A large part of what is sold today as AEO or GEO has little to do with your own website. It has to do with what other people say about you. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode build answers from third-party pages and videos, so the brand mentions AI assistants find there decide whether you appear at all. A brand missing from those sources is usually missing from the answer too.
Ahrefs dedicates a full lesson of its AI visibility course to earning mentions and citations, sorted into three tiers of sources. Below is what holds up from that lesson, where the numbers need context, what newer data from December 2025 changed, and how to do it without an enterprise tool budget.
The short version
- In the latest Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, mentions on YouTube had the strongest correlation with visibility across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, at about 0.737.
- Branded web mentions came second, at 0.66 to 0.71 depending on the platform. Backlinks and Domain Rating correlated far more weakly.
- Where you are mentioned matters. A mention on a heavily linked page correlates strongly with AI Overviews, but only very weakly with ChatGPT.
- Mention sources fall into three tiers: editorial content, communities and your own channels.
- All of this is correlation, not causation, and paid mentions must be disclosed in both the EU and the US.
Why everyone is suddenly chasing mentions
The first data came in May 2025, when Ahrefs compared 75,000 brands against their visibility in Google AI Overviews. Branded web mentions came out on top with a Spearman correlation of 0.664, well ahead of Domain Rating at 0.326 and the raw number of backlinks at 0.218. About 26% of brands had no AI Overview mentions at all, and brands in the top quarter for web mentions averaged more than ten times as many AI Overview mentions as the next quarter down (Ahrefs, May 2025).
In December 2025 Ahrefs extended the analysis to ChatGPT and AI Mode and added YouTube. That changed the ranking. YouTube mentions showed the strongest correlation with AI visibility, at about 0.737, slightly ahead of YouTube mention impressions at about 0.717. Brands mentioned more on YouTube were more likely to show up on all three AI surfaces (Ahrefs, December 2025). Branded web mentions stayed a close second:
| Factor | ChatGPT | AI Mode | AI Overviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Branded web mentions | 0.664 | 0.709 | 0.656 |
| Branded anchors | 0.511 | 0.628 | 0.527 |
| Branded search volume | 0.352 | 0.466 | 0.392 |
| Domain Rating | 0.266 | 0.285 | 0.326 |
The authors found only very weak correlations between link metrics and AI mentions, and almost no relationship between the number of pages on a site and AI visibility. Publishing more or buying links for volume does not make a brand visible to AI. Being talked about in many places does.
Backlinks have not stopped mattering. They still carry classic SEO, and classic SEO decides which pages AI can find. Links without real conversation around your brand are simply not enough. How mentions fit into a broader plan is covered in my AEO strategy guide.
Not every mention carries the same weight
The lesson says mentions on heavily linked pages correlate with AI Overviews at 0.7. True, but only half the story. The original analysis broke it down by platform (Ahrefs, mentions on highly linked pages):
| AI platform | Correlation with mentions on highly linked pages |
|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | 0.70, strong |
| Perplexity | 0.40, moderate |
| ChatGPT | 0.12, very weak |
Google builds AI answers on its own index and decades of link analysis, so it clearly favors authoritative pages. ChatGPT selects sources differently and also relies on publisher partnerships. A mention on a strong page is a Google play first. For ChatGPT, breadth of mentions and presence on the sources it actually cites matter more.
Tier 1: third-party editorial content
The most valuable mentions and the hardest to earn: industry publications, review sites, comparison articles, best-of lists and creator reviews on YouTube.
This is exactly the content AI likes to cite. The lesson quotes that 43.8% of pages cited in ChatGPT answers are best X lists. Context matters. The figure comes from 750 top-of-funnel prompts in three commercial categories: software, products and agencies (Ahrefs, best lists research). It holds for which tool should I pick questions, much less for informational ones.
How to find the pages you want to be on
- Ask AI directly. Enter your customer questions into ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode and write down the cited sources. After twenty questions you will see which sites keep coming back.
- Find lists you are missing from. In Google, combine intitle:best or intitle:alternatives with your topic and a minus sign before your brand name. You get articles that cover your segment but not you.
