ChatGPT has no clear brand leader in most categories

ChatGPT is far from settled on which brands define most buying categories. A Semrush analysis found that only 15.2% of topic categories had a clear brand leader across a series of related buyer questions, suggesting AI visibility remains highly competitive even for established companies.

The study examined 1,094 U.S. categories using five common buyer prompts for each topic, including definitions, comparisons, alternatives, use cases, and purchase decisions. To qualify as a category owner, a brand had to appear in at least four of the five responses and lead the next closest competitor by at least five percentage points.

Only 166 categories met that standard.

Another 31.2% had an emerging leader, where one brand appeared in at least three prompts but lacked a decisive lead. The remaining 53.7% had no consistent leader at all.

Visibility varies across buyer questions

The findings suggest that appearing in one AI-generated answer does not necessarily translate into broader category ownership.

Instead, visibility shifts as buyers ask different questions within the same topic. That makes measuring performance across an entire buying journey more useful than tracking rankings for individual prompts.

The pattern was even more pronounced in high-demand topics. Among the half of categories generating the most AI search activity, only 11.3% had a clear owner. Less competitive categories were somewhat more stable, with 19% producing a dominant brand.

Because the most-searched topics accounted for 98% of AI search volume in the study, most buyer activity occurred in categories where no single brand consistently appeared.

Traditional SEO explains only part of AI visibility

Semrush also compared category ownership with conventional SEO metrics, including branded search volume, organic traffic, and Authority Score.

Branded search volume was the only metric that consistently aligned with category ownership. Organic traffic and authority scores showed little relationship to whether ChatGPT consistently associated a brand with a topic.

The analysis also found that citations and brand mentions often diverged. Only 21% of the most-cited domains within a category were also the brand mentioned most frequently in ChatGPT’s responses, suggesting that citation counts alone provide an incomplete picture of AI visibility.

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Small leads are easy to lose

When brands established clear category ownership, they generally held onto it. Category leaders remained in first place in more than 90% of month-over-month comparisons.

Less established leaders proved far more volatile. Across emerging and unsettled categories, the leading brand changed nearly 2,000 times during the study period. Categories with narrow leads were also more likely to see leadership change than those with larger gaps between competitors.

For marketers, the findings reinforce that AI search visibility extends beyond ranking for individual prompts. As buyers ask a range of related questions before making purchasing decisions, consistent association with an entire topic appears more valuable than appearing in a single AI response.

The full study is available here. (No registration required)