevance. In some cases, the absence of a visible review profile was interpreted negatively by AI tools, which flagged missing trust signals as a potential warning sign for consumers.

The shift comes as AI-assisted search and shopping behaviour becomes more mainstream. Trustpilot said 58 per cent of consumers are already using AI tools to research products and services, creating a widening divide between brands that cultivate strong digital trust signals and those that do not.

Alicia Skubick, chief customer officer at Trustpilot, said trust was becoming a measurable commercial asset in AI-driven buying journeys. “Authentic customer sentiment is increasingly shaping how brands are surfaced and described by AI systems,” she said.

The research also points to a broader evolution in how AI models source information. Review and trust platforms now account for 14 per cent of all citations in AI-generated responses, making them the second most-referenced source category overall. Among review platforms, Trustpilot was identified as the most frequently cited across systems including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini and AI search tools such as Perplexity.

Trustpilot attributed this prominence to what it described as the “three Rs” of AI visibility: relevance, recency and ranking. Frequent review submissions provide continuously updated content, while detailed user feedback gives AI systems context-rich information for generating recommendations and summaries.

The findings reinforce how AI tools are reshaping digital marketing dynamics, with customer feedback increasingly influencing not just reputation, but discoverability itself.