Do Backlinks Still Matter for AI Visibility? What Data Says

A question I hear a lot from business owners right now is: “If people are getting answers from ChatGPT instead of Google, should I stop paying for link building?” Some have read that “links are dead in AI search.” Others have been told that a high Domain Rating is the key to being recommended by AI.

Neither claim holds up well against the data. The research so far says something more useful: domain-level link scores are a poor predictor of AI mentions, but links still do important work behind the scenes. What changes is which links you go after, and what you measure.

Let me explain what the studies found, where they disagree, and how I would adjust a link-building plan so it helps both Google rankings and AI visibility.

Why the backlinks question changed once AI started answering

For twenty years, links have been one of Google's main ways to judge pages. Google still says so plainly. Its link best practices page (updated December 2025) states:

“Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl.”
— Google Search Central, Link best practices for Google

AI assistants are different. They write an answer in words, and the brands they name come from text they have read, either in training or in a live search. A link is one kind of text on a page. A mention of your brand in a sentence is another. The question is which of these matters more for AI.

If you need a refresher on the basics first, my guide to what backlinks are and how they work covers that. Here I want to focus on what the AI-era data says.

What Ahrefs found when it compared link strength with AI mentions

Patrick Stox at Ahrefs tested this directly in Domain-Level Link Metrics May Not Be Good Predictors of AI Search Mentions (June 25, 2025). He took the 50 websites mentioned most often in Ahrefs Brand Radar for June 2025, across about 76.7 million AI Overviews, 957,000 ChatGPT prompts and 953,500 Perplexity prompts.

He then compared each site's share of mentions with its Ahrefs Rank, a ranking of domains by the size and quality of their followed referring domains. In simple words: a measure of overall link strength.

Platform	Correlation with Ahrefs Rank	Strength
Google AI Overviews	-0.12	Very weak
ChatGPT	0.01	No relationship
Perplexity	-0.34	Weak

Source: Ahrefs, June 2025. A note on the minus signs: Ahrefs Rank works like a league table, where rank 1 is the strongest. So a negative number here means more mentions tend to go with stronger links. Perplexity showed the most of that, ChatGPT none at all. The headline point is that none of these relationships is strong.

“I suspected that domain-level link metrics would not be a good predictor for mentions.”
— Patrick Stox, Ahrefs, Domain-Level Link Metrics May Not Be Good Predictors of AI Search Mentions

He also found each platform leaned toward different kinds of sites with similar link strength. AI Overviews over-indexed on user-generated sites like YouTube, Reddit and Quora. ChatGPT over-weighted Wikipedia and news sites such as Reuters. Perplexity favoured YouTube and Wikipedia. So what kind of site you are mattered more than how many links you had.

To be fair, he was clear about the limits. Fifty sites is a small sample, and all of them are giant websites. He planned a larger study using page-level metrics. I treat this as a strong hint, not a final answer.

Mentions beat links in the 75,000-brand study

A bigger Ahrefs study points the same way. In An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (May 26, 2025, updated April 2026), Ahrefs looked at 75,000 brands and ranked factors by how closely they tracked AI Overview mentions.

Factor	Correlation with AI Overview mentions	Type of signal
Branded web mentions	0.664	Mention
Branded anchors (links whose text is your brand)	0.527	Link + mention
Branded search volume	0.392	Demand
Domain Rating	0.326	Link (domain level)
Referring domains	0.295	Link (domain level)
Backlinks	0.218	Link (domain level)
URL Rating	0.18	Link (page level)

Notice the second row. Branded anchors, meaning links where the clickable text is your brand name, scored much higher than raw backlink counts. That is a link and a mention in one. It suggests the most useful links for AI are the ones that name you in context.

The same Ahrefs article cites Seer Interactive's research on ChatGPT, where Domain Rating correlated at just 0.25 and backlinks at 0.10, while Google keyword rankings correlated at 0.65 and Bing rankings at 0.50. I go through all the factors in what drives brand visibility in AI answers.

The counter-evidence: SE Ranking's ChatGPT citation data

Not every study says links barely matter. An SE Ranking study, reported by Search Engine Journal on November 26, 2025, looked at 129,000 domains and 216,524 pages across 20 niches, and counted how often they were cited by ChatGPT.

Sites with up to 2,500 referring domains averaged 1.6 to 1.8 citations. Sites with over 350,000 averaged 8.4.
Citations nearly doubled around 32,000 referring domains, from 2.9 to 5.6.
Domain Trust scores of 97 to 100 averaged 8.4 citations, against 1.6 for scores below 43.
Page-level trust mattered less than domain-level signals in this dataset.

