Expanding on one of our most popular AI Overview studies, we’ve analyzed 75,000 brands to see which search factors are most likely to influence brand mentions in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.
- YouTube mentions show the strongest correlation with AI visibility (~0.737), outperforming every other factor across ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.
- YouTube mentions correlate slightly more strongly than YouTube mention impressions across all platforms (~0.737 vs ~0.717).
- Branded web mentions still correlate highly with AI visibility (0.66–0.71).
- ChatGPT shows weaker correlations with classic authority metrics—like branded search volume (0.352) and DR (0.266).
- There is almost no relationship between content volume—number of site pages (~0.194)—and AI visibility.
- AI Mode consistently shows the highest correlations with branded authority signals—such as branded anchors (0.628) and branded search volume (0.466).
- All three AI assistants largely mention the same brands, demonstrated by a high output overlap correlation (0.779).
These thresholds helped us better find legitimate brands at scale—domains meeting our criteria were more likely to represent actual companies rather than generic keywords or non-brand entities.
Though not a perfect calculus, it worked pretty well in helping us find 75,000 brands.
Following that, we analyzed millions of AI responses to find mentions of those brands using Ahrefs Brand Radar.
In Brand Radar, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity share the same question pool—while AI Overview and AI Mode share another.
We’ve included AI Overview data from our earlier research this year for benchmark comparisons across all three platforms.
We used the Spearman correlation coefficient to analyze the data in this study–larger positive values reflect stronger positive correlations.
The usual disclaimer applies: correlation isn’t causation.
We’ve spotted patterns between search metrics and AI mentions, but that doesn’t mean improving these metrics will automatically boost your AI visibility.
We studied two new factors in our research this time around: “YouTube mentions” and “YouTube mention impressions”—using newly available data in Ahrefs Brand Radar.
Both correlated more strongly with AI visibility than anything else, beating even “Branded web mentions”, which originally topped the list.
To clarify, “YouTube mentions” refer to any time a brand name crops up in a YouTube video title, transcript, or description—and “YouTube mention impressions” are those mentions weighted by the number of views each video received—data you can see in our YouTube index in Brand Radar.
When brands are mentioned more on YouTube, they are more likely to show up across all three AI surfaces.
Both AI Mode and AI Overviews are owned by Google—the same parent company as YouTube—and cite YouTube more than any other domain.
It’s not hard to see why YouTube mentions might carry extra weight on these platforms.
But ChatGPT—owned by OpenAI—showed almost identical correlations, and YouTube is its sixth most-cited domain.
In other words, this isn’t just a “Google” thing.
The relationship between “YouTube mentions” and AI visibility holds up, regardless of AI platform.
And YouTube doesn’t just make up AI assistant output—it’s also part of the training data.
Both Google and OpenAI have trained their models on YouTube transcripts.
In fact, The New York Times reported that OpenAI’s GPT-4 model was trained on over a million hours of YouTube transcriptions, treating them as a massive natural language dataset.
When you realize YouTube data is so heavily baked into both the input and output of AI assistants, those YouTube correlations become less surprising and more inevitable.
Another interesting finding: the volume of “YouTube mentions” seems to matter ever-so-slightly more than the reach.
Brands don’t appear to be at a huge disadvantage if they’re mentioned in low-view videos, so long as they’re mentioned widely.
Back in our first study, “branded web mentions” correlated strongly with AI visibility. That’s still true today.
More web mentions means more visibility across every AI platform we studied—not just AI Overviews.
Brands with more mentions across different contexts (blog posts, anchors, video transcripts, descriptions, titles) are more likely to appear in AI responses.
“Branded anchors” (the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink that features the brand name) and “branded search volume” (the total search volume of all keywords containing the brand name) also correlated with AI visibility—but to a lesser extent.
Ultimately, these brand reputation signals seem to be crucial for visibility in AI, counting for more even than domain strength (DR) and classic SEO authority metrics.
Once again, we found very weak correlations between link metrics (“number of backlinks” and “URL rating”) and brand mentions across all AI systems.
And there appears to be almost no relationship between content volume (“number of site pages”) and AI visibility.
Lately, I’ve seen a few SEO experts advising people to invest in programmatic content to drive up AI visibility.
But, going by the correlation data, this doesn’t seem to be the best course of action.
In the words of our Director of Content, Ryan Law, “It’s not just a content creation arms race.”
The same goes for link building—it isn’t enough to build tons of links for volume’s sake.
What matters most is getting mentioned across a broad scope of sites.
