Why Does It Feel Like AI Search Favors My Competitors?
It might feel like AI systems favor your competition, but that’s not because AI systems think your competitors are better than your brand, but rather, your competitors likely have stronger authority signals (like backlinks and branded mentions) and content that is easier for AI systems to read.
Authority signals help AI determine which sources to trust. When competitors have stronger signals—even with comparable content quality—AI systems will mention their content in citations more often.
And content that’s easier for AI to understand has a better chance of being cited within AI outputs. If competitors answer questions in their opening sentences with clear structure, AI can pull those segments cleanly. AI might skip content that buries answers or uses complex phrasing.
Are My Competitors Really Showing Up More Than Me?
Your competitors may genuinely appear more often in AI responses, but you can't know for sure without measuring it.
Manual spot-checks can mislead you. AI responses vary by query phrasing, user context, and when you search. So searching a few queries where competitors appear doesn't prove visibility gaps.
To verify a visibility gap, use Semrush's AI Competitor Research tool.
Enter your domain and up to four competitors. Click “Run competitor analysis.” Review your AI visibility score against your competitors to see if they’re really showing up more than you.
When People Ask AI About My Category, Which Brands Does It Name First?
AI platforms don't rank brands in a fixed order like traditional search results. They select based on authority and relevance for each specific query.
Share of voice (a metric that describes how often you appear and how prominently you're positioned) helps you determine your brand's visibility relative to competitors.
Use Semrush’s Brand Performance to find your brand’s share of voice compared to your rivals.
Could We Already Be Showing Up in AI Results That I’m Not Checking?
You likely appear in AI responses for queries you haven't checked, as manually checking results only covers a fraction of the questions people ask AI platforms.
Semrush’s Visibility Overview gives you a list of all the prompts that mention your brand.
This gives you a better sense of your brand’s visibility in AI search.
How Do AI Engines Decide Which Brands to Feature?
AI engines feature reputable brands with strong authority and trustworthy content.
Authority can come from quality backlinks, brand mentions, and consistent use of your business name and product names across trusted sources.
Trustworthy content includes verifiable claims with explicit sources, clear author credentials, and data from credible research.
Where Do AI Platforms Get Their Information About Brands and Products?
AI platforms source brand and product information from training data, licensed content partnerships (like Reddit and academic publishers), and indexed web content.
For example, say you launch a new product and you want AI systems to mention it. You might create detailed product pages with clear descriptions and specifications, publish announcement content on your blog, earn coverage in industry publications, and generate discussions on platforms like Reddit or relevant forums.
Publishing in the sources that AI systems reference can improve your chance of appearing in AI answers.
Why Do Some Domains Get Trusted More Than Others?
AI platforms trust domains with established authority signals, verified credentials, and consistent citations across high-quality sources over newer or less-cited sites.
Domains earning frequent citations typically have strong backlink profiles from authoritative publications. Along with verified organizational information and consistent mentions in trusted contexts. AI systems use these signals to assess source reliability before including content in responses.
How Stable Are AI Answers and Citations?
AI answers and citations change frequently based on model updates, query phrasing, and which sources the system retrieves at the time of the request.
For example, “best CRM?” and “what is the best CRM?” are similar queries that produce different results.
How Do Different AI Search Engines Decide Who to Recommend (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.)?
Different AI engines decide who to recommend based on distinct ranking signals, training data, and retrieval methods which cause brand visibility to vary across systems.
Our research also found that domains ranking in Google's top 10 are often cited across AI platforms, too.
This means improving your SEO also strengthens your visibility within AI answers.
What Are My Competitors Doing Better in the Eyes of AI Platforms?
Your competitors may do better in the eyes of AI platforms because they have stronger authority signals, broader topic coverage, and more frequent mentions across trusted sources.
If your competitors are outperforming you in AI search, you should:
- Focus on building consistent brand mentions online through digital public relations (PR), partnerships, and contributing expert commentary to industry publications
- Optimize your content with clear headings and easy-to-find answers that AI systems can easily extract
- Earn quality backlinks from authoritative sites in your industry to strengthen trust signals
- Expand topic coverage to match competitor breadth
- Stay present on public forums that AI platforms reference like Reddit or Quora
Are They Just More Present in the Training Data?
Brands with consistent mentions across the sources that AI models train with are more likely to be referenced.
