Social Rocket
AI visibility is not a global ranking position. In its AI Visibility Index from 13 October 2026, Semrush shows that ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI search mention brands differently by country and weight sources differently. For marketing teams, the decisive question becomes where a brand is recommended – and which independent sites support that recommendation.
The new Semrush report on the British and American AI market provides the data basis for this. It looks at seven monthly samples from January to July 2026: 2,5 million British and 25 million American prompts per month for ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode. Google AI Overviews was examined separately using a variable search dataset.
In the UK, news sources are especially prominent
29,5 percent of the citations among the 100 most-cited domains in the British ChatGPT dataset went to news sites on a seven-month average. In the US it was 19,6 percent. Gemini also showed UK news providers leading month after month, with shares between 16,6 and 23 percent among the most frequent sources.
For PR and content marketing, this is a concrete observation: a brand's own website alone does not fully reflect its presence in AI answers. Trade media, independent product reviews and editorial mentions can shape the source mix. This is exactly what the shift from GEO to its own marketing technology market is about.
The platforms differ markedly. Of their respective 100 most-mentioned brands, two AI services examined shared on average only 63 to 70 in the UK, and 70 to 78 in the US. A central visibility figure averaged across countries and systems hides such differences.
Being mentioned and being linked are two different achievements
Semrush distinguishes between brand mentions, meaning a brand name appearing in an answer, and citations, the domains cited as sources. For the British top-100 lists, the average overlap according to the study was only 36,7 to 45,3 domains, depending on the month.
The example of the British supermarkets illustrates the gap: Tesco and Asda regularly rank among the most-mentioned brands. In July, Tesco ranked 25 among the most-cited British domains on ChatGPT, while Asda ranked 606. On Gemini, the two were much closer together. A brand can therefore be present in answers without its own website appearing as evidence in the same way.
For practical reporting, separate rows should therefore at least cover how often brands are mentioned, which source pages are cited, relevant customer questions, competitors and the respective market. More on this measurement question is in the overview of AEO scores and their limits.
Flo and Motorway anchor AI visibility in everyday work
How such data turns into an organisation was also shown on 13 October at the Semrush Spotlight in London. According to Adweek's report on the event, the health app Flo Health employs a person responsible for discoverability in AI assistants, who works with the respective channel teams.
The British car-sales platform Motorway continuously monitors the outputs of large language models. Marketing and brand director Cassie Hall reported that newly published content sometimes appeared in AI citations within 24 hours. This is an observation from Motorway's own work, not a general indexing timeframe for all websites.
Instead of building a separate "AI text channel", you can derive a cross-functional workflow from it: monitor questions and answers in the market, correct errors in product information, publish understandable original content, and keep an eye on independent mentions. How such measures combine with classic search engine optimisation is also shown by our guide on ChatGPT recommendations for brands.
What German marketing teams can take from this
The Semrush comparison measures the United Kingdom and the USA, not Germany. Precisely these market differences are a compelling reason to test German search queries and German-language sources separately. A UK ranking or a prominent US citation is no substitute for actual presence in your own target market.
A sensible starting point is ten to twenty recurring purchase and comparison questions that are relevant to your own offer. Regularly document which brands ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews mention, where they source their evidence, and how answers develop after content changes. SEO, PR and social content should evaluate the results together – for example where creator content as sources for AI search answers is gaining importance.
Sources: Semrush: AI Visibility Index UK/USA, 13.10.2026; Semrush: study overview; Adweek: Flo and Motorway in the spotlight, 13.10.2026.