How do AI models weight different types of sources when discussing companies?

The weighting logic is consistent across the major engines, even where the implementations differ. Authority is the heaviest input: a domain’s reputation, how often it is cited by other authoritative domains, whether it carries structural signals like proper schema and clean information architecture. Recency matters – newer authoritative content typically outweighs older content of equal authority for time-sensitive questions. Topical relevance filters out high-authority but off-topic sources (a Reuters general-news article is less useful than a specialist outlet for a niche industry question). Corroboration frequency, the degree to which multiple authoritative sources say the same thing, increases the engine’s confidence in the synthesized answer. The implication for source-layer work is that strong sources stack: one good article helps, three coordinated good articles across the right outlets move the engines noticeably.