- Prioritize pages that earn links. A strong, topically precise page AI does not cite today may cite tomorrow. Paid tools show referring domains, but plain Google rankings give a rough picture too.
How to get onto them
The author of a list has no reason to add you just because you asked. Give them one: product access for testing, real data, a comparison their article is missing or an expert comment. With media, a contributed piece that adds value works. A press release about how great you are does not.
Tier 2: communities and user-generated content
Reddit, Quora, niche forums, Stack Exchange, LinkedIn groups and review platforms carry more weight than you might expect. In 2024 Reddit signed data licensing deals with both Google and OpenAI (CNBC, 2024), and a Semrush analysis found Reddit and Wikipedia to be the two most cited domains in ChatGPT (Semrush, 2025).
The same analysis showed something that gets less attention. Between early August and mid-September 2025, the share of ChatGPT responses citing Reddit fell from close to 60% to around 10%. The sources AI draws from change quickly and without warning, so building a strategy on one platform is a gamble.
How to do it without spamming
- Answer where people genuinely ask. Write a useful answer and mention your brand only when it fits.
- Say who you are. An employee who introduces themselves is credible. Anonymous praise of your own product comes out sooner or later.
- Respect community rules. Every subreddit and forum has its own self-promotion rules, and moderators enforce them.
- Never buy comments or reviews. Fake reviews and undisclosed paid comments break consumer protection law in the EU and the US and get accounts banned.
Outside English-speaking markets Reddit is smaller, so check which local forums, review platforms and creators AI cites for questions in your language.
Tier 3: your own channels, with YouTube first
Your YouTube channel, podcast, LinkedIn profile and company blog are indexed, and AI can cite them. Given the December 2025 data, YouTube deserves special attention, as the strongest correlated factor across all three AI surfaces.
This is where I see the biggest missed opportunity in practice. Plenty of companies have excellent products and not a single video comparing them, explaining setup or showing real use. Two approaches work together: your own videos answering customer questions, and reviews by independent creators your audience already watches. Say the brand name clearly in the video and the title, not only in the thumbnail.
Connect your channels technically as well. Organization structured data with the sameAs property tells search engines that your site, YouTube channel and company profiles belong to one brand. Along with crawler access and rendering, that is part of technical SEO for AI search.
Brand mention audit, step by step
Lists get updated, articles get rewritten and your brand can vanish without notice. AI can also pick up wrong information about you from an outdated source.
1. Build a list of key questions
Write down 20 to 30 questions where you want AI to mention your brand. Mix product questions, comparisons and questions about the problems you solve.
2. Test them regularly
Once a month, run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Record whether you appear, in what context and which sources are cited. Paid tools automate this, but a spreadsheet is enough for a small business.
3. Track new mentions on the web
Free Google Alerts notify you when your brand name appears in new content. Add a saved YouTube search for your brand so you catch new videos too.
4. Check Search Console
As of August 31, 2026, Google has rolled out the generative AI performance report in Search Console to all websites worldwide. It shows impressions, not clicks, in AI Overviews and AI Mode, with Discover in a separate report. Sites with too few impressions in AI features may not see data yet (Search Console Help).
5. Fix inaccuracies
When you find wrong information, first correct it and state it clearly on your own site, for example on the about page, pricing page or product specifications. Then politely ask the publisher for a correction. The sooner an error is fixed at the source, the sooner AI stops repeating it.
6. Watch where you disappeared
If an article used to mention you and no longer does, find out why. Sometimes sending the author current information is enough. Other times a competitor with a better offer replaced you, and that is valuable feedback.
What the lesson did not say
The three-tier framework is solid. From my own practice I would add a few points a course from a tool vendor naturally leaves out.
It is a course from a company that sells a mention tracking tool. That does not make it wrong, but its recommendations lead toward its product. You can do most steps by hand, only more slowly.
Correlation is not causation. Big brands have many mentions, links, videos, searches and AI citations all at once. It does not follow that inflating mentions artificially will make AI recommend you (correlation does not imply causation). The Ahrefs authors stress this themselves.
Google says something different. According to the official documentation, no additional requirements or special optimizations are needed to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. A page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet in regular Search (Google Search Central). Mentions are not an official signal, more a symptom of a brand people know. If your key pages are not even indexed, fix that first and be wary of shortcuts, as explained in how guaranteed indexing tools really work.
