How to Build Effective Brand Mentions for AI Search (What the Data Says)

Welcome to the era of off-page SEO.

In traditional search, backlinks are slightly less important than they used to be. So is backlink building and digital PR dead?

Not even a little bit. “Branded mentions” are the single most important predictor of visibility in AI search. If you want to “rank” in AI search, you need to build off-site mentions.

Transcript

2. About Ryan Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs Prev. CMO Animalz, agency co-founder Worked with Google, Zapier, GoDaddy, etc. ...obsessed with understanding AI search.
3. Welcome to the era of off-page seo
4. Links are less important 😭 Sample of 1,000,000 keywords, Spearman correlation between SERP ranking and different SEO metrics.* https://ahrefs.com/blog/links-matter-less-but-still-matter/
6. Brand mentions = any text reference to your brand on a webpage
7. Links matter less... but mentions matter more https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/
8. ... and most of your brand mentions will come from other websites
9. why brand mentions are the #1 “ranking” factor
10. More mentions = better visibility in training data
11. More mentions = better visibility in retrieved content
12. Mentions don’t need to be linked https://www.iloveseo.net/a-guide-to-semantics-or-how- to-be-visible-both-in-search-and-llms/
13. Low DR isn’t a problem Top-cited domains in ChatGPT for “wild camping” topics in the UK, April 13 2026
14. The Most Popular Domains in AI Search
15. Every LLM prefers to cite different websites 86% of top-mentioned sources are not shared across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. https://ahrefs.com/blog/top-mentioned-sources-are-not-shared-across-ai-assistants/
16. That’s because every AI search engine works differently Different search indexes, internal ranking systems, paid partnerships, QFO processes... LLM ChatGPT AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini Claude Perplexity Meta Search index Mostly Bing Google Brave In-house index Bing and Google
17. AI Overviews Data from Brand Radar Data set: 6,570,667 results Date: 9th April 2026 Location: UK Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Domain www.youtube.com en.wikipedia.org www.reddit.com www.facebook.com www.bbc.co.uk www.instagram.com www.amazon.co.uk www.healthline.com my.clevelandclinic.org www.tiktok.com Cited in 1,663,484 579,371 380,226 372,809 177,948 166,216 143,694 133,340 120,875 94,660 DR 99 97 95 100 93 100 93 92 92 97 Traffic 6B 3.5B 996M 2.2B 137M 1.7B 73M 53M 158M 522M
18. ChatGPT Data from Brand Radar Data set: 933,988 results Date: 9th April 2026 Location: UK Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Domain en.wikipedia.org www.reddit.com www.alibaba.com uk.trustpilot.com www.theguardian.com www.independent.co.uk www.forbes.com www.accio.com www.collinsdictionary.com www.healthline.com Cited in 135,330 125,353 80,247 42,925 40,804 39,941 37,354 26,102 25,587 25,347 DR 97 95 92 94 93 91 94 75 85 92 Traffic 3.5B 996M 6M 35M 28M 5M 17M 222K 9M 53M
19. Copilot Data from Brand Radar Data set: 337 ,805 results Date: 9th April 2026 Location: UK Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Domain www.ebay.co.uk en.wikipedia.org www.amazon.co.uk uk.redbrain.shop www.reddit.com www.temu.com www.youtube.com www.awin1.com uk.trustpilot.com www.tripadvisor.co.uk Cited in 62,292 56,062 55,812 29,747 24,377 21,880 14,511 14,289 12,365 11,660 DR 91 97 93 33 95 84 99 91 94 91 Traffic 15.2M 3.9B 72.8M 2.1K 1B 20.3M 4B 275 38.3M 19.8M
20. But there are common themes... 💬 UGC platforms like Reddit, Quora 🤝 Media partnerships with specific publishers ⭐ Third-party review sites like G2, CNET, Forbes 🎬 YouTube, TikTok and other video platforms
21. Let’s build some mentions 💪
22. Brand
 Radar Huge index: 353 million prompts Multiple LLMs: ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot And much more: Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, search demand
23. 1 Find outreach targets for your industry
24. 1 Find the most- cited domains in your niche
25. 1 Filter to “pitch- worthy” domains Only 1/3 of ChatGPT's most-cited domains are actually influenceable. https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpts-most-cited-pages/
26. 1 Prioritize placements in new pages The average age of URLs cited by AI assistants is 1064 days, vs. 1432 days in organic SERPs— 25.7% “fresher”. https://ahrefs.com/blog/do-ai-assistants-prefer-to-cite-fresh-content/
27. 2 Get featured in product comparison Listicles
28. 2 Listicles get cited like crazy In our study of 750 top-of-the-funnel prompts (e.g. the best web design agencies in London), 43.8% of all source links were listicles. https://ahrefs.com/blog/best-lists-research/
30. 2 This goes for all major AI search engines
31. 2 DR doesn’t matter 35% of cited best lists were published on low authority domains — many of which were highly questionable. https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpts-most-cited-pages/
32. 2 Freshness trumps authority Across 1,100 blog lists used as research sources, 79.1% were updated in the current year. https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpts-most-cited-pages/
33. 2 (If you operate multiple properties, use them.)
34. 2 Any marketer worth a damn knows listing yourself at the top of a list hosted on your site doesn’t build trust with buyers. — Wil Reynolds
35. 3 Get featured in YouTube videos
36. 3 LLMs really love YouTube YouTube is #1 in AI Overviews, AI Mode, #2 in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity.
37. 3 YouTube mentions show the strongest correlation with AI mentions YouTube mentions show a correlation of 0.74 with AI mentions (extremely high). https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-brand-visibility-correlations/
38. 3 Transcripts = LLM training data
39. 3 Koray Tuğberk Gübür a.k.a. Corey Tuggy Goober
40. 3 All videos generate transcripts... and so do adverts
41. 4 Steal mentions from your competitors
42. 4 Why do competitors get mentioned when you don’t? 😔
43. 4 LLMs only learn associations if content exists to suggest them
44. 4 See where competitors beat you...
45. 4 ...plan topic clusters based on fan-out queries... https://ahrefs.com/blog/query-fan-out/
46. 4 ...and create that content! On-site: blog posts, product comparisons, listicles.
 Off-site: guest posts, sponsorships, influencer partnerships, listing and review platforms, UGC and forum posts.