Going into this research, I suspected that domain-level hyperlink metrics wouldn’t be a superb predictor for mentions. I used to be anticipating Google AI Overviews to point out extra of a correlation since they could use a number of the conventional search indicators, whereas the opposite methods might not. For conventional search, normally the page-level metrics are extra predictive of rankings than domain-level ones.
I regarded on the prime 50 web sites talked about in Ahrefs Model Radar for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. That is throughout ~76.7M AI Overviews, 957k ChatGPT prompts, and 953.5k Perplexity prompts for the month of June 2025.
I in contrast the web site mentions to their Ahrefs Rank (AR) in Ahrefs. Ahrefs Rank (AR) ranks all of the web sites in our database so as, by the scale and high quality of their adopted referring domains.
Sidenote.
Model Radar isn’t simply one other LLM visibility monitor, we observe a considerable amount of queries throughout all of those methods and you may question for any product, service, or model and evaluate vs opponents. It’s extra like Website Explorer than it’s Rank Tracker. Plus now we have the net visibility index so to see the way you’re talked about on-line and the search demand index to see how widespread you might be in searches.
Right here’s what Model Radar appears like.
Let’s dig in.
Perplexity reveals a reasonable correlation between the mentions of its most-cited domains and their Ahrefs Rank, Google AI Overviews a really weak correlation, and ChatGPT no correlation. I used to be anticipating Google to have a stronger relationship than Perplexity, so the outcomes shocked me.
This correlation would probably change with a bigger dataset outdoors of simply the highest 50. The highest 50 are all extraordinarily well-linked and cited web sites.
I’ll give the same old correlation doesn’t equal causation disclaimer.
Listed here are the Spearman rank correlations for point out share vs. Ahrefs Rank throughout the highest 50 domains in every system:
| AI Assistant | Spearman Rho | P-Worth | Correlation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | -0.12 | 0.47 | Very weak |
| ChatGPT | 0.01 | 0.95 | No relationship |
| Perplexity | -0.34 | 0.095 | Weak |
Google AI Overviews over-index on UGC websites like YouTube, Reddit, and Quora, in addition to encyclopedic content material like Wikipedia. We’ve seen this in a number of different research already.
These websites get further weight in mentions than their hyperlink profile predicts.
Google AI Overviews underweights on social media websites like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Fb. One other sample we’ve seen in different research.
We additionally see the same story with ChatGPT, the place they’re chubby on issues like Wikipedia and information websites like Reuters, precisely like we noticed earlier than.
Perplexity additionally reveals the identical biases we’ve seen. YouTube and Wikipedia are chubby, social media websites are underweight.
Closing ideas
I’m undecided that is sufficient of a pattern dimension to get a superb measure. We really noticed larger correlations in Google AI Overviews in comparison with DR after we studied 75k websites than we noticed in correlations to regular Google rankings throughout 1 million key phrases, 0.326 vs 0.131.
We’ll run a much bigger research past the highest 50, in addition to have a look at some extra web page stage metrics for extra insights.
