At a glance
- A Bonfire Studio study of 1,048 citations found 45% came from advisor-controlled domains.
- The same count put government, regulatory and professional-association sources at just under 11%.
- Anyone who has watched a firm maintain its web presence will recognize the pattern.
When ChatGPT names a financial advisor, the sources behind its answer lean heavily on the advisor's own site. A Bonfire Studio study of 1,048 citations found 45% came from advisor-controlled domains. Financial Planning first reported the findings.
The same count put government, regulatory and professional-association sources at just under 11%. Bank, wirehouse and insurance company sites supplied 8.2%. The gap is not close.
Anyone who has watched a firm maintain its web presence will recognize the pattern. A site built at launch often gets neglected until a redesign project lands on someone's desk. Sara MacQueen, president and founder of Bonfire Studio, says that neglect now costs advisors placement in AI answers. She called the website “actually the best place for AI engines and search engines to learn about who you are, what you do, where you're located.”
The Financial Planning report arrives as AI search begins to take share from the Google-dominated model. Packing a page with keywords no longer buys a top slot, the article notes, and marketers have steered advisors toward authority building: blogs, third-party media, LinkedIn videos, YouTube. Fran Merlie, senior vice president of content and AI strategy at the marketing firm Gregory, frames it as “a lot of different buckets that normally haven't been connected in the past.”
The site's citation lead
The Bonfire data ranks the categories by citation count. Advisor-owned pages come first, and they are the only category a firm controls outright. Leave the homepage vague or dated, and ChatGPT has cause to cite another page that says the same thing more clearly. MacQueen's three facts — who you are, what you do, where you're located — are precisely what a recommendation answer requires. When they are missing, the AI reaches for someone else.
Before the first conversation
None of this means the website is the whole game. The study counted citations, not client conversations. But being the source an AI names matters before any new relationship starts, and every other channel points back to the website. A PR hit lands on a URL. A LinkedIn video carries the same domain. ChatGPT's citation pattern suggests it notices when that domain keeps saying the same credible thing.
Wealth Advisor Daily has tracked how AI is changing advisor marketing: directories of AI agents, usage-based contract clauses, homegrown tools. The Bonfire study turns attention to the pages underneath all of it. Advisors cannot control what ChatGPT reads on a competitor's blog, but they can control the site that accounts for the 45% figure. Plain language about what the firm does, for whom, and where is the least exotic AI marketing strategy available. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.
Reported by the Practice management desk from Financial Planning. Published . Corrections