Recent research from Ahrefs, an AI marketing platform, confirms what Bospar has been seeing across our own AI visibility audits: brand awareness is now the new SEO , including in Google AI Overviews.
While marketers have optimized for algorithms, obsessing over keywords, backlinks and metadata, with the rise of Google AI Overviews, the rules of visibility are changing again.
The question for brands is not “How do I rank?” It’s “Will the AI even mention me?”
Mentions Matter More Than Links
In its analysis of 75,000 brands, Ahrefs found that off-site signals, i.e., how often a brand is mentioned across the web, are far stronger predictors of visibility in Google’s AI Overviews than traditional ranking factors like backlinks or domain authority.
The most powerful predictor of visibility was how often a brand was mentioned across the web (correlation = 0.664), showing a strong positive link between brand mentions and appearance in Google’s AI Overviews. In other words, the more your brand is talked about, whether those mentions are linked or not, the more likely it is to appear in Google’s AI-generated answers.
Following web mentions were branded anchor text (0.527) and branded search volume (0.392). Meanwhile, backlinks (0.218) and ad spend (0.215) barely registered.
Like its fellow AI engines, Google’s AI is rewarding conversation, not link-building or advertising.
The more you are talked about or referenced, the more visibility for your brand.
And if the internet isn’t talking about you?
You’re a ghost, invisible to the models generating AI answers.
Talking About My Reputation
This matches what our own data at Bospar’s Audit*E platform reveals. When we analyzed how companies show up across AI platforms, i.e., ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot, we found that visibility hinges less on your brand’s technical SEO and more on your narrative footprint: what’s being said about your brand, where it’s being said and in what context.
AI systems aren’t crawling your site and weighing H1 tags. They are scanning the linguistic landscape of the internet: the conversations, citations and context that define who you are.
These systems are learning about your reputation through repetition.
That’s why brands in the top quartile of web mentions earned 10 times more AI Overview mentions than the next tier down, according to Ahrefs. Visibility breeds visibility. And once you fall behind that curve, the algorithmic snowball effect works against you.
That’s Where Generative Engine Optimization Comes In
Just as SEO optimized for web crawlers, GEO optimizes for language models, the AI systems that now mediate how people discover brands and products.
Traditional SEO asks, “What keywords will help people find us?”
GEO asks, “What stories will help AIs understand us?”
The tactics are different. It’s no longer about keyword density or the number of links driving traffic to your website. What AI cares about is the language that others use when they describe you.
It’s also why public relations has never been more important to search. With every earned media hit, podcast mention or analyst quote, PR is creating a data point that large language models absorb. We can’t emphasize this enough: The more often your brand appears in credible, context-rich content, the more likely it is to surface in AI-generated summaries.
Audit*E: Measuring Your Reputation in the AI Era
We built Audit*E to help brands quantify this new reality. The platform scans generative AI systems to show how companies are portrayed, and, crucially, where they’re missing from the conversation.
In one case, we found that our client RealSense, a former Intel portfolio company launching on its own, was misrepresented by ChatGPT because the model had trained on outdated content. After a series of coordinated media placements and content refreshes, the brand’s AI visibility rebounded, and its reputation in generative search shifted from “defunct” to “innovator.”
This is why every brand needs proactive reputation management in the AI age.
What Marketers Should Do Now
Ahrefs’ study and our own work point to the same conclusion: your brand’s public narrative defines your AI search destiny.
Here’s where to focus:
- Amplify web mentions. Earned media, guest bylines and strategic partnerships aren’t just good PR, they’re your ticket to AI discoverability.
- Encourage branded anchors. When publications link to you, make sure they use your brand name in the anchor text.
- Grow branded search volume. Launch campaigns that make people curious enough to search your name. Every search is a signal to AI that you matter.
- Monitor your AI reputation. Tools like Audit*E can help you understand what generative systems “know” about your brand and where you need to correct the record.
The Future of Visibility Is Narrative
The Ahrefs study confirms what PR practitioners have long intuited: optimization only takes you so far. You have to “earn” your relevance.
AI search is turning the internet’s collective narrative into the new ranking system. Want to win in this era of digital discovery? Make sure AI isn’t ghosting you. That requires meaningful mentions, so your brand is talked about, trusted and remembered.
This is exactly where Bospar excels.
Reach out to learn more.