To build training data presence for future model updates:
- Publish consistently on your own site and earn coverage in authoritative publications that likely appear in training datasets
- Get mentions in Wikipedia and academic papers
- Maintain active profiles on platforms AI companies license for training data, such as Reddit and major news outlets
- Create linkable assets (research, data, tools) that other sites reference
Are They Mentioned More Often Around Key Topics and Situations?
Yes, competitors mentioned frequently alongside specific topics and use cases appear more often in AI responses for those contexts.
AI systems learn topic associations from repeated patterns across sources. When trusted sites consistently mention a competitor around key topics, AI platforms associate that brand with those contexts and cite them for related queries.
Do They Have Stronger Authority Signals and Clearer Entities Than We Do?
Competitors with stronger authority signals and well-defined entities (subjects that AI systems recognize like brands, people, places, products, or concepts) may perform well as AI systems prioritize trustworthy, recognizable sources.
Authority signals include quality backlinks from trusted domains, consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data across directories, and mentions in authoritative publications.
Is Their Content Easier for AI Systems to Quote and Justify?
Yes, competitors with clear structure, direct answers, and explicit sources make extraction and citation easier for AI systems and competitors following these patterns may get cited more often even with comparable expertise.
AI platforms prefer content that answers questions in opening sentences, uses clear headings, and provides verifiable claims with linked sources. Like this:
Are They Already Creating Content Around Real Prompts and Category Entry Points?
Competitors creating content that directly matches actual AI prompts and category entry points capture more AI visibility by aligning with how users phrase questions.
AI systems favor content addressing queries exactly as users ask them. Competitors who research real prompts and build content around that specific phrasing have a better chance of appearing in AI responses.
Use Semrush's Prompt Research tool to get prompt ideas that you can include in your content. Enter a topic and click “Prompts” on the next page’s report.
Incorporate these prompts into your content. For example, you might use the prompt “what are some popular dog names of famous people?” within a relevant blog post.
How Do I Diagnose Our AI Visibility Gap?
Diagnose your AI visibility gap by identifying where your competitors appear but you don’t.
Do this with Semrush’s Competitor Research tool.
After inputting your domain and up to four competing domains, scroll down to the “Topics & Prompts” report and click “Prompts.”
Then click “Missing” to see the prompts that at least one of your competitors rank for but you don’t.
How Do I See Where Our Brand Is Mentioned or Cited Across AI Platforms?
See where your brand appears across AI platforms by using an AI visibility tool that monitors response across multiple platforms.
For example, Semrush's Visibility Overview aggregates mentions from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other systems.
Visibility Overview displays every prompt mentioning your brand, the platform where it appeared, and more to give you a detailed view into your brand’s AI mentions.
How Do I Compare Our AI Share of Voice to Key Competitors?
Compare AI share of voice by using a tool that monitors and evaluates AI outputs that mention your brand or your competitors.
Semrush's Narrative Drivers tool tracks how often your brand appears in related prompts along with how early AI tools mention your brand.
Start by entering your domain. Then, review the share of voice metrics in the overview dashboard.
A low share of voice in certain platforms indicates platform-specific visibility gaps.
Different AI systems use different retrieval methods and source preferences. Weak performance on one platform may signal content structure issues, authority gaps, or missing coverage in sources that platform prioritizes.
Which Gaps Are About Our Content vs. Our Broader Brand and Web Presence?
Gaps stem from content issues when competitors answer queries you don't address, and from authority issues when you cover topics but AI systems don't cite you.
Review your content gaps using the “Missing” filter in Semrush’s Competitor Research, and:
- If competitors appear for topics you haven't covered, create content addressing those queries and use cases
- If you already cover the topics where competitors dominate, build authority through backlinks, brand mentions, and trust signals that make AI systems prioritize your content
What Should I Fix First to Start Showing Up in AI Answers?
You should first fix content structure by adding clear headers with answers directly below each header. Then address authority gaps through backlinks and consistent brand mentions.
Start with your most important pages (like landing pages and product pages) that target queries your competitors already rank for in AI responses.
Restructure these pages to answer questions directly in opening sentences, use headings that mirror the prompts people use, and add explicit sources for all claims.
Next, focus on authority building. Secure mentions in online publications by sharing newsworthy updates—like product releases—and offer expert quotes to relevant outlets through platforms such as HARO.
You can also grow your authority by building backlinks to your site. One way to find backlinks is with Semrush's Backlink Gap tool, which identifies the backlinks your competitors have that you don’t.
