SEO & GAIO Authority

Organic visibility is no longer won by whoever can build the most links or publish the most articles. In 2026, search performance is increasingly determined ...

SEO & GAIO Authority

Organic visibility is no longer won by whoever can build the most links or publish the most articles. In 2026, search performance is increasingly determined by whether Google and AI systems recognise you as a legitimate authority with real-world reputation.

Google’s AI Overviews now appear in around half of all searches and are associated with 20–40% traffic drops for many sites, while zero-click behaviour has climbed toward 60% of queries. (Source: Heroic Rankings) When an Overview appears, users often never scroll to traditional results at all.

In that environment, brand authority is no longer a nice-to-have. It is the filter that decides who still gets seen.

The Impact Of AI Overviews On Organic Search Visibility

Multiple 2025–2026 studies paint a consistent picture:

  • Pages in position 1 lose roughly a third of their click-through rate when AI Overviews fire for the query.
  • Overall CTR on AI Overview SERPs can fall by 60% or more compared with traditional result layouts.
  • Yet brands cited inside the Overview often gain more clicks than non-cited competitors on the same query set.

Seer Interactive’s longitudinal data showed organic CTR on AI Overview queries dropping by more than 60%, but also found that cited brands received over 30% more organic clicks and nearly double the paid clicks versus non-cited peers. (Source: AI SEO Journal) Semrush and others have reported similar patterns around position 1 CTR declines and heightened zero-click behaviour. (Source: Stackmatix)

At the same time, BrightEdge’s tracking shows that AI search referrals remain a small share of total traffic, but are growing quickly, while Google still holds more than 90% of search market share. (Source: BrightEdge) The result is a dual reality:

  • Traditional organic rankings still matter for conversion
  • AI Overviews now act as a parallel visibility layer that selectively amplifies a small set of trusted entities

For SEO teams, the practical question becomes: how do we move from being “one of ten blue links” to one of the few brands machines choose to summarise?

How Google Evaluates Brand Authority In 2026

Google’s public guidance and recent core updates point to three interacting layers of authority.

1. Page-Level Helpfulness

In March 2024 Google folded the Helpful Content system into its core ranking systems. Helpfulness is now a direct ranking concern, not an auxiliary classifier. (Source: Amsive) Later updates in 2025 continued raising the baseline quality bar across more niches, not only classic YMYL categories. (Source: Core Media)

Pages must clearly satisfy intent with original analysis, specific detail and evidence, not generic summaries or scaled content.

2. E‑E‑A‑T And Lived Expertise

Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines expanded E‑A‑T into E‑E‑A‑T in late 2022: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust. (Source: Google Search Central) Raters are instructed to value first-hand, lived experience alongside formal credentials, particularly for reviews, tutorials and product comparisons. (Source: Search Engine Land)

In practice this means:

  • Named authors with biographies, credentials and real case work
  • Content that demonstrates “having done the thing”, not just quoting others
  • Transparent sources, clear disclaimers and accurate referencing

3. Entity-Based Authority

Google increasingly models the world as entities and relationships, not isolated pages. Tools that surface Knowledge Graph entries for brands and people illustrate how Google assigns entity types, canonical “homes” and confidence scores that influence knowledge panels and AI summaries. (Source: Warren Hance SEO)

Authority is therefore measured not only by backlinks, but by how consistently you appear as a coherent entity across:

  • Your site and schema
  • Authoritative media and niche publications
  • Structured profiles and directories
  • Reviews, forums and social platforms

This is where Reddit, G2, Quora and LinkedIn become strategically important.

Why Reddit Is So Prominent In Search And AI Answers

If you have noticed Reddit ranking conspicuously in Google results and appearing frequently in AI summaries, you are not imagining it.

