The Attribution Crisis in LLM Search Results

Abstract:

Web-enabled LLMs frequently answer queries without crediting the web pages they consume, creating an "attribution gap" - the difference between relevant URLs read and those actually cited. Drawing on approximately 14,000 real-world LMArena conversation logs with search-enabled LLM systems, we document three exploitation patterns: 1) No Search: 34% of Google Gemini and 24% of OpenAI GPT-4o responses are generated without explicitly fetching any online content; 2) No citation: Gemini provides no clickable citation source in 92% of answers; 3) High-volume, low-credit: Perplexity's Sonar visits approximately 10 relevant pages per query but cites only three to four. A negative binomial hurdle model shows that the average query answered by Gemini or Sonar leaves about 3 relevant websites uncited, whereas GPT-4o's tiny uncited gap is best explained by its selective log disclosures rather than by better attribution. Citation efficiency - extra citations provided per additional relevant web page visited - varies widely across models, from 0.19 to 0.45 on identical queries, underscoring that retrieval design, not technical limits, shapes ecosystem impact. We recommend a transparent LLM search architecture based on standardized telemetry and full disclosure of search traces and citation logs.