Marketing software company Semrush just conducted a great study on LLMs and Google’s AI Mode, and the results are very interesting.
For this blog post, I wanted to talk about a specific section of the study that’s highly relevant to small and midsized businesses looking to maximize their SEO and GEO.
And that section is this: how strong of a correlation exists between Google’s top 10 search rankings and source citations in LLMs (like ChatGPT and Perplexity) and Google’s AI Mode?
That is, when AI platforms provide sources to information in their answer, do they often pull those sources from the top 10 Google Search results for a query?
In our recent experience, the better your SEO, the better your AI visibility is going to be.
Like I’ve written about previously, we helped a client acquire a new customer because their customer used Microsoft Copilot (an LLM) to search for a particular tech consulting service, and Copilot recommended our client in its answer.
Why did Copilot do this?
Because we helped our client achieve the #1 Google ranking for a primary keyword around that particular technology.
So…did Semrush’s study also find that strong SEO results correlate with increased visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode?
Study Key Findings
Semrush conducted the study by counting “overlapping domains and URLs between each platform and Google’s top 10 organic rankings” for a bunch of queries.
They found that Google’s top 10 rankings appeared often in LLMs and AI Mode, but that the overlap was “far from absolute” and wasn’t equal across different AI tools.
Fascinating. Here’s a chart of the study’s findings:
Important Stats
- Perplexity had the highest correlation of citing Google top 10 search rankings in its AI-generated answers (91%)
- Google AI Overviews cited top 10 Google Search sources much more often than Google AI Mode did (85% vs 53%)
- ChatGPT had the lowest correlation at 44%
Takeaways
It’s interesting to see that ChatGPT had a significantly lower correlation with citing top Google Search results than Perplexity did.
One possible explanation I have for that is that ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, has a close relationship with Microsoft and thus is more focused on citing sources in Microsoft Bing’s top 10 rankings, and not Google’s specifically.
Another takeaway from the study is that Google AI Overviews cite top 10 sources far more than Google AI Mode does.
This could indicate that Google AI Mode is trying to provide a completely different experience than traditional Google Search (which now includes AI Overviews).
Third, Perplexity, which is incredibly popular and according to some sources has over 15 million active users, cites Google top 10 search results close to every time in its answers (90%+).
That is a ton! And it really solidifies the notion that great SEO is still very important today.
In Closing
The evidence remains clear that strong SEO has a high correlation with strong GEO performance and AI visibility.
As people increasingly use AI tools like Grok, ChatGPT, and Perplexity to access and find information, the importance of your company’s content and brand getting cited and included in AI-generated answers rapidly rises.
For more information on GEO and why it matters, check out our recent blog post titled, What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?