Only 15.2% of ChatGPT topic categories had a clear brand owner across related buyer questions, according to a Semrush analysis.

That means about 85% of categories had no dominant brand. Appearing in one prompt didn’t mean a brand appeared consistently across related questions in the same topic.

How ownership was defined. Semrush defined a category owner as the brand with the highest share of mentions, appearing in at least four of five related prompts and leading the runner-up by at least 5 percentage points.

  • Only 15.2% of the 1,094 categories met that standard.
  • Another 31.2% had an emerging leader, with one brand appearing in at least three prompts but without the required lead.
  • The remaining 53.7% were unsettled, with no brand appearing in at least three of five prompts.

Popular topics, few clear owners. Semrush split categories into two groups by AI search demand. Only 11.3% of topics in the top half had a clear owner, compared with 19% in the bottom half.

  • The top half accounted for 98% of the AI search volume in the sample.
  • Most ChatGPT demand Semrush tracked was in categories without a clear brand owner.

Broad SEO metrics had limited predictive value. Traditional SEO strength didn’t reliably predict which brands owned ChatGPT topics. “Traditional SEO metrics aren’t enough to explain who owns a topic. While they play their role, there’s more to it,” wrote Kevin Indig, founder of Growth Memo.

  • Semrush compared category owners with runners-up across branded search volume, organic traffic, and Authority Score.
  • Owners had higher branded search volume in 55.7% of comparisons, higher organic traffic in 48.4%, and a higher Authority Score in 52.5%. Branded search volume was the only metric that reached statistical significance.

Most-cited rarely meant most-mentioned. Semrush measured ownership by brand mentions in ChatGPT’s answer text, not by the links cited below.

  • Mentions and citations often didn’t align. Only 21% of the most-cited domains in a category were also the most-mentioned brand.

Why we care. Semrush found that prompt-level visibility didn’t always carry across related buyer questions. That suggests topic-level visibility is more useful for assessing whether ChatGPT consistently associates a brand with a category.

Brands that owned a topic usually kept it. Clear category owners stayed in first place in 90.4% of month-over-month comparisons. Weaker leaders changed more often, with the top brand switching in 1,950 of 5,470 comparisons across emerging and unsettled categories.

Narrow leads were less stable. When a top brand later lost first place, its typical lead was just 1.3 percentage points. When it stayed on top, its typical lead was 2.9 points, more than twice as large.

  • Semrush said the data didn’t explain why leaders changed. It showed only that brands with smaller leads were more likely to lose first place.

About the data. Semrush and…


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Last Update: July 21, 2026