Sistrix data reported by eMarketer showed Reddit’s Google SEO visibility increasing more than tenfold between mid‑2023 and spring 2024, partly due to Google’s effort to surface more “hidden gems” from forums and Q&A sites. (Source: eMarketer) Independent analyses of SERPs have documented how Reddit and similar user-generated platforms now occupy more page‑one positions for informational queries, especially where lived experience matters. (Source: Orange SEO)

On the AI side, Semrush’s 2025 study of more than 100 million AI citations found Reddit and LinkedIn among the five most-cited domains across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity. (Source: Semrush) Business Insider has also reported Reddit as one of the top sources feeding Google’s AI Overviews, supported by a formal data licensing agreement between the two companies. (Source: Business Insider)

Reddit ranks well because it produces what current systems are optimised to reward: detailed, experience-rich, multi-perspective discussions that feel authentic rather than commercially polished.

Strategies For Building Category Authority In SEO

Category authority is the degree to which the market implicitly treats your brand as the reference point for understanding a problem space. In an AI-mediated search world, that status makes machines more likely to quote you when they explain the category itself.

Practical moves:

  1. Define the canonical explanationsCreate in-depth, explanation-first resources for the core “What is X?”, “How does X work?” and “X vs Y” questions in your domain. These pieces should be author-led, richly referenced and designed to be quotable by analysts and journalists.
  2. Model the topic as entities, not keywordsMap key entities (problems, solutions, personas, tools) and build content that clarifies how they relate. Use schema to reflect that model for crawlers.
  3. Consolidate thin or overlapping contentThe Helpful Content integration punishes sites that spread a topic across many near-duplicates. Fewer, higher-quality nodes of explanation generally outperform scattered fragments. (Source: Core Media)
  4. Publish original data and perspectivesProprietary benchmarks, field experiments and case studies tend to earn links, mentions and citations, which strengthen both traditional and AI authority.

How To Improve Brand Mentions For AI Search Engines

Generative search tools are now influencing a significant minority of organic discovery, with some analyses projecting that AI platforms could influence more than 14% of organic traffic by 2026. (Source: Wikipedia) Yet most AI interfaces surface only a handful of cited brands per query.

To increase the odds that your brand is one of them:

  1. Target the domains AI already trustsBrightEdge’s research shows that a large share of AI citations come from news media, niche publishers, forums and review platforms, with LinkedIn and Reddit alone supplying nearly 10% in some verticals. (Source: BrightEdge) Prioritise earned coverage and expert contributions where AI models already look for evidence.
  2. Systematise reviews on high-signal platformsG2 reports that roughly two-thirds of buyers are influenced by online reviews, with even larger effects for high-ticket products. (Source: G2) For B2B SaaS and services, consistent, specific reviews on G2, Capterra or industry-equivalents form a durable authority footprint that LLMs can ingest.
  3. Participate in communities with lived expertiseStructured, non-promotional participation in relevant subreddits, specialist forums and LinkedIn conversations creates exactly the sort of detailed, experience-led content AI systems prefer to summarise.
  4. Make entity signals unambiguousAlign naming, descriptions and homepage URLs across your site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, review profiles and media mentions so that Google’s Knowledge Graph has a single, consistent entity to attach those mentions to.
  5. Measure AI visibility explicitlyTreat generative engine optimisation as a measurable channel, not a vague by-product of SEO. Track when, where and how often ChatGPT, Gemini and others cite or recommend your brand, then tie that back to specific content and off-site assets.

Turning Authority Into Measurable AI Visibility With RankBee

Authority is now the organising principle that connects traditional SEO, digital PR and generative engine optimisation (GAIO & AEO). Strong brands with clear entities, expert-led content and rich external validation are the ones that continue to surface in both organic listings and AI Overviews.

RankBee is built for that reality. Our platform analyses how often and where AI systems mention your brand, compares that to competitors, then helps you optimise on-site content and off-site signals so you are more likely to be cited when buyers ask questions in ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Overviews. (Source: RankBee)

If you want to understand your current authority footprint across AI search, start with a free visibility test and a live walkthrough with our team.