A new Semrush analysis reveals that just 15.2% of ChatGPT topic categories have a dominant brand. Traditional SEO metrics fail to predict brand authority, and most high-demand AI search topics remain unsettled.
Brand dominance in ChatGPT’s AI search results is far less common than many marketers expect, according to new research from Semrush. The study found that only 15.2% of ChatGPT topic categories had a clear brand owner across related buyer questions, leaving the vast majority of categories without a consistent leader.
Semrush defined a category owner as the brand with the highest share of mentions, appearing in at least four out of five related prompts and leading the next closest brand by at least five percentage points. Out of 1,094 categories analyzed, just 15.2% met this threshold. Another 31.2% showed an emerging leader-one brand appeared in at least three prompts but lacked a sufficient lead-while 53.7% of categories had no brand appearing in at least three prompts.
Even in the most popular AI search topics, clear ownership was rare. Only 11.3% of high-demand categories had a dominant brand, compared to 19% in lower-demand segments. Notably, the top half of categories by search volume accounted for 98% of all tracked AI search demand, yet most lacked a clear brand association.
Traditional SEO metrics such as branded search volume, organic traffic, and Authority Score did not reliably predict which brands would own a ChatGPT topic. In head-to-head comparisons, category owners had higher branded search volume in 55.7% of cases, higher organic traffic in 48.4%, and a higher Authority Score in 52.5%. Only branded search volume reached statistical significance, suggesting that other factors play a major role in AI search visibility.
Semrush’s analysis also revealed a disconnect between brand mentions in ChatGPT’s answer text and the domains cited as sources. Only 21% of the most-cited domains in a category were also the most-mentioned brand, highlighting that mentions matter more than citations for establishing authority in AI-generated answers.
Prompt-level visibility did not guarantee consistent brand presence across related buyer questions. Semrush found that topic-level visibility is a more reliable indicator of whether ChatGPT consistently associates a brand with a category. Brands that achieved clear ownership typically maintained their lead, staying in first place in 90.4% of month-over-month comparisons. However, in categories with weaker or emerging leaders, the top brand changed frequently-1,950 times out of 5,470 comparisons-often when the lead was narrow. When a brand lost its top spot, its average lead had been just 1.3 percentage points, compared to 2.9 points for brands that held on to first place.
The study, conducted by Semrush and Kevin Indig, analyzed 1,094 U.S. ChatGPT categories from January to June 2026 using the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. The dataset included over 50,000 brands, 220,000 domains, 600,000 citations, and 220,000 URLs, with each category tested across five prompts reflecting common buyer questions such as definitions, comparisons, alternatives, use cases, and purchase decisions.
These findings echo broader concerns about the stability of AI-driven search authority. As seen in recent regulatory scrutiny of search platforms, such as the European Union’s actions against Google for favoring its own services, the landscape for brand visibility in AI search remains highly dynamic. For more on how competition rules are shaping search results, see this analysis of Europe’s ruling on Google’s search practices.
Semrush, founded in 2008, is a leading provider of online visibility and marketing analytics tools. As of 2026, the company serves over 95,000 paying customers worldwide and tracks billions of keywords and domains, making it a major data source for digital marketing and SEO professionals.
