Everyone wants to show up in AI answers, but most teams still don’t know which signals actually move the needle.
People talk about how important brand awareness is for LLM visibility. The brands that will actually see results? The ones that take the time to figure out what that really means for their brand and then take strategic action. Unless you’re a Fortune 100 company, brand building isn’t easy. PR outreach, trend reports, publisher partnerships, earned media — it’s all high-effort, and it takes real resources to do it right.
It’s also high-reward.
OpenAI hasn’t updated its training data since 2023, and it still leans on that data ~60% of the time. When it does, or when ChatGPT leans all in on its search capabilities, how your brand shows up (or doesn’t) will reflect the effort put in.
The lift is big, but so is the potential upside.
We’ve been testing different signals and their impact on visibility. After analyzing organic presence and publisher-site mention factors, we asked a new question:
Does simply being an established brand tip the scales in your favor?
Why would that matter?
AI models filter what content appears in their answers, when someone asks “what’s the best tool for X?” does brand search interest correlate with AI visibility? And if brand search interest is a visibility signal, then building brand awareness can be a high-impact piece of your AI strategy.
The Correlation Between Brand Awareness & AI Mentions
To test the connection, we used the same method from the AI Answers Study, focusing on:
- Brand MSV – monthly search volume for each brand’s name
- Count of AI Mentions – how often that brand name appeared in our 10,000 LLM question dataset
What We Found: Brand Awareness Can Move the Needle
Brand MSV had a correlation coefficient of 0.18. While that’s not overwhelming — but in a noisy digital ecosystem, it’s significant. It also supports our growing hypothesis: brand awareness doesn’t just matter to humans, it may matter to LLMs as well.
Of Note: Excluding organic ranking keywords, 0.18 is among the strongest correlations we’ve observed—second only to Domain Rank (0.25).
The connection starts to make sense when we consider how brand prominence can feed into other signals that influence AI-generated answers:
- Online Presence: The more a brand appears on trusted sites, LLMs are more likely to crawl and cite that brand in answers
- Domain Rank & Backlinks: High-visibility brands earn more authority signals, which is carrying its weight
- Publisher Mentions: Known brands are more likely to be picked up in credible news or industry coverage
Tip: Correlation ≠ Causation. A high MSV alone won’t guarantee your brand a place in AI-generated content. Instead, it works in tandem with these other signals, like backlinks, domain rank, and valuable content.
Brand awareness hits harder in some verticals more than others
Zooming in by industries, there was a clear trend: brand awareness aligns more strongly with AI mentions in certain verticals. Especially where trust is highly valued.
Take Banking & Finance. If you ask ChatGPT about opening a checking account (even as it’s refining its local capabilities) at this point it's still more likely to suggest a national bank, like Bank of America, rather than the small community bank down the street.
On the flip side, in categories like Collaboration & Communication tools, ChatGPT might highlight the product features that best match my needs rather than focusing solely on the awareness of the brand.
So what? If you’re in an industry that relies heavily on trust and credibility may see bigger payoffs from awareness-building campaigns. In other verticals, you still need awareness, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. Your unique value props (UVPs), user experience, and content quality might matter more than your name recognition.
What This Means for Marketers
In an AI-first search world, brand-building is a critical visibility strategy.
If LLMs are pulling from trusted, recognizable sources, here’s how to make sure your brand’s in the conversation:
- Invest in Brand Campaigns — for Humans and Bots
- While brand MSV alone isn’t the sole driver of AI mentions, it remains a consistent signal
- Earned media coverage from reputable publishers, especially those partnered with AI chatbots
- Engaging with industry experts, journalist networks, and PR opportunities can elevate your visibility beyond standard SEO tactics
💡 AI doesn’t magically “discover” brands. It picks up what the web is already paying attention to
- Create Trend-Based Content
- In our research, AI chatbot referrals often involve informational or thought-leadership queries
- Share insights that push the conversation forward. Get known for helping people understand change, not just rank for it
- If your brand is known for fresh industry research, there’s a higher chance an LLM will reference you when it leverages its search capabilities
- Don’t Miss with Technical SEO
- You can have the strongest brand awareness but if you’re blocking AI bots or don’t have a sound site structure, LLMs will use third party information when referencing your brand
- A well-optimized site is still essential. If your content isn’t crawlable, LLMs can’t factor it into response
Final Thoughts: LLMs Reward Recognition — Not Just Relevance
Brand MSV and mention count don’t tell the entire story, but they’re important pieces to the puzzle.
As we continue exploring what drives visibility in AI-generated answers, one thing remains clear: building a recognizable, trusted brand still matters..
Key Moves:
- Build Brand Awareness → Gives LLMs a reason to find and feature you
- Earn Authority → Backlinks & Publisher Mentions reinforce your authority
- Nail the Technical Basics → If your site isn’t indexable, it’s not valuable to LLMs
Want to see how your brand stacks up in AI-generated results? Get your custom GenAI Answer Tracking Report and see your brand’s share of voice, who else is getting mentioned, and where you can win visibility across LLMs.
