ChatGPT is leaning on editorial reviews, not brand homepages

01What I am seeing in daily tests

For commercial prompts ("best", "top", "vs", "alternatives"), the sources ChatGPT links to are overwhelmingly third-party: industry publications, review sites and comparison posts. Brand homepages show up for brand-name questions, but rarely when the buyer has not named a brand yet.

This matches published research. In Ahrefs' analysis for its AEO course, ChatGPT's most-cited domains were publishers and communities such as Reddit, Wikipedia, Forbes, Business Insider and Wired, with a median Domain Rating of about 90. Only 8–10% of ChatGPT's citations overlapped with Google's top 10 results for the same query. The same study found just 14% overlap in the top 50 cited domains across AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, with only seven domains common to all three.

02Why this matters for your brand

If you are not in the articles ChatGPT reads, you are unlikely to be in its answer, even if your own site ranks well on Google. Ranking and being recommended are now two different jobs.

The audience is not small. OpenAI reported 900 million weekly active users in February 2026, more than double the 400 million it reported a year earlier. Ahrefs' own analytics found AI visitors converted at about 23 times the rate of organic search visitors. Few people arrive this way, but the ones who do have usually already been told you are a good option.

03The three tiers of mentions

Not all mentions are equal. Editorial mentions on well-linked pages carry the most weight, then community mentions, then your own channels.

Ahrefs measured a 0.7 correlation between mentions on heavily linked pages and appearing in AI Overviews. Reddit is one of ChatGPT's most cited sources and a core training source, so genuine, helpful answers in relevant threads count. Your own YouTube channel, podcast and LinkedIn are indexed and citable too, which is why I treat them as part of the same plan.

04What to do this week

A simple routine to find and win the sources that matter. It takes about two hours the first time and 30 minutes a week after that.

1. 1List the sources. Run your ten most important buyer questions in ChatGPT with web search on. Record every site it cites.
2. 2Find the gaps. Mark the articles that mention competitors but not you. Those are your targets.
3. 3Pitch with substance. Offer the author something useful: original data, a product trial, an expert quote or a case study. Not a link request.
4. 4Fix your own pages. Make sure the facts those articles would quote (pricing, features, locations) are clear and current on your site.
5. 5Re-check monthly. Ahrefs found roughly 45% of AI Overview citations change on refresh. Sources move; your list should too.

05What kind of article gets cited

Comparison and list formats dominate. In Ahrefs' analysis, 43.8% of pages cited by AI were listicles, and comparisons and pages with original data also performed well. The article does not need to be long: 53% of cited pages were under 1,000 words.

That tells you what to pitch for. A "best SEO experts in Melbourne" list on a local business publication, a "X vs Y" comparison on an industry blog, or a review on a site buyers already trust will do more for your AI visibility than another page on your own domain. Where you can, bring the author something that makes their article better: a data point they cannot get elsewhere, a clear explanation of a tricky topic, or a customer story with numbers.

Freshness matters here too. Ahrefs found cited content is about 25% fresher than typical search results, so an article updated this quarter is a better target than a definitive guide from 2022. When you pitch, offer to help the author update the piece, not just add you to it.

06A note on Reddit and communities

Reddit is one of ChatGPT's most cited sources and a core training source, so relevant threads count as mentions. The rule is simple: answer real questions properly, disclose who you are, and never post marketing copy.

Find threads that already rank in Google's top five for your topic, or that ChatGPT already cites, and add a genuinely useful answer. Communities police spam quickly and language models learn from the whole thread, including the replies calling out a sales pitch. Done well, a single thorough answer can be referenced for years.

07What this does not replace

Earned mentions sit on top of SEO, not instead of it. Your own pages still need to rank for the live searches AI runs, be crawlable by AI bots, and state the facts those articles will quote. If your pricing page is vague, a reviewer will guess, and the AI will repeat the guess.

08How to check what AI already cites for your topic

You do not need expensive tools to start. Open ChatGPT with web search on, ask your ten most important buyer questions, and write down every cited domain. Repeat in Perplexity and in Google with an AI Overview. The list you end up with is your target media list.

Group the sources into three buckets: pages where you already appear, pages that mention competitors but not you, and pages that are generic guides with no brands at all. The second bucket is where most of the value is. Rank them by how often they are cited across your questions, then by how recently they were updated. A source cited for five of your ten questions and updated last month is worth a careful, personal pitch. One cited once and last updated two years ago is not.

Repeat the exercise monthly, because the citation pool moves. Ahrefs measured roughly 45% of AI Overview citations changing on refresh, which means new sources keep appearing and some you worked hard to get into will drop out. A rolling list keeps the effort pointed at what AI is reading now.

09Example: a Melbourne services brand

A typical pattern from my work: a well-ranked local firm asked ChatGPT "best SEO expert in Melbourne" and was not mentioned at all. The sources cited were two local business publications, a review platform and a Reddit thread. Within a quarter the firm was in two of the four.

The steps were unglamorous. We confirmed the firm's own pages stated prices, suburbs served and named experts clearly. We offered one publication a short data piece about local demand and the other an expert comment for an article they were already updating. We claimed and completed the review profile. And a senior person answered the Reddit thread properly, with disclosure. No new website, no advertising. The following month, ChatGPT named the firm for three of the ten tracked prompts, up from zero. That is what "earned mentions" looks like in practice.

10How I report this to clients

Each month you see three numbers: how often you were mentioned across the fixed prompt list, how often you were cited with a link, and how many target articles now include you. Plain English, one page.