That looks like the opposite of Ahrefs' finding. But the same study also found big jumps for things that are not links: sites with heavy Reddit and Quora mentions, sites listed on review platforms, fresher content and pages with more data points all averaged more citations.

“What ultimately matters is not the domain name itself, but the quality of the content and the value it provides.”
— SE Ranking, via Search Engine Journal, New Data: Top Factors Influencing ChatGPT Citations

Why the two studies seem to disagree

Let me explain this simply, because it matters for your budget.

Different samples. Ahrefs compared the top 50 sites, all of which already have huge link profiles. Among giants, link strength cannot separate winners from losers. SE Ranking looked across 129,000 domains of all sizes, where link strength varies far more.
Links travel with everything else. Sites with hundreds of thousands of referring domains also tend to have more traffic, more content, more reviews and more mentions. SE Ranking found the same jump for traffic (sites over 10 million visitors averaged 8.5 citations). Links may be a marker of a big, well-known site rather than the cause.
Mentions vs citations. Ahrefs measured brand mentions in the answer. SE Ranking measured citations (linked sources). A site can be cited as a source without its brand being named, and vice versa. I explore that gap in AI mentions without links.

My reading: links help you get into the pool of pages that AI considers, especially for citations. But once you are in that pool, mentions, content quality and the type of site decide who gets named.

Links still do two jobs that AI depends on: discovery and ranking

Even if links do not directly decide AI mentions, AI systems still depend on search. And search still depends on links.

Discovery. Crawlers find new pages by following links. Google says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. An orphan page that no one links to may never be found by Google, Bing or the AI crawlers that rely on them.

Ranking. Google's AI features documentation says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, with no extra requirements. So the pages Google's AI cites come from the same ranked pool as normal search. Links help pages earn a place in that pool.

For ChatGPT, Seer's research (cited by Ahrefs) found brand mentions tracked Google and Bing rankings far more closely than link counts. In other words, links seem to help AI visibility mainly through rankings, not as a separate AI signal.

Being mentioned on the pages AI actually reads

If mentions matter most, where should you be mentioned? On the pages AI tools cite again and again.

We know which domains these are. In Ahrefs' June 2025 data, Wikipedia led ChatGPT mentions at 16.3%, YouTube led Perplexity at 16.1%, and AI Overviews leaned on YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit and Quora. Semrush's 2025 study found Reddit and LinkedIn in the top five cited domains on ChatGPT, AI Mode and Perplexity. And Similarweb (April 2026) found AI tends to cite deep pages, not homepages.

Put together, the best places for a mention are:

Deep, specific articles in your niche that already rank and get cited, such as “best X for Y” guides and comparison pages.
Community threads on Reddit, Quora and niche forums where your customers ask questions.
Video on YouTube, where your brand is named in titles, descriptions and spoken content.
News and trade press, especially for ChatGPT, which leans on news publishers.
Review platforms your buyers use.

A mention without a link on a page like this can be worth more for AI than a link from a high-DR page nobody reads. If people already mention you without linking, my guide to turning unlinked brand mentions into links shows how to follow up.

How I would adjust a link-building plan for AI visibility

I would not throw out link building. I would change the targets. Here is how the shift looks.

Old way of choosing a link	AI-aware way of choosing a link
Highest Domain Rating I can get	Pages that rank, get traffic and get cited for my topics
Any anchor text, often keyword-rich	My brand named in a sentence that explains what we do
Homepage or money page as target	The specific guide or product page that answers a question
One-off guest posts on general sites	Repeated mentions across niche media, lists and communities
Report: links built, average DR	Report: mentions earned, citations, AI share of answers

And here is the process, step by step:

Collect your questions. List 30 to 50 questions buyers ask. Run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google.
Record the cited pages. Note every third-party URL cited, and which brands each one names.
Score each page. Give points for: cited on more than one platform, ranks in Google, names competitors but not you.
Pitch the top pages first. Offer the author something genuinely useful, such as data, a product to test or an expert view. Aim for a mention with context, and a link if it fits naturally.
Keep normal link earning going for the pages you need ranked, using the tactics in my link building strategies guide.
Re-run the questions monthly and track changes in mentions and citations.

A worked example of a budget split

This is a hypothetical example. An online kitchenware shop spends a fixed monthly budget that used to buy about 10 guest-post links on general home sites, chosen mainly for DR.

Under an AI-aware plan, the shop splits the same effort three ways: about 40% on outreach to the 15 “best knife set” and “best cookware for beginners” articles that ChatGPT and Perplexity cite most; about 30% on digital PR (a small survey of home cooks offered to food journalists); and about 30% on links to its two buying guides that sit on page two of Google.

