Semrush: ChatGPT Topic Ownership Rare, SEO Insufficient

A Semrush analysis revealed that clear brand ownership is rare across ChatGPT topic categories, with only 15.2% of the 1,094 categories studied meeting the criteria for a dominant brand. This indicates that approximately 85% of categories lack a leading brand, and a brand appearing in one prompt did not guarantee consistent presence across related queries within the same topic. Semrush defined a category owner as a brand with the highest share of mentions, appearing in at least four out of five related prompts and leading the next closest competitor by a minimum of 5 percentage points.

Further breakdown showed that an additional 31.2% of categories had an emerging leader, where one brand appeared in at least three prompts but did not achieve the required lead over competitors. The remaining 53.7% of categories were classified as unsettled, with no single brand appearing in at least three out of five prompts. The study also noted a correlation between AI search demand and ownership, with only 11.3% of topics in the top half of AI search volume having a clear owner, compared to 19% in the bottom half. The top half of topics accounted for 98% of the tracked AI search volume.

Traditional SEO metrics proved to be insufficient in predicting which brands owned ChatGPT topics. While these metrics play a role, they do not fully explain topic ownership. Kevin Indig, founder of Growth Memo, stated that traditional SEO metrics are not enough to explain who owns a topic, suggesting other factors are at play. Semrush compared category owners with their runners-up across several metrics, including branded search volume, organic traffic, and Authority Score. Owners exhibited higher branded search volume in 55.7% of comparisons, higher organic traffic in 48.4%, and a higher Authority Score in 52.5%. Branded search volume was identified as the only metric that reached statistical significance in predicting ownership.

The analysis measured ownership by the frequency of brand mentions within ChatGPT's answer text, rather than by the links cited in the responses. This distinction is significant because mentions and citations did not consistently align. Only 21% of the most-cited domains within a category were also identified as the most-mentioned brands, highlighting a divergence between what ChatGPT references and what it explicitly discusses.