Why AI Mentions Brands More Than It Recommends Them, and What That Means for SEO

We analyzed 312 AI-generated answers across 8 brands. Here’s what we found:

48% of answers mentioned the brand

Only 8% recommended it

52% didn’t mention it at all

Shockingly, only 1% of citations came from the company’s own content

This suggests that traditional SEO signals (ranking, keywords, backlinks) are no longer sufficient for “AI discovery.” AI doesn’t just rank pages - it decides which sources it trusts enough to recommend.

We’re building FlyGen to help brands understand and optimize for this new behavior. Curious to hear if others have observed similar gaps between ranking and AI recommendation.