We wanted a straight answer to a question clients keep asking us: "If I rank well on Google, am I safe?" So we picked 200 real queries across client accounts — a mix of commercial and informational intent — and manually checked both Google's top 10 and ChatGPT's answer every week for three months.
The overlap was lower than we expected. In roughly 38% of queries, the top-ranking Google page's brand was never mentioned in ChatGPT's answer to the same question. Informational queries ("how does X work," "what is Y") had the widest gap — ChatGPT tended to synthesize an answer from Wikipedia-style sources and forums rather than brand content, even when that brand ranked #1 on Google.
Commercial queries ("best X for Y," "X vs Z") had much tighter overlap — around 80% — because comparison-style content tends to get lifted directly into AI answers.
The takeaway we've since built into every content brief: informational content needs a distinct AEO pass (clear definitions, structured facts) separate from the SEO pass, because ranking well in one doesn't guarantee visibility in the other.
Read More : Stop Optimizing for Position #1. Optimize to Be the Answer Instead.
