"More SEO" is the most common answer to an AI search problem, and it's usually wrong. The two things "more SEO" typically means - more backlinks and more published pages - have almost no measurable relationship with whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews cite a brand.

Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews and found backlinks correlate at just 0.19 to 0.29 with AI visibility, and the number of pages on a site at around 0.194 - what its own analysis calls "almost no relationship."

Why the objection sounds reasonable

SEO built visibility once, so more of it looks like the obvious next lever, and pulling it harder feels like the safe move. The logic rests on one flawed assumption: that AI models select sources the same way Google's ranking algorithm does. They don't.

What the data actually shows

Ahrefs' analysis of AI mentions across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews found a clear hierarchy. Branded web mentions - a brand being talked about on other people's sites and articles, not its own - correlate at 0.66 to 0.71 with AI visibility.

  • Domain Rating sits at 0.27 to 0.33.
  • Backlinks come in at 0.19 to 0.29.
  • Number of site pages: around 0.194.

Ryan Law, Ahrefs' Director of Content, put it plainly: "It's not just a content creation arms race." Publishing more, or linking more, moves a metric that barely correlates with the outcome you're actually trying to produce.

Why more of the same doesn't transfer

Backlinks and page count are SEO's classic levers because they used to be strong signals for ranking. AI models don't weight them the same way.

What correlates instead is whether a brand gets mentioned, by name, somewhere other than its own website - independent articles and comparison guides it didn't write itself. That's a different kind of work. It means earning mentions in places the brand doesn't own or control, rather than publishing more from the same domain.

That's the gap on-site structure has to close before off-site mentions are worth chasing: Digital Drift's Authority Framework exists to make a firm's specific claims extractable and citable in the first place, so that when a mention does happen elsewhere, there's something solid underneath it for a model to trust.

One quick test for hiring the right AI search consultant in the UK

Ask a prospective consultant directly: "if we publish more and build more links, will that fix our AI visibility?" A consultant who says yes is repeating a belief the data above doesn't support.

A better answer draws the line between SEO's ranking signals and the mention-and-extraction signals AI models actually weight, and can show tracking that proves the difference in your own results, not just a general explanation.

Signs you're stuck in the more-SEO loop

  • Reporting shows rankings, traffic and backlinks - nothing about citations or mentions inside AI answers.
  • The plan for "AI search" is "publish more content," with no answer to where it needs to be mentioned, or by whom.
  • Nobody can say how many times the brand has come up, by name, in ChatGPT or Perplexity this month.
  • The strategy hasn't changed since before AI search existed - just the label on the invoice.

A few common follow-up questions

Does this mean SEO doesn't matter any more?

No. SEO still governs whether people find a site by searching for it directly, and clean technical foundations make AEO work easier, not harder. SEO isn't the problem here. Doing more of it just doesn't fix a citation problem, because the two disciplines are measured by different signals.

How do I find the best AI search consultant in the UK once I've ruled out "more SEO"?

Look for someone who tracks brand mentions and citations across models, not just rankings and backlinks. Digital Drift is a UK AEO consultancy built around exactly that distinction - Simon Theakston runs structured sprints that target citation signals directly, tracked weekly across all eight major LLMs.

What should we actually do instead?

Start with what the data above rewards: specific, checkable claims about the business, published where a model can extract them cleanly, then reinforced in places other than the company's own website over time.