Have you ever wondered why certain websites or brands seem to get mentioned more often by AI models, like ChatGPT, than others? Is it a product of chance? Some sort of behind-the-scenes partnership? 

With its rapid advancement, AI technology has both disrupted the content marketing scene and left many of its most experienced professionals feeling perplexed. 

Organic search is no longer the reliable source of potential customers it used to be. The conversation around AI in content marketing has shifted from the best ways to use AI to create content to the exact opposite: how to create content that gets used by AI. To understand how to get mentioned by AI, though, we first have to take a closer look at how AI actually works.

Quick Review of AI Tech & How It Works

There are two main types of AI models: foundation and generative AI models. The latter is likely what you’re most familiar with and is usually what businesses are concerned with. 

Foundation models are large-scale, pre-trained systems that are designed to adapt to a variety of tasks. This category includes large language model (LLM) families like GPT. It also includes small language models (SLMs) that are more specialized. Foundation models can typically generate or interpret text, images, and audio.

Generative AI models, on the other hand, cover a much wider spectrum of capabilities. The most advanced generative AI models can work across several media, producing text, images, and audio from the same system. 

Where foundation models provide a strong and adaptable base for automation systems, generative AI models focus specifically on creating new content.

Some of the most common types of generative AI models you might encounter include:

• Text generation

• Image generation 

• Audio generation

• Video generation

• Multimodal, which is used in the most advanced systems, like GPT models and Gemini

• Reasoning models, which are designed to apply logic and structural thinking in addition to generating outputs

Another model to be familiar with is Google’s AI Search Overview, which is a generative AI feature that has been integrated directly into Google Search. Later, we’ll explore how AI Search Overview functions in comparison to tools like ChatGPT–but like other generative models, it strives to create new content to answer a user’s question.

How Does AI Get Its Information About Businesses?

How AI gets its information depends on the type of model it’s built on. For the purposes of our discussion, though, we’ll focus specifically on generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, as well as Google’s AI Search Overview.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, & Other Complex Tools

Most complex generative AI models get their information from two sources:

1. A massive library of pre-training data. This content, sourced from partner websites, publications, and other data, was used to initially train AI models like ChatGPT.

2. Information from real-time web search capabilities. In recent years, models like ChatGPT have begun to source information directly from the live web, much like you would when performing a Google search.

While you, as a business, may not be able to change the information that AI tools were fed during their development, you can position yourself in front of AI tools as they search the web for new information. 

When a tool like ChatGPT or Claude needs information, it queries the live internet for relevant web pages. It then reads the fetched pages to construct an answer, providing links and citations for the sources it relied on most.

But how does AI judge a potential source when it decides which ones to pull from and which ones to skip over? Generally speaking, AI wants sources that are credible, relevant, and trustworthy. It likely comes as no surprise, then, that ChatGPT responses are typically dominated by content from the top Google Search result, as found by a 2024 study. 

Importantly, the study also found that the distribution of source information can vary by topic. In other words, which sources are seen as “better” by AI vary from one topic to another, and ranking #1 for a keyword isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get cited by AI for that topic – you’ll need original, helpful content that AI sees value in citing. 

For topics and queries with no widely accepted consensus and few to no government or academic sources (e.g., which digital marketing agency is best for your business), AI models are more likely to rely on a small number of high-authority sources. Your goal is to become one of them.

Google AI Search Overview

Like other generative models, Google’s AI Overview uses large language models to generate summaries. AI Overview can scan and read through all of the results for a particular query, then generate a summary that’s designed to be concise. The overview also contains links to sources where information was pulled from.

Interestingly, as discovered in a 2025 SEMRush study, the most cited source for AI Search Overview is Quora, followed by Reddit. This suggests that getting mentioned by Google’s AI model may require a presence on socials and forums, not just your website.

How Do Brands Get Mentioned by AI?

Brands get mentioned by AI by being recognized as prominent, trustworthy, and relevant sources of information, ideally across both training data and web sources. But understanding how to get your brand mentioned by AI within your niche can be a little more complex.

The overall goal is to ensure your website signals authority, credibility, and relevance to AI tools. How you achieve that may vary, depending on your industry or niche, whether your business is B2B or B2C, and your lead generation pipeline (where do your customers typically come from?). 

Let’s take a closer look at how different businesses have managed to get mentioned and cited by AI to understand which path might make the most sense for you.

Creating a Content Ecosystem

If there is no content on your website or online about your business, an AI model literally won’t have anything to source. Having not only a website, but a website with content is the first step toward signaling your online presence and expertise. 

Content typically looks like, at bare minimum, landing pages for different products or services as well as a supporting blog. But if you’re looking to get mentioned by AI, you shouldn’t stop there. The more mediums you’re able to use to promote your brand, the more chances you have to be “seen” by AI. 

In addition to a blog, for example, you might start a podcast series or host webinars that you then publish with transcripts on your website. Or maybe you decide to invest more time into posting content on LinkedIn and other socials, in addition to what you create for your site.

