Search for how to appear in ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews and you will meet two camps. One says backlinks still decide everything. The other says links are dead and brand mentions are the new currency. Both cite data. We read the studies and Google's own pages on 27 October 2026 to see what each one shows.
The short answer: the studies disagree with each other, none of them tests cause, and Google names no link requirement for its AI features. Below, four popular claims get checked against the text.
What the studies measured
On 12 December 2025 Ahrefs published a study of 75,000 brands. It used the Spearman correlation, a score that shows how closely two lists rise and fall together, between a set of factors and how often each brand was mentioned in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews. Its text reports "very weak correlations between link metrics" (backlinks and URL rating) and brand mentions in all three. The strongest factor was YouTube mentions (about 0.737). Among web factors, branded web mentions scored highest, at 0.709 for AI Mode.
Three limits matter. The sample holds only domains with a Domain Rating above 40. The outcome is brand mentions, not links cited in answers. And Ahrefs sells both backlink tools and the Brand Radar tool used here.
Other studies point in other directions:
| Study | Measured | What the text says about links |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs, 26 May 2025 | Brand mentions in AI Overviews | Backlinks 0.218, referring domains 0.295, Domain Rating 0.326: "moderate to weak" |
| SALT.agency, Dec 2025 | Mentions and citations, 5,825 URLs on travel and content-heavy sites | ChatGPT backlinks 0.39 ("Moderate"); AI Overviews Domain Rating 0.25 ("Weak") |
| Semrush, 16 Oct 2025 | Domain mentions, 1,000 domains | Authority Score against mentions: Spearman 0.57 |
| SE Ranking, 24 Nov 2025 | Domain citations in ChatGPT, 129,000 domains | Referring domains rank first in a model of feature importance |
These are different outcomes, platforms and methods, so the numbers do not line up. Authority Score is a composite metric, and our post on why DR, DA and Authority Score disagree explains why such scores are poor stand-ins for "backlinks".
Correlation is not cause
Ahrefs warns its own readers: "The usual disclaimer applies: correlation isn't causation." It adds that this "doesn't mean improving these metrics will automatically boost your AI visibility."
In plain terms: big, well-known brands tend to have many links, many mentions and many searches at once. Brand strength could drive all three. Counting links would then tell you who is already strong, not what made them strong.
David Hume made a similar point in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In Section VII he writes: "We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other." We see one event follow another, over and over. Hume says we never observe the force that joins them. The idea of it comes from habit after repeated pairing (Section VII, Part II), and Section IV shows that reason cannot justify that expectation. A table of correlation coefficients is repeated pairing in spreadsheet form.
Claim check
Claim 1: "Backlinks drive AI citations."
Ahrefs finds very weak links with brand mentions. SALT.agency finds a moderate link for ChatGPT. Semrush finds a link between Authority Score and mentions (Spearman 0.57). SE Ranking ranks referring domains first for ChatGPT citations. No study added links to a site and measured the change. Verdict: Unknown.
Claim 2: "Brand mentions beat backlinks."
In Ahrefs' data, branded web mentions scored 0.709 in AI Mode (YouTube mentions scored higher, about 0.737) while link metrics stayed very weak. In the May 2025 AI Overviews study, web mentions scored 0.664 against 0.218 for backlinks. One caveat: branded anchors, links that use the brand name as text, scored 0.628 in AI Mode. So the data does not say links are irrelevant. Verdict: Supported as a correlation in Ahrefs' DR 40+ sample. Not shown as a cause.
Claim 3: "You need links to appear in AI Overviews."
Google's AI features page, last updated 10 December 2025, says: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." A page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. The page names no external-link requirement. Google also says PageRank continues to be part of its core ranking systems, and that its generative AI features are rooted in those ranking and quality systems. So links may matter indirectly. Google does not say how much. Verdict: Not supported as a requirement.
Claim 4: "You can buy mentions or links to get cited."
Google's AI optimization guide, last updated 10 July 2026, says "seeking inauthentic 'mentions' across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem." Its spam policies, updated 28 August 2026, list "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes" and count attempts to manipulate "generative AI responses in Google Search" as spam. Links qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" are exempt; what nofollow does and does not do is a separate question. Verdict: Not supported. Buying unqualified links is a policy risk.
What we do not know
- Whether links cause AI visibility. Every study here is observational.
- What happens below Domain Rating 40. Ahrefs left those sites out.
- Why ChatGPT results differ. Ahrefs found ChatGPT the weakest on almost every authority signal; SALT.agency found a moderate backlink link for it.
- How much vendor interest shapes results. Ahrefs, Semrush and SE Ranking sell tools, and their conclusions lean toward what those tools measure.
- How Google weighs links inside AI features. Its guide never mentions backlinks.
- How long any of this holds. AI products change, and so do these pages.
The same rule applies to other shortcuts. llms.txt looked like a lever until Google said it does not use the file. For how the terms fit together, see our post on SEO, GEO and SEM.
Verdict
Links alone do not explain who appears in AI answers, no study shows they cause it or that they do not, and buying unqualified links to game those answers falls under Google's link spam policy.
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