Search is evolving faster than ever. With millions turning to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity instead of Google, the rules of search have changed. Brands aren’t just fighting for blue links anymore. They’re competing for AI mentions inside conversational answers and summaries generated by large language models (LLMs). These are the places where you can get cited, making it crucial to monitor how and when your brand appears.

Importance of AI mentions in 2026:

AI mentions are important because they highly impact users’ buying decisions and directly affect your brand’s visibility. In both ways – good and bad.

AI can omit your brand, recommend competitors by default, or compress your features into the wrong story. That’s why it’s important to monitor and improve your brand’s visibility in AI tools.

Especially now, when more and more people turn to AI instead of Google when looking for information.

Fact: Google’s AI Overviews have been shown on 13.14% of search results pages already in March 2025 (Source: Semrush AI Overviews Study).

Google’s AI Overviews are a great example of how new search result formats are changing the landscape.

AI tools now dominate search results, pushing organic results further down the page:

Conclusion

I honestly think that getting mentioned by an AI tool is today what getting a top-3 Google ranking was before AI – an early-mover advantage that compounds over time.