AI search optimisation
Ahrefs analysed over 1 billion data points across 14 studies. Here’s what they found and what it means for a marketing strategy.
1) “Best X” blog listicles are the single most prominent content format cited by AI chatbots. They make up 43.8% of all page types cited by ChatGPT specifically.
2) 67% of ChatGPT’s top 1,000 citations come from sources marketers can’t influence: Wikipedia (29.7%), homepages (23.8%), app stores (6.6%). Only 32.3% are influenceable content like educational pages, reviews, news, and blog posts.
3) 28.3% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages have zero Google organic visibility. These pages get cited repeatedly by ChatGPT despite not ranking in Google at all. A completely separate discovery layer.
4) ChatGPT only cites about 50% of the URLs it retrieves. It fetches dozens of pages per query but uses half as background context without attribution. This means that being retrieved and being cited are very different things.
5) Adding schema markup had zero meaningful impact on AI citations. AI Overviews actually dipped −4.6%, while AI Mode (+2.4%) and ChatGPT (+2.2%) showed changes indistinguishable from zero.
6) YouTube mentions have the highest correlation (0.737) with AI brand visibility out of all the factors we studied (including all the conventional SEO metrics like backlinks, page count, DR, etc). This held true for both Google-owned and OpenAI products.
7) AI Overviews reduce clicks to the #1 result by 58%. That’s up from 34.5% just 10 months earlier. The trend is accelerating.
8) 99.9% of AI Overviews appear on informational intent queries. Transactional, navigational, and local searches are almost entirely AIO-free. Shopping triggers AIOs just 3.2% of the time.
9) For a given search query, Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews reach the same conclusions 86% of the time — but cite almost entirely different sources (only 13.7% citation overlap).
10) AI Overviews change every 2.15 days on average, with 70% of content differing between consecutive observations. But semantic similarity stays at 0.95. The words, sources, and entities constantly shuffle, but the actual meaning barely moves.
So what does all that mean?
- 43.8% of ChatGPT citations are listicles — your blog format still matters
- 28.3% of cited pages have zero Google ranking — AI is a separate discovery layer
- 58% clicks to #1 result when AI Overview appears — the funnel is changing fast
Priority 1
Defend & win on influenceable content. Double down on “Best X” listicles and comparison posts
Finding #1: Nearly half of all ChatGPT citations are listicle-format pages. This is the single most cited content type — and one you can produce.
- Audit your blog: identify your top 10 highest-traffic “best X” and “top X” posts and prioritize refreshing them first.
- For new content, lead with the list answer up top, then expand below — AI crawlers surface the structured answer, humans read the depth.
- Include your brand naturally in comparison articles (e.g., “Best [category] tools including [your product]”).
Invest heavily in third-party review and news coverage
Finding #2: Only 32% of ChatGPT citations are content marketers can influence — reviews, educational articles, and blog posts. That 32% is your entire playing field.
- Prioritise getting reviewed on G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, and niche industry review sites.
- Actively pitch journalists and industry newsletters for mentions — news pages are in ChatGPT’s citation set.
- Create genuinely educational content (how-to guides, explainers, free tools) that earns external links and citations independently of your brand name.
Priority 2
Build the YouTube & brand presence signal. Treat YouTube as a core SEO/AIO channel, not optional
Finding #6: YouTube mentions have the highest correlation with AI brand visibility (0.737) — above backlinks, domain rating, and every other conventional SEO metric. This held across both Google and OpenAI products.
- Publish consistently to YouTube: product demos, tutorials, founder explanations, and how-to content.
- Optimise titles and descriptions with exact keywords your buyers search — YouTube acts as a separate citation and discovery layer for AI.
- Encourage customers and creators to make review/comparison videos mentioning your brand name.
- Repurpose every video as a blog post with full transcripts — this compounds the signal across formats.
Priority 3
Stop treating Google rank as a proxy for AI visibility. Audit your AI citation footprint separately
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Finding #3: More than a quarter of ChatGPT’s cited pages rank nowhere on Google. Your Google rankings don’t predict your AI visibility.
- Run brand queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews and document what gets cited.
- Identify which pages AI cites that you don’t rank for — and reverse-engineer what makes them work.
- Track AI citation share as a standalone metric alongside organic traffic.
Focus on being retrieved, not just cited
Finding #4 : ChatGPT cites ~50% of pages it fetches. The other half still influence the response as background context — shaping answers without credit.
- Write pages that are clear, factual, and authoritative even if you never receive attribution — the substance still shapes AI outputs.
- Structured, scannable content (headers, clear definitions, concise answers) improves retrievability regardless of citation.
- Think of every page as a fact-source for AI, not just a conversion asset.
Don’t waste budget on schema markup for AI citation gains
Finding #5: Adding schema markup had no meaningful impact on AI citations. AI Overviews actually dipped slightly (−4.6%), while ChatGPT changes were statistically zero.
- Keep schema markup for traditional SEO benefits (rich snippets, knowledge panels) — but don’t add it specifically to chase AI citations.
- Redirect that effort toward content quality, YouTube presence, and third-party mentions instead.
Priority 4
Restructure your SEO strategy for the click-loss reality. Accept that ranking #1 no longer means what it used to
Finding #7: AI Overviews reduce clicks to the #1 result by 58%, up from 34.5% just 10 months earlier. The trend is accelerating with no signs of reversal.
- Shift KPIs: track brand mention share, direct traffic, and AI citation frequency alongside organic click volume.
- For informational queries (FAQ, how-to, definitions), accept that you’re contributing to AI answers — measure brand awareness downstream rather than clicks directly.
- For transactional and navigational queries, invest more — these are almost entirely AIO-free (only 3.2% of shopping queries trigger AIOs), so traditional SEO still works here.
Concentrate transactional SEO on commercial and local intent
Finding #8: AI Overviews appear on informational queries 99.9% of the time. Shopping, navigational, and transactional searches are nearly AIO-free.
- Protect and grow your transactional page rankings — product pages, pricing pages, “buy X”, “X near me” — this is where clicks still convert.
- For informational content, optimize for AI inclusion (clear answers, cited sources) rather than pure click-through.
- Map your content inventory to intent type and set different success metrics for each.
Priority 5
Adapt to AI’s fluid, multi-source citation behavior. Create content optimised for both AI Mode and AI Overviews
Finding #9: Google AI Mode and AI Overviews reach the same conclusions 86% of the time, but cite almost entirely different sources — only 13.7% overlap.
- You can’t optimise for one and assume it covers the other — check citation behavior in both products separately.
- Diversify the content types you produce: AI Mode and AIOs pull from different page types, so breadth helps more than depth.
Publish for meaning, not for a specific AI answer snapshot
Finding #10: AI Overviews change every 2.15 days on average with 70% of content differing — but semantic similarity stays at 0.95. Meaning is stable, sources and wording constantly shuffle.
- Don’t optimize for a specific AI answer phrasing — the wording will change. Optimize for owning the underlying factual claim.
- Be the definitive, credible source for a concept in your niche. If the facts are yours, the AI will keep reaching for your signal even as it rewrites the surface.
- Maintain content freshness — dated pages get rotated out even when the topic meaning stays constant.
