Brands Struggle for Dominance in ChatGPT as Study Reveals Only 15 Percent of Topic Categories Have Clear Owners

The landscape of digital discovery is undergoing a seismic shift as artificial intelligence begins to supplement, and in some cases replace, traditional search engine queries. However, a comprehensive new study from Semrush suggests that the transition from traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is currently characterized by a significant power vacuum. According to the analysis, which examined over 1,000 distinct topic categories within ChatGPT, a staggering 84.8% of categories lack a dominant brand owner. Only 15.2% of topic categories demonstrated a clear brand leader across related buyer questions, signaling a massive opportunity for companies to establish early authority in the burgeoning AI search ecosystem.

The findings highlight a critical disconnect between a brand’s presence in a single AI-generated response and its overall "topic authority." Appearing in a single prompt does not guarantee consistency; the data indicates that a brand may be cited in response to one specific question but remain entirely absent when a user asks a closely related follow-up within the same category. This lack of "topic-level visibility" suggests that ChatGPT’s internal synthesis of brand information is still highly fragmented, leaving the majority of commercial sectors without a definitive "top-of-mind" brand in the eyes of the AI.

Defining Brand Ownership in the Age of Generative AI

To understand the current state of brand visibility within Large Language Models (LLMs), Semrush established a rigorous set of criteria to define what constitutes a "category owner." For a brand to be classified as a leader in a specific topic, it had to meet three primary benchmarks: it must hold the highest share of mentions within that category, it must appear in at least four out of five related prompts, and it must lead the nearest competitor by at least five percentage points.

This methodology was designed to move beyond "vanity metrics" or one-off appearances. By requiring consistency across five distinct types of buyer questions—including definitions, comparisons, alternatives, use cases, and buying decisions—the study aimed to identify which brands have successfully permeated the AI’s training data or retrieval mechanisms to the point of becoming synonymous with a specific industry or product type. The fact that fewer than one in six brands met this threshold underscores the nascent and unsettled nature of AI search.

The Paradox of Popularity: High-Demand Topics See Less Brand Control

One of the more surprising revelations of the study is the inverse relationship between search demand and brand dominance. Semrush split the analyzed categories into two groups based on AI search volume. In high-demand categories—those where users are most active—only 11.3% of topics had a clear brand owner. Conversely, in the bottom half of categories by demand (niche or specialized topics), the ownership rate rose to 19%.

This disparity suggests that in highly competitive, high-traffic sectors, the AI is drawing from a much wider and more diverse pool of information, leading to a "dilution" of brand mentions. In these crowded spaces, no single brand has yet managed to separate itself from the pack in a way that the AI perceives as authoritative across the board. In contrast, niche markets allow for more concentrated authority, likely because there are fewer high-quality sources for the AI to synthesize, allowing dominant players to stand out more easily.

The Decoupling of Traditional SEO and AI Visibility

For decades, digital marketing has been governed by traditional SEO metrics: domain authority, backlink profiles, and keyword density. However, the Semrush study indicates that these metrics are no longer reliable predictors of success in an AI-driven environment. Traditional SEO strength did not consistently correlate with which brands "owned" topics within ChatGPT.

Kevin Indig, founder of Growth Memo and a key collaborator on the study, noted that while traditional SEO metrics still play a role, they are insufficient for explaining the mechanics of AI brand authority. "Traditional SEO metrics aren’t enough to explain who owns a topic," Indig stated. "While they play their role, there’s more to it."

This suggests that the algorithms governing LLM responses prioritize different signals than Google’s traditional ranking algorithm. While a high-authority domain might rank first on a Google Search Results Page (SERP), ChatGPT may prioritize brands that are mentioned more frequently in conversational contexts, product reviews, or synthesized summaries across the web. The study suggests that "mentions" within the actual text of the AI’s response are a far more critical metric for brand health than the presence of a link in the citation block below the answer.

Methodology and the Scope of the Research

The data for this study was compiled through an exhaustive analysis of 1,094 U.S.-based categories within ChatGPT. Conducted between January and June, the study utilized the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit to track the performance of more than 50,000 brands. The scale of the research was immense, encompassing:

• 220,000 unique domains
• 600,000 individual citations
• 220,000 specific URLs
• Over 5,000 monthly comparisons

By tracking these categories over a six-month period, the researchers were able to observe not just who was winning at a single point in time, but how stable those leads were. Each category was tested with a cluster of five prompts designed to mimic the typical "buyer’s journey." For example, if the category was "CRM Software," the prompts might include: "What is a CRM?" (definition), "Salesforce vs. HubSpot" (comparison), "Best alternatives to Pipedrive" (alternatives), "How to use a CRM for small business" (use case), and "Which CRM should I buy for a real estate firm?" (buying decision).

Stability vs. Volatility: The Winner’s Edge

The study found that while it is difficult to achieve the status of a "category owner," those who do reach that summit tend to stay there. Clear category owners—those who met the strict definition of ownership—maintained their first-place position in 90.4% of month-over-month comparisons. This suggests a "moat" effect: once an AI consistently associates a brand with a category across multiple types of queries, that association becomes deeply ingrained and difficult for competitors to dislodge.

In contrast, categories characterized by "weaker" leaders or unsettled competition saw frequent turnover. In 5,470 comparisons across these emerging categories, the top-mentioned brand switched nearly 2,000 times. The stability of a brand’s lead was directly tied to the margin of its dominance. When a leading brand eventually lost its top spot, its average lead had been a mere 1.3 percentage points. However, when a brand successfully defended its title, it typically held a lead of at least 2.9 percentage points—more than double the margin of the more volatile leaders.

Strategic Implications: Why Topic-Level Visibility Matters

The core takeaway for marketers and C-suite executives is that prompt-level visibility is a "noisy" and potentially misleading metric. A brand might celebrate being mentioned in a single ChatGPT response, but if that visibility does not carry over to related questions, the brand has not truly captured the "mindshare" of the AI.

The study argues that topic-level visibility is a much more robust indicator of whether ChatGPT consistently associates a brand with a specific industry. For businesses, this means that the goal of GEO should not be to rank for a single "keyword," but to become a recurring character in the AI’s narrative about a specific category.

This shift requires a new approach to content creation. To own a topic, brands must ensure they are being mentioned across a variety of source types—from technical documentation and white papers to consumer reviews and forum discussions—since LLMs aggregate information from a vast array of disparate sources.

The Future of Brand Discovery in a Generative World

As OpenAI continues to refine ChatGPT and move toward more integrated search features (such as the recently announced SearchGPT), the stakes for brand ownership will only increase. If AI becomes the primary interface through which consumers discover products and services, being left out of the 15% of "owned" topics could mean total invisibility for many brands.

The Semrush study serves as a wake-up call for the marketing industry. The fact that 85% of categories are currently "unowned" represents a frontier era in digital marketing. There is a limited window for brands to establish the kind of deep-rooted authority that leads to the 90.4% stability rate seen among current leaders.

As AI search matures, the winners will likely be those who move beyond traditional SEO tactics and focus on broad-based topic authority. This involves not just technical optimization, but a holistic strategy that ensures a brand is the most cited, most compared, and most recommended entity across the entire spectrum of user intent. For now, the field is wide open, but the data suggests that once the AI makes up its mind about who "owns" a category, it is very difficult to change it.