Lists can be gamed, and AI does not catch it yet. The same best lists research found that companies ranking themselves first on their own lists saw no downside in ChatGPT or in search. That is an opportunity today and a risk tomorrow, and readers see through it instantly. If you publish your own list, compare competitors fairly, following the principles in how to write content AI cites.
Paid mentions must be disclosed in the EU and in the US. The EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive lists in Annex I, point 11, as always unfair the use of editorial content to promote a product the trader paid for without making that clear to the consumer, the classic advertorial. Point 22 bans falsely representing oneself as a consumer, such as staff posing as happy customers on forums (Directive 2005/29/EC). Amendments adopted in 2019 added explicit bans on submitting or commissioning fake consumer reviews (Directive (EU) 2019/2161). In the US, the FTC Endorsement Guides require any material connection between an endorser and a brand, including payment, free products or a business or family relationship, to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, and PR firms or review brokers can be liable too (16 CFR Part 255). A separate FTC rule from 2024 prohibits fake consumer reviews and buying them (16 CFR Part 465). Google also requires paid links to carry the sponsored or nofollow attribute under its spam policies.
Beware of sellers of miracle AI visibility. Nobody can guarantee you a spot in ChatGPT, because source selection changes from week to week, as the Reddit case showed.
My recommendation: where to start
If you are starting from zero, do not jump straight to Reddit or expensive tools. This order works best:
- Put your own house in order. Clear information about the company, products and pricing, consistent naming and linked profiles. AI and journalists take facts from you first.
- Map who AI cites. Twenty questions, three AI tools, one spreadsheet. In an afternoon you know which sites matter in your field.
- Start a YouTube habit. Short, practical videos answering real customer questions, with your brand named clearly.
- Focus on five to ten editorial sources. The ones that repeat in citations and that your customers actually read.
- Be useful in communities. Regularly, under your own name and without sales talk.
- Create something worth mentioning. Original data, an honest comparison, a genuinely good guide.
- Measure leads and orders, not just mentions. AI visibility only matters when it brings demand.
Earning mentions is slow, steady work that pays off most when it starts from data rather than guesses. WooAcademy, run by Milan Fraňo, helps companies in the EU and the US with this remotely, from an AI search visibility audit that maps where AI cites you and your competitors to a practical plan for mentions, YouTube and the technical SEO behind them.
FAQ
What are brand mentions and why do they matter for AI?
A brand mention is any reference to your company or product name on a third-party website or in a video, with or without a link. In the December 2025 Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, YouTube mentions correlated most strongly with visibility in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, at about 0.737, and branded web mentions came second at 0.66 to 0.71, well ahead of backlinks.
Are brand mentions more important than backlinks for AI search?
According to the available data, brand mentions correlate with AI visibility much more strongly than link metrics. Backlinks still support classic SEO, and mentions on heavily linked pages correlate strongly with Google AI Overviews, though only weakly with ChatGPT. The best approach combines broad mentions with a healthy link profile.
Why does YouTube matter so much for AI visibility?
In the December 2025 Ahrefs analysis, YouTube mentions were the strongest correlated factor across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, ahead of web mentions. It is a correlation, not proof, but it makes both your own channel and independent creator reviews worth investing in.
Does promoting my brand on Reddit work?
Only when it is honest and useful. Answer real questions, disclose who you are and follow the self-promotion rules of each community. Spam and fake reviews lead to bans, and undisclosed paid comments or employees posing as customers can break EU consumer law and FTC rules in the US.
Do I need a paid tool like Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Not necessarily. For a small business, monthly manual testing in AI tools, Google Alerts, a saved YouTube search and the Search Console generative AI report are enough. A paid tool saves time once you track many brands, markets or languages.
Can I pay for a brand mention?
Yes, but it must be clearly disclosed as advertising or sponsorship, and a paid link needs the sponsored or nofollow attribute. A hidden paid mention is an unfair commercial practice in the EU, and in the US the FTC Endorsement Guides require clear and conspicuous disclosure of any material connection.