AI Mode shows consistently stronger correlations with traditional brand signals than ChatGPT or AI Overviews:
- Branded web mentions (0.709 vs. 0.664 and 0.656)
- Branded anchors (0.628 vs. 0.511 and 0.527)
- Branded search volume (0.466 vs. 0.352 and 0.392)
- Branded traffic (0.357 vs. 0.235 and 0.274)
This pattern suggests that AI Mode acts as a sort of consensus engine, recommending brands that most people already know and search for.
AI Mode is also the only platform where branded anchors cross into “strong” correlation territory (typically 0.6+), while the other two platforms show moderate correlations in the 0.5 range.
Branded anchors are more than just mentions—they’re deliberate endorsements where someone has chosen to link to your brand by name.
They sit at the intersection of brand popularity (people using your brand name) and authority (people linking to you).
AI Mode seems to weigh these kinds of intentional brand references more heavily than the other platforms—meaning your brand’s anchors might count for more if you want to show up in AI Mode.
For emerging brands that haven’t yet made it to “household name” status, AI Mode seems like it would be the hardest platform to break into.
ChatGPT shows the weakest correlations of all three AI assistants for almost every traditional brand authority signal—“branded anchors”, “branded search volume”, “branded traffic”, “DR”, “number of backlinks” etc.
It seems to be less influenced by established brand dominance than AI Mode or AI Overviews.
This may mean it’s more likely to mention brands with varied digital profiles—not just the heavyweights.
Google’s AI products tap into decades of search quality algorithms, helping them assess and rank sites based on tons of quality factors.
Though ChatGPT has its own methods of prioritization, it doesn’t have the same advanced ranking systems baked in, which might explain why it doesn’t correlate as closely with the “classic” factors we’ve studied.
For a brand with modest search volume, backlinks, and web mentions, ChatGPT may be the best entry point into AI visibility, since it appears to be less heavily gated by traditional SEO authority metrics.
Aside from “YouTube mentions”, “domain rating” is one of the only factors where AI Overviews show stronger correlations.
That said, the difference is modest, and DR is a mid-tier correlating factor—much weaker than branded signals like “branded web mentions” and “branded anchors”.
AI Overviews deliver factual, one-shot answers to informational queries—unlike AI Mode and ChatGPT, which handle conversational back-and-forth.
Having just one chance to answer correctly with limited context may explain why they favor high-DR sources slightly more.
Of all three AI systems studied, ChatGPT brand mentions correlate closest with ad metrics.
At first glance, this is fairly surprising—you’d think Google-owned properties would show closer correlations to their own ad data.
This doesn’t mean ChatGPT directly rewards ad spend, but that brands that advertise heavily tend to dominate the kind of content that ChatGPT draws on.
Despite their different selection philosophies, the same brands generally appear across all AI assistants.
| AI assistant pair | Correlation between brand mentions in AI responses |
|---|---|
| AI Overviews & AI Mode | 0.821 |
| AI Overviews & ChatGPT | 0.749 |
| AI Mode & ChatGPT | 0.769 |
AI Mode might weigh branded anchors heavily and AI Overviews might care more about DR. But at the end of the day, they’re still mostly mentioning Nike, Apple, and Amazon.
The same big players tend to dominate, just through different paths.
What this means for smaller brands
There’s a clear hierarchy: YouTube presence and brand mentions matter most, followed by branded anchors, and search volume. Traditional SEO metrics like backlinks and domain authority seem to matter less.
If you can’t compete on brand recognition yet, focus on:
- Building YouTube presence (the strongest signal across all platforms)
- Earning genuine mentions in articles and guides
- Targeting ChatGPT, which shows the weakest correlation with established brand authority metrics
The platforms have different thresholds—ChatGPT seems to be the most accessible entry point, while AI Mode looks like the hardest to crack without established brand recognition.
Wrapping up
Across all three AI platforms, “YouTube mentions” correlate more strongly with AI visibility than any other factor we tested. If people are producing and watching videos about your brand, AI platforms likely take that as a strong signal you’re worth talking about.
And beyond YouTube, brand recognition still matters. Getting discussed across the web, in articles, guides, forums, and publications, is a strong predictor of AI visibility—especially in AI Mode. If you don’t yet have that kind of footprint, ChatGPT may be a route in, since it seems to rely less on traditional authority signals.
But there are some things that categorically won’t help, like chasing low quality links and churning out content for content’s sake.
The data shows a few unequivocal patterns: brands with strong YouTube presence, widespread mentions, and branded anchors are the ones appearing in AI responses.
Whether these factors directly influence which brands AI systems mention, or whether they’re simply markers of existing brand strength, they still give us something useful and concrete to work toward.
