Research 50,000 products on ChatGPT [Study]

Product visibility on ChatGPT is changing rapidly. Two related questions in the same consumer survey can yield completely different results. Track just one, and you can think you’re winning. Look at the subject, and the picture changes.

The question in AI search is no longer “am I ranking for this keyword or content?” It says “when AI answers questions on the main topics of my business, does my brand keep coming up?”

To find out how brands are winning and losing visibility across topics, we partnered with Kevin Indig to read 1,094 lessons from ChatGPT.

Here’s what we found.

Important takeaways

• Winning a single entry on ChatGPT is not the same as owning a title. Original title ownership requires that the product appear in at least four out of five related announcements, with a 5 percent lead over the runner-up.
• Many topics on ChatGPT are still contested. Only 15.2% of the 1,094 categories we analyzed have a clear owner. 85% remain open to competitors who can create consistent visibility.
• Broad SEO signals do not consistently predict topic ownership. Domain-level metrics like Authority Score and organic traffic match ownership about half the time. The picture of competition becomes clear only at the level of the article.
• Once a brand owns a title on ChatGPT, it tends to stick with it. But only by a wide enough margin. Owners with a 5 percent lead point maintained first place in 90% of month-to-month comparisons. Small leads change hands frequently.

How to do it

We teamed up with Kevin Indig and Growth Memo to analyze data from the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.

The dataset includes 1,094 US sections, tracked monthly on ChatGPT from January to June 2026.

Each category is a collection of five representative instruction topics that include questions a buyer might ask in that topic area (description, comparison, alternatives, type of use, purchase question).

Think of the category as a topic like “billing software,” “small business banking,” or “best pillows for neck pain,” and the five commands as common questions someone might ask about each.

Data scope:

• Over 220,000 domains
• More than 50,000 products
• Over 600,000 quotes
• Over 220,000 URLs

For each command, we tracked which ChatGPT types were mentioned in the response and which sources mentioned them as links.

Definitions

• Category owner: the brand with the highest share of mentions, named in at least four out of five announcements, with at least a five-point lead over the runner-up.
• An emerging leader: the most specified type appears in at least three notifications but does not meet the owner limit.
• An unstable phase: no type appears in at least three notifications.

1. Many phases are still to be taken in ChatGPT”

Only 15% of the AI ​​search categories we analyzed had a clear winner. For the other 85%, no single product type appears consistently across all subject-related information. A brand may appear in one question and not in the next.

Here’s a full breakdown of the 1,094 categories we analyzed on ChatGPT:

• 15.2% have a clear owner (one symbol appears in at least 4 out of 5 notifications with 5 points)
• 31.2% have an emerging leader (one sign appears in at least 3 notifications, but without the required lead)
• 53.7% are unstable (no product from even 3 out of 5 prompts)

Here’s the flip side: You’d expect the biggest topics, the ones people ask ChatGPT about the most, to be dominated by well-known brands like Google.

Higher search volume usually means stronger competition. In ChatGPT, it’s the opposite

We divided the 1,094 categories into two groups by AI search demand: the top half (topics people ask about the most) and the bottom half (those who ask about less). Only 11ю3% of the top articles had a clear product owner. In the bottom half, 19% did.

And that top segment makes up 98% of AI search volume in our sample, so almost every query we tracked on ChatGPT remains on topic without a clear winner.

Takeaway: winning a single notification does not make the ChatGPT type associated with the topic. It shows consistently across all related queries. Of the many articles we reviewed, no brand was able to do that, which is an opportunity.

2. SEO metrics don’t always predict who wins the title in ChatGPT

If a brand has strong SEO fundamentals (high organic traffic, high keyword search volume, strong Authority Score), you can expect it to win in AI search as well.

We tested this by comparing the title holder against the runner-up on three domain metrics: branded search volume, organic traffic, and Authority Score.

Results are only consistent with ownership about half the time. Only branded search volume was a statistically significant difference, and even then, the margin was modest.

• Owners had the highest search volume for 55.7% of the pairs
• Owners had the highest organic traffic in 48.4% of pairs
• Owners had the highest amount of Authority in 52.5% of the pairs

In about half of the titles, the runner-up had at least one of these advantages and still lost. Whatever determines who owns a topic in AI search is not determined by the broad power of SEO alone.

“Treat that as an assumption, not a finding. What the data actually shows is: traditional SEO metrics aren’t enough to define who owns a title. While they play their role, there’s more to it.”
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Kevin Indig, Founder of Growth Memo

Strong SEO helps you get noticed, but once a few brands are up and running, in-depth coverage of a particular topic is what takes you from runner-up to owner. If you’re strong on Google but losing topic authority on ChatGPT, the fix isn’t backlinks to the homepage. Build a deep library and find mentions of that particular topic on the basis of SEO.

3. Once you own a topic in ChatGPT, you can usually hold it. But only if your lead is wide.

If a brand has a comfortable lead on a topic in ChatGPT, they almost always keep it. The smaller the lead, the more often you lose it.

Clear the category owners we analyzed remained at the top with 90.4% of month-to-month comparisons. Emerging leaders and unstable categories changed hands more often, with the highest product turnover at 1,950 out of 5,470 comparisons.

• Titles where the leader turned: average lead of 1.3 percent
• Titles where the leader holds: an average lead of 2.9 percent

Leadership changes hands frequently. However, those shifts were concentrated in sections where the initial lead was small.

Here’s an example where the clear leader was replaced by last month’s runner-up:

Why the change happened is not something this data can answer. They may reflect shifts in ChatGPT’s resources, changes in the way it generates responses, or actual shifts in the underlying relevance of the product. What the data shows is a simple pattern – margin is more important than direction.

The takeaway: growth is not the same as safety. If you lead the article with only a thin line, continue to press the content and cover. A competitor who is growing fast can still overtake you. If you are competing in a title where the current leader has a small lead, this is the time to act. Once they have accumulated a large margin, the subject becomes more difficult to move.

How to start winning at the title level

The brands that win in AI search work at the category level. They select a fixed set of topics and create coverage, mentions, and signals from third-party authorities that ChatGPT relies on within each one.

This takes time to build, but it adds up. Once you associate ChatGPT with a product and category, there’s a good chance you can grab it.

Each piece of information should still be viewed as a signal. But your topic authority determines what ChatGPT will display if a customer asks something new in that category.

Here’s how to get started:

• Identify subject areas that are important to your business. Start with what your customers care about and where you compete. The categories of questions that buyers ask when evaluating something like what you are selling are topics that should be built around.

• Analyze your current topic authority. Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit already allows you to see which topics you influence in AI search and where you sit within each. Start there to get a reliable baseline of where your authority is true, where it is weak, and where the competition is ahead.

• Focus on your efforts. Trying to build authority on every topic at once slows everything down. Choose two or three categories that are relevant when you already have a specific signal, existing content, and a real product angle. That’s your first bet.

• Increase your topic authority. The presence of topics comes from three factors working together: broad content coverage of all questions within the category, related mentions in the sources ChatGPT is available (Reddit, review sites, industry publications, expert comments), and strong business signals (structured data, consistent branding, citations from third parties that link your product to the topic).