85% of ChatGPT Categories Have No Brand Owner: What the Semrush Study Means for Small Business

A new Semrush study tracked 1,094 U.S. buying categories inside ChatGPT from January through June 2026 and found one clear opportunity: most categories are wide open. If your small business sells a product or service, there is a real chance that no one owns your topic yet in the AI tools your customers already use every day.

What the Semrush Research Actually Found

The study covered more than 50,000 brands and 220,000 domains. For each category, Semrush ran five buyer-style prompts: a definition question, a comparison, an alternatives search, a use-case question, and a purchase-intent question. A brand had to show up in at least four of those five prompts and hold at least a five-percentage-point lead over the next closest competitor to qualify as a category owner.

The results were striking. Only 15.2% of the 1,094 categories had a clear brand owner. Another 31.2% had an emerging leader. The remaining 53.7% had no consistent leader at all. That means more than half of all buying categories studied were completely unsettled after six months of tracking.

For small business owners, that is not a problem. That is an opening.

Citations and Mentions Are Not the Same Thing

Here is a detail worth understanding before you spend time chasing links. The study found that only 21% of the most-cited domains in a category were also the most-mentioned brand. In other words, getting your URL listed as a source at the bottom of a ChatGPT answer does not mean ChatGPT is naming your business in the actual response text buyers read.

Mentions in the answer body are what shape buying decisions. Semrush found that 74% of users in related research chose the top-mentioned brand as their final pick. So the goal is not just to be a footnote. The goal is to be the brand ChatGPT names when a customer asks which business to hire or which product to buy.

Traditional SEO Metrics Do Not Predict AI Visibility

This is the finding that should change how small business owners think about their marketing budget. Semrush tested whether standard SEO metrics predicted ChatGPT category ownership. The results were clear:

• Domain authority scores aligned with category ownership only about half the time.
• Organic traffic showed a similar weak correlation.
• Branded search volume was the only metric that reached statistical significance as a predictor of ChatGPT ownership.

What does that mean in plain terms? A business with modest organic traffic but strong brand recognition in its local market can outrank a larger competitor inside ChatGPT. The playing field for AI visibility is different from the old Google rankings game, and that difference favors focused, well-known local and niche businesses.

Once You Own a Topic, You Tend to Keep It

The study also found that category ownership is sticky once established. Brands with a lead of at least five percentage points retained first place in 90% of month-over-month comparisons. Narrow leads changed hands frequently, but a clear lead held.

That means the businesses that move now, while most categories are still unsettled, have a real chance to lock in a durable position. Waiting until a competitor establishes that lead makes the task considerably harder.

What Small Businesses Should Do Right Now

You do not need an enterprise budget to build AI topic visibility. The tactics that work are the same fundamentals that good web professionals have recommended for years, applied with AI discovery in mind.

• Write answer-ready content. Put a direct answer at the top of each page. Use clear headings. Add FAQ sections that mirror the actual questions buyers type into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
• Keep your business information consistent everywhere. Your name, address, phone number, and business description should match on your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, industry directories, and social profiles. Inconsistent data confuses AI systems and reduces your credibility as a source.
• Build third-party mentions. Press coverage, guest articles, podcast appearances, and reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and industry-specific sites all contribute to the picture AI systems build of your business. The more places your brand name appears in context, the more AI treats you as a known entity.
• Update your content regularly. Perplexity, which performs real-time web searches for every query, has been shown to strongly favor recently published content. Keeping cornerstone pages current signals that your information is reliable.
• Check your robots.txt settings. Some security tools and content delivery networks block AI crawlers by default. If you want visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, make sure those crawlers can actually reach your pages.
• Track branded search volume. Since Semrush found it is the strongest predictor of ChatGPT topic ownership, branded search is the metric to watch. Rising branded searches often follow AI mentions, since users see a business name in an AI answer and then search for it directly.

The Local Business Angle

The Semrush study focused on broad U.S. categories, but the principle applies at the local level too. A Michigan plumber, a Grand Rapids accounting firm, or a Detroit-area marketing agency can work toward topic ownership inside AI answers for geographically specific queries. The competition for those local AI mentions is even thinner than the national data suggests.

AI platforms pull local data heavily, and accuracy matters more than ever. A complete, accurate, and active Google Business Profile is one of the highest-return actions a local business can take for AI visibility right now.

The Bottom Line

The Semrush data tells a straightforward story. Most buying categories inside ChatGPT are up for grabs. Traditional domain authority does not determine who wins. Brands that establish a clear lead tend to hold it. And the businesses moving first have the best shot at owning their category before a competitor does.

If you are not sure how your business shows up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews, or if you want a plan to build topic-level AI visibility for your local market, we can help. Contact us to start the conversation or schedule a call and we will walk through what the opportunity looks like for your specific business.