Semrush: ChatGPT Shows Clear Brand Leaders in Only 15.2% of Categories
Semrush analysis of 1,094 U.S. categories finds ChatGPT has no consistent brand leader in 53.7% of topics and only 15.2% have a dominant brand.
A Semrush study of 1,094 U.S. categories found that only 15.2% had a clear brand leader in ChatGPT responses across five buyer prompts. The analysis defined a clear leader as a brand appearing in at least four of the five responses and leading the next competitor by at least five percentage points. This threshold was met in 166 categories.
Prompt-Level Variation in Visibility
Another 31.2% of categories showed an emerging leader that appeared in at least three prompts without a decisive margin. The remaining 53.7% had no consistent leader. Among the half of categories with the highest AI search activity, only 11.3% had a clear owner. Less competitive categories reached 19%. The top half of categories by activity accounted for 98% of total AI search volume in the study.
Limited Link to Traditional SEO Metrics
Branded search volume was the only conventional SEO metric that aligned with category ownership. Organic traffic and Authority Score showed little relationship to consistent brand mentions in ChatGPT. Only 21% of the most-cited domains in a category matched the brand mentioned most frequently by the model.
Month-to-Month Stability of Leaders
Established category leaders held first place in more than 90% of month-over-month comparisons. In emerging and unsettled categories, the leading brand changed nearly 2,000 times during the study period. Narrow leads were more likely to flip than larger gaps.
according to MarTech. The full study is available on the MarTech site.
