Does Being Mentioned on Top News Sites Impact AI Answer Mentions?

Why It Matters

AI-driven search experiences, like ChatGPT, can dramatically influence brand visibility. If your brand is frequently mentioned by well-known publishers, does that translate into more AI mentions? Understanding this link helps marketers optimize their PR, SEO, and content strategies -especially given emerging insights that organic keyword rankings often correlate more strongly with AI mentions than traditional backlink metrics.

Background: GPT’s Training Data & Key Questions

Recent studies (including our own) have highlighted that ChatGPT’s brand mentions often stem from organic rankings rather than domain authority or backlinks alone. However, this can still lead to the question:

“What if you consistently appear on top-tier news outlets like Forbes, CNBC, or Business Insider - does that influence your brand’s visibility in ChatGPT’s responses?”

Why look at major news sites?

• GPT-3 & GPT-4 Training Sources: OpenAI has publicly stated it trains models on data from Common Crawl, Reddit, Wikipedia, reference sites, and various news sources filtered for quality.
• SearchGPT Usage: A SEMRush study found that 46% of queries trigger SearchGPT - indicating the other 54% will rely on training data. So, understanding how your brand appears in that 2023 snapshot matters.

The cutoff date for this training data is October 2023.

This means that anytime you search in ChatGPT and it doesn’t leverage its web search capabilities - it’s using its training data from 2023 (at the time of this post’s date).

With all that being said, my questions remain:

• How does visibility on news sites influence brand mentions in ChatGPT?
• How can that influence our strategy in the future?

Does a strong presence on major news sites increase the likelihood of being mentioned in AI answers?

We put this to the test by analyzing whether mentions on well-known news sources correlate with being referenced in ChatGPT-generated answers. 

Methodology: How We Tested

Objective: 

Examine whether frequent mentions on major news sites correlate with being referenced more often in ChatGPT-generated answers.

Data Sources: 

We selected eight well-known publishers and aggregators frequently cited online.

Process:

• Step 1: We tallied how often selected brands appear on each of these sites.
• Step 2: We ran prompts through ChatGPT (with the 2023 training data) via OpenAI’s API and recorded the frequency of brand mentions.
• Step 3: We calculated the correlation coefficient to see if a stronger presence on these news sites translates to a higher likelihood of ChatGPT mentions.
  
  

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Key Takeaways

1. No Direct Link Between News Mentions & AI Answers 

Correlation Coefficient ~0.07

A correlation of 0.07 indicates almost no relationship between news-site coverage and ChatGPT brand mentions.

What This Means: Simply being featured in Forbes or CNBC doesn’t guarantee your brand appears in ChatGPT’s answers. While news coverage helps overall brand awareness, it doesn’t directly drive AI mentions based on historical training data.

2. Slightly Stronger Correlation for Business Insider, the Longest-Standing OpenAI Partner Measured

Correlation Coefficient ~0.12

Interestingly, Business Insider showed a correlation double that of other publications, potentially linked to its OpenAI & Axel Springer partnership announced in December 2023, enabling direct use of certain publication data.

• Partner Sites: Across the four partner sites, we saw a correlation of 0.09, vs. just 0.02 for non-partners.
• Hypothesis: Partnering directly with AI-training-aligned publishers may offer a modest advantage - though still not a guarantee of high ChatGPT visibility.

Tip: Remember, for SearchGPT (ChatGPT’s live web search), 87%+ of citations come from Bing’s top results. So if your focus is real-time AI answers, aim to secure top Bing rankings and aggregator placements.

3. SearchGPT vs. ChatGPT Training Data

Our testing did not cover how SearchGPT might reference brands, since we used ChatGPT’s pre-2023 data.

• Short Term: Focus on queries that trigger SearchGPT for the most immediate AI visibility gains, as real-time search heavily relies on Bing’s organic results and fresh publisher content.
• Long Term: As OpenAI continues forming publisher partnerships and updating training data, we’ll track whether news-site coverage plays a bigger role. Future updates to GPT’s dataset may incorporate those news articles and partnerships more robustly.
  
  

How this stacks up with previous research

These findings align with our past research showing organic rankings have a much stronger correlation to AI mentions than domain rank or news site coverage. In simpler terms:

• Being an authoritative site with well-optimized content typically matters more for ChatGPT visibility than just appearing on a big-name publication.
• Partnerships can yield slight boosts (like Business Insider), but not enough to be a standalone AI mention strategy.

What It Means for Your Strategy

• Don’t Bank On News Mentions Alone

• They’re great for brand awareness and PR, but don’t strongly influence ChatGPT mentions - at least under the current training data model.

• Keep an Eye on AI Partnerships

• Publishers with direct deals (Business Insider, etc.) showed some correlation bumps. Future expansions of these partnerships might strengthen their influence on AI training data.

• Focus on SearchGPT Opportunities

• With up to 46% of queries now triggering web searches, Bing ranking and aggregator sites can yield immediate gains in real-time AI answers.

• Long-Term Monitoring

• GPT-4’s data cutoff is October 2023. New partnerships or data expansions could shift AI mention dynamics down the road. Keeping tabs on your domain’s presence in key sources remains a focus.

Our next batch of testing is focused on on-page and off-page signals

We’re continually testing on-page and off-page signals to see how brands can maximize AI-driven visibility. 

Want to dig into your brand’s AI mentions? Contact us to learn how we can help you monitor AI Overview visibility, measure real-time SearchGPT mentions, and refine your SEO/PR strategy.