The most sustainable way to get your brand mentioned by AI is to grow your digital presence to span across different platforms and touchpoints. That doesn’t mean you need to start blasting newsletters every day or produce AI-generated content on a daily basis. It just means you may need to adopt a more holistic approach to visibility than you may be used to from traditional SEO.

Editorial Authority

AI models look for third-party credibility, or “social proof,” when choosing which websites to source and cite. Brands that appear consistently in industry news coverage, like press releases and news articles, therefore have a leg up on the competition. 

Even if your access to external publications is limited, you can still build your editorial authority by engaging in content initiatives outside your website. Forming partnerships with other businesses and creating thought leadership content or creating original data studies are just two examples of steps you might take to get the word out about your business and what you do best.

Established Topical Relevance

Remember: AI wants to find answers to questions, and it wants to produce the most relevant answer possible. That means it will only consult sources it believes to be relevant to the topic at hand.

The takeaway? Relevance should be one of the most important considerations that anyone wondering how to get mentioned by AI should keep in mind. If you want your brand to be recognized and cited for a particular subject or topic, you need to have a clear web presence around it. 

Once again, this goes beyond a single service or landing page and requires aligning website content with third-party coverage and other marketing initiatives. Instead of trying to spread yourself too thin and cover as many potentially relevant queries or topics as possible, focus on a smaller number of topics or subjects that you are particularly qualified to create content about. Build relevance in those areas by creating consistent content that’s well-written, informative, and helpful.

How to Get Mentioned by AI: 3 Strategic Tips

While the exact tactics you use to get mentioned by AI may be unique to your niche, there are some general strategies you can use to get started. Here are a few pointers to guide you in the right direction:

1. Be More Selective (& Strategic) About Content

Traditional SEO practices have encouraged many businesses to think strictly in terms of keywords, search volume, and traffic. While those metrics are still useful, they don’t capture the whole story when it comes to AI visibility. 

This is especially true when you consider how user behavior on AI tools differs from traditional search. Users tend to ask AI models much more specific questions than they would Google. Instead of searching “best software for content management,” a user might ask an AI model “which content management software has the best customer service?”

But getting mentioned by AI in response to this specific query doesn’t mean you need to include it word-for-word in your content. This kind of strategy is still too informed by SEO, where using specific keywords or questions is a key part of ranking for them. 

That’s not how AI finds information; it actually reads the words and data you write, so it’s looking for pieces of content that stand out in some way. A more effective strategy would be to, across content and platforms, work on establishing your brand’s software as the best option for customer service. Then, when a user prompts AI to tell it about software in your niche, it sees your brand mentioned as a good pick for customer service (across several different touchpoints) and is more likely to recommend you.

All of this means that there is no special kind of content you need to produce to get mentioned by AI. Instead, you should likely scale down and tighten up your strategy. Focus on creating people-first, helpful, and original content that demonstrates the first-hand knowledge you bring to the table. 

This also means refraining from producing irrelevant, generic, or low-effort content (especially AI-generated content). If you don’t have enough firsthand knowledge to create informative and unique content on the subject, you probably shouldn’t be writing about it. 

2. Practice SEO Fundamentals

There’s a misconception that engineering content for AI means filling your content with long questions and answers, adding a ton of headings, or otherwise trying to write copy that’s “optimized” for AI tools. 

But the reality is there is no special sauce or secret tech hack that will get you mentioned by AI. We know that authority, in the eyes of AI models, is shaped by your website’s prominence, credibility, relevance, and trustworthiness. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s not too far off from Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness). 

SEO fundamentals help you achieve the preliminary goal of ensuring your content is relevant, useful, and credible. So, don’t think of AEO as something that contradicts SEO. Instead, think of solid SEO as a prerequisite. 

3. Build Your Authority

The content you produce for your website is important, but so too is what you do off the page. If your website is the only place on the web that’s mentioning your business, it’s not likely to be seen as especially credible. You need social proof.

This can come in all kinds of forms, like backlinks to your website from other sources, transcripts from interviews or podcasts, and more. 

As AI search continues to grow and evolve, businesses need to think beyond the keywords and focus on building a strong association with their areas of expertise. 

Quality Content is Key to Getting Mentioned by AI

So, how do brands get mentioned by AI? By building and sustaining a strong digital presence that demonstrates relevance, expertise, and credibility. The same kind of authority signals that Google looks for inform the way that AI tools get their information. 

This is good news for businesses, though: it means there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Having a solid understanding of how AI works and where it makes the most sense to grow your presence to build topical relevance is key. With this strategy piece figured out, you can shift your attention to the other half of the puzzle: high-quality, informative, original content.

Here at Inkless, we’ve always adopted a content-focused approach to SEO and growth. As writers by trade, our team knows how to understand your audience and their concerns so that we can create content that answers the questions behind the searches. 

We’re also dedicated to staying on the cutting edge of technological advancements like generative AI and helping shape the discussion around how to respond to them. If you’re looking for a content partner who understands the role AI has to play in capturing new leads and can rise to the challenge, we’ve got your back.

The brands that do the best demonstrate relevance, expertise, and credibility

Want to learn more about how a content-focused approach can help you get mentioned by AI? Book a call with us today to start a conversation.