"AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity-powered by large language models (LLMs)-are emerging as parallel gatekeepers. They're quietly reshaping which brands get recommended long before a buyer ever reaches a search results page. In my previous article, I discussed how Google's AI Overviews are intercepting traffic (even for top-ranking sites). But there's another shift that many businesses haven't recognized: Search engines are no longer the only place where your customers' questions get answered."
"Prospects are increasingly turning to AI assistants to compare vendors, recommend solutions and explain complex products. Yet the brands these tools favor rarely match those dominating traditional search. In 2025, Ahrefs analyzed 15,000 AI prompts and found that only about 12% of links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot also appeared in Google's top 10 results for the same query. Put simply: Ranking on search engines doesn't mean AI will cite you."
AI assistants powered by large language models are emerging as parallel gatekeepers that recommend brands before users reach search results pages. These assistants intercept traffic through features like AI Overviews and answer engines, and prospects increasingly use them to compare vendors, recommend solutions, and explain products. Analysis of 15,000 AI prompts showed only about 12% overlap between links cited by AI assistants and Google's top-10 results, indicating search rank alone no longer guarantees AI citation. Search engines and AI systems share foundations such as entities, semantic relationships, and structured information, but AI requires clearer signals because answer engines compress options into single answers.
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