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According to Tim Soulo, ChatGPT, Google’s AI mode and AI overviews often choose different sources for the same answer. X
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Ahrefs research found that 28.3% of ChatGPT’s most cited pages lack organic Google visibility. X
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YouTube mentions showed the strongest association with AI brand visibility in the study at 0.737. LinkedIn
A brand can rank nowhere on Google and still show up in AI responses. That’s the key message from Tim Soulo, chief marketing officer at Ahrefs, who argues that AI search has become its own discovery channel with its own rules.
What Soulo claims
AI tools select sources in their own way. For a given search query, Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews reach the same conclusion 86% of the time, but cite almost completely different sources, with only 13.7% overlap. So visibility now depends less on a ranking site and more on where your brand is mentioned on the web: YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, reviews, forums and trusted industry sites. Soulo calls citations the new backlinks for the age of AI search.
The data behind it (yes, there is a quote)
One commenter asked if this was a real study or just an ad. It’s both. Ahrefs analyzed over 1 billion data points across 14 studies in six months. The standout numbers: “Best A separate result showed a 0.67 correlation between the number of times a brand is mentioned on the web and its visibility in AI search.
Why it changes SEO
The task shifts from ranking pages to building real evidence for the brand. LLMs understand your brand through co-mentions, the topics and products you appear next to. So the step is to find gaps in your business and get mentions when your industry is discussed. The old game leaked anyway: AI Overviews now reduced clicks on the number one result by 58%, down from 34.5% ten months earlier.
The honest reservation
This is initial research from Ahrefs, and the company sells Brand Radar to track exactly this. So read it with that in mind. One finding even contradicts common advice: adding schema markup showed no significant impact on AI citations. Nevertheless, practical knowledge is difficult to fake. Real mentions, real reviews, and real conversations are what AI rewards.
Build something good, get the right people talking about it, and AI will increasingly help the right audience find your brand.
Watch and read more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL1W1SMtTT4
https://x.com/timsoulo/status/2061796432534003866
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