Try to get links from the same sources through backlink building strategies like outreach and link bait (content that naturally attracts backlinks like research reports).
Also build brand mentions through PR, expert commentary, and industry publication contributions to strengthen recognition signals.
How Do I Make Our Existing Content More AI-Friendly?
Make your existing content more AI-friendly by restructuring answers to appear early, adding clear headings, and providing explicit source attribution.
Here are more tips to optimize content for AI search engines:
- Rewrite opening sentences to directly answer the query in complete, standalone statements. Move supporting details and context to follow the direct answer rather than leading with background information.
- Add descriptive H2 and H3 headings that match question formats users actually ask. Replace vague headings like "Getting Started" with specific questions like "How Do I Set Up Keyword Tracking?" that mirrors real prompts.
- Link to sources for every factual claim, statistic, or expert statement. AI systems prefer content with verifiable attribution. Making cited content more likely to be extracted and referenced. Use authoritative, primary sources rather than secondary aggregators whenever possible.
How Do I Create New Content Around the Situations That Trigger AI Prompts?
Create content around AI prompts by finding out what actual people are asking AI platforms.
You can get prompt ideas with tools that track prompts and their outputs.
For example, Semrush’s Prompt Research tool is like keyword research for AI. Enter your topic and click “Analyze.”
Then, select relevant prompts then build content that addresses complete situations rather than isolated keywords.
For example, if prompts show "how to switch from Mailchimp to HubSpot without losing contacts," create a detailed migration guide covering contact export, data mapping, import process, and verification steps—not just a generic "email platform switching" article.
Structure new content by using the prompt phrasing in your headings and opening sentences.
Do I Need a Separate AI SEO Strategy, or Is This Just SEO Done Differently for AI Answers?
You don’t need a separate AI SEO strategy because core SEO best practices (like strong backlinks, good technical site health, and helpful content) also help AI SEO.
AI optimization adds onto your SEO strategy, and things like direct answers, explicit source attribution, and brand entity consistency make existing content more extractable for AI systems.
How Do I Align SEO, Content, and PR So They Reinforce Each Other in AI Search?
Align SEO, content, and PR by targeting the same topics and entities across all channels, creating consistent signals that AI systems recognize and trust.
Coordinate topic selection so your content team writes about the same subjects your PR team is pitching and your SEO team is optimizing for.
Then, when PR secures coverage about your new feature, you can ensure that corresponding content exists on your site that AI can easily reference and extract.
How Do I Turn This Into a Simple AI Search Visibility Roadmap?
Turn this into a roadmap by auditing current gaps, creating content that fills those gaps, and building authority alongside content creation.
Semrush’s Brand Performance tool analyzes how your brand performs in AI search and gives you tailored suggestions including how urgently you should apply each recommendation. That way, you never need to guess your next move.
How Do I Balance SEO and AI SEO Without Completely Changing My Roadmap?
Balance SEO and AI SEO by integrating AI optimization into existing workflows rather than creating separate initiatives.
Here are some tips:
- Apply AI-friendly structure to all new content. Write opening sentences that answer the heading, use question-format headings, and add explicit source links.
- Check both keyword opportunity and AI prompt coverage when planning content. Use Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool and Prompt Research to target topics serving both traditional search rankings and AI visibility needs.
- Pursue backlinks and mentions that strengthen signals for both search engines and AI platforms. Focus on unified source targeting rather than separate outreach for authority building.
What Should My Next 90 Days Look Like if I Want Better AI Visibility?
Your next 90 days should focus on restructuring top pages, creating prompt-driven content, and building authority through targeted outreach.
Follow this roadmap:
- Month one: Audit visibility, restructure your top 10 pages with answers and clear headings, and identify missing prompts where competitors dominate
- Month two: Create five to eight new articles addressing high-volume missing prompts and begin backlink outreach to sources citing competitors
- Month three: Generate brand mentions through PR and expert commentary, expand topic clusters around successful prompts, and measure share of voice growth to validate efforts and adjust strategy
How Do I Explain This Shift to Stakeholders Who Only Care About Traffic and Conversions?
Frame the shift as protecting future traffic and conversions. Then back it up with data.
Our research shows that digital marketing topics may bring more visitors from AI search than from traditional search by 2028.
More importantly, we found that AI search visitors are worth 4.4x the average search visitor in terms of conversions. And even the smallest traffic gains from AI search can make a difference to your bottom line.
Want to strengthen your brand’s presence in AI search?
Try Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit.