After three months, the shop would judge success by: how many cited articles now name it, whether the buying guides reached page one, and its share of AI answers for 40 tracked questions. The DR of new links becomes a secondary detail.

Link tactics that now carry extra risk

When people hear “mentions matter,” some rush to manufacture them. Be careful. Google's spam policies (updated August 2026) define link spam as creating links “primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings,” and list examples including:

Buying or selling links for ranking purposes.
Advertorials where payment is received for articles with links that pass ranking credit.
Low-quality directory or bookmark site links.
Forum comments with optimised links in the post or signature.
Creating low-value content mainly to manipulate linking and ranking signals.

Since links help AI visibility mainly through rankings, losing rankings to a spam action hurts you twice. The same goes for spammy forum posts: communities spot and remove them, and they can damage how your brand is described. Read my notes on link building after Google's link spam updates before trying anything aggressive. Listing yourself first in your own “best of” articles is another grey area, which I examine in ranking yourself #1 in your own lists.

What to report to clients instead of Domain Rating alone

If you run link building for clients, or you buy it, the report needs to change. DR on its own tells you little about AI visibility. Here is what I would add.

Metric	What it shows	How often
Brand mentions earned (linked and unlinked)	Growth in the signal most tied to AI visibility	Monthly
Mentions on AI-cited pages	Whether outreach is hitting pages AI actually reads	Monthly
Branded anchor share	Links that name the brand in context	Quarterly
Rankings of linked target pages	Whether links are helping pages enter the AI source pool	Monthly
AI share of answers for tracked questions	The end result	Monthly
AI referral visits and conversions	Business value	Monthly

For more on choosing the right numbers, see my guide to link building KPIs.

Open questions the research has not answered yet

I want to be honest about what we still do not know.

Page-level links. Ahrefs' top-50 study used domain-level metrics only. We do not yet have strong public data on whether links to a specific page make that page more likely to be cited.
Cause and effect. Every study so far is correlation. Big, popular sites have more of everything, so it is hard to isolate links.
Training vs live search. Links may matter more for live search citations and less for what a model “remembers.” The studies do not separate the two cleanly.
Platform drift. Semrush saw Reddit fall from close to 60% of ChatGPT responses to around 10% in a few weeks in 2025. Sources change fast, so today's best targets may shift.

Until better data arrives, I suggest a balanced plan: keep earning quality links to the pages you need ranked, and shift a good share of effort toward being mentioned in the places AI reads.

Questions people ask about backlinks and AI visibility

Do backlinks help you get mentioned in ChatGPT?

Indirectly, yes. Links help your pages rank and get found, and ChatGPT's live search leans on search results. But in Ahrefs' data, domain-level link strength showed no relationship with how often top sites were mentioned in ChatGPT (correlation 0.01).

Is Domain Rating useless for AI visibility?

Not useless, but weak. In Ahrefs' 75,000-brand study, DR correlated 0.326 with AI Overview mentions, about half the strength of branded web mentions (0.664). Use it as one input, not the goal.

Are unlinked brand mentions worth chasing now?

Yes. AI models read text, not just links, so a mention of your brand in a relevant article can shape what assistants say about you even without a link. A linked mention is still better, because it also helps rankings and discovery.

Should I stop building links and only do PR?

No. Keep earning links to the pages you want found and ranked, but choose link targets that also give you a real mention in context. In practice, good digital PR does both.

How long before link building shows up in AI answers?

Live search can pick up a newly linked and newly ranking page within weeks. Changing what a model remembers about your brand from training takes much longer, often months, because it depends on training updates.

Our approach to link building when AI answers matter

So, do backlinks still matter for AI visibility? Yes, but not the way many people think. Domain-level link scores barely predict which brands AI mentions. Branded web mentions do much better. Links still help you get found and ranked, and ranking is how most pages enter the pool that AI draws from. The smart move is to earn links that also name your brand on pages AI already reads.

To see how each assistant picks different sources, read why each AI assistant cites different sources, and for a list of sources you can realistically influence, see which AI citation sources you can influence.

If you would like a link and PR plan built for both Google and AI answers, our team can help. Read about our digital PR for AI search and SEO services, or get a free quote.

Sources for this backlinks and AI visibility guide

#backlinks #link building #ai visibility #brand mentions

Written byRohit ChoudharyCo-Founder, My SEO Experts

Rohit Choudhary is the co-founder of My SEO Experts and has more than 14 years of hands-on experience in SEO, paid advertising and digital marketing. Since starting out in 2011 he has helped hundreds of businesses grow through practical, data-driven search strategies, and he also serves as a consulting Digital Marketing Director for several US-based companies.

Website All articles by Rohit →

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Do Backlinks Still Matter for AI Visibility?