Does being talked about on extremely cited net pages result in extra mentions in AI assistants? I’m defining extremely cited net pages as these with extra Referring Domains (RD).
These are distinguished pages on the net and those who different web sites have deemed worthy of linking to. Having your model current on these pages means you doubtless have extra credibility, that you simply’re a recognized model.
I seemed on the prime 50 web sites talked about in Ahrefs Model Radar for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. That is throughout ~76.7M AI Overviews, 957k ChatGPT prompts, and 953.5k Perplexity prompts for the month of June 2025.
Let’s dig in.
I’ll give the same old correlation doesn’t equal causation disclaimer, particularly right here.
I didn’t suppose this might be any form of direct sign, however I used to be curious if there could be variations within the techniques. Google AI Overviews reveals a robust correlation, Perplexity a average correlation, and ChatGPT a really weak correlation.
It shouldn’t come as a shock that distinguished manufacturers are talked about on pages that web site house owners deemed worthy sufficient to hyperlink to. Google favors manufacturers and Perplexity appears to indicate some favoritism as effectively. What’s stunning is the weak spot of ChatGPT right here. I feel they simply lean closely on partnerships for prime quotation sources.
It is going to be fascinating to see how this adjustments after we run this for a bigger variety of web sites.
Listed here are the Spearman rank correlations for mentions on extremely cited net pages versus AI visibility throughout the highest 50 domains in every system:
| AI Assistant | Spearman ρ | Correlation |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | 0.70 | Robust |
| ChatGPT | 0.12 | Very weak |
| Perplexity | 0.40 | Average |
Remaining ideas
It is going to be fascinating to see how this adjustments after we run this for a bigger variety of web sites.
