Search is changing quickly.
For more than two decades, businesses have invested in SEO to improve their visibility in Google and other traditional search engines. Content, technical SEO and backlinks have formed the foundations of most successful organic search strategies.
But people are no longer discovering businesses exclusively through traditional search results.
Platforms such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity can answer questions directly, often using information gathered from multiple websites across the web.
This has created an entirely new battleground for businesses.
Instead of asking only:
“How do we rank higher in Google?”
Brands increasingly need to ask:
“How do we get mentioned, recommended or cited by AI?”
And that raises an important question for anyone investing in SEO.
Does link building help you rank in AI search?
The short answer is yes, link building can contribute to your visibility in AI search, but not necessarily in exactly the same way that backlinks have traditionally influenced Google rankings.
There is currently no universal “AI backlink ranking factor”. Different AI platforms retrieve, interpret and cite information differently. However, backlinks, editorial coverage, brand mentions and third-party authority can all contribute to the wider signals surrounding a website and brand.
Understanding that distinction is going to become increasingly important for SEO.
What Is AI Search?
AI search refers to search experiences where artificial intelligence generates or synthesises an answer rather than simply returning a traditional list of webpages.
Traditional search might return ten webpages for a query such as:
“What are the best running shoes for a marathon?”
An AI-powered search experience might instead analyse information from numerous sources and produce a response explaining several recommended shoes, their advantages and disadvantages and which runners they might suit.
It may then provide citations or links to the sources used to produce that answer.
That fundamentally changes the objective for website owners.
Ranking first is no longer the only prize.
Your website could become a source used to construct the answer.
Your company could be mentioned as a recommended brand.
Your research could be cited.
Your product could appear within a comparison.
Your statistics could become evidence supporting the response.
This emerging discipline is frequently referred to as Generative Engine Optimisation or GEO, although the principles overlap heavily with traditional SEO.
Google itself says that established SEO best practices remain relevant to its generative AI search experiences because these experiences are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems.
How Does AI Search Find Information?
To understand the relationship between link building and AI search, it helps to understand how AI search engines obtain information.
There is a common misconception that platforms such as ChatGPT simply answer every question using information contained within their original training data.
Modern AI search can also retrieve current information from the web.
One method used by AI search systems is retrieval augmented generation, commonly shortened to RAG.
Rather than relying exclusively on what a model already knows, the system can retrieve relevant external information and use it to help generate an answer.
Google explains that its generative AI search features use grounding and retrieval techniques to find relevant and up-to-date webpages from its Search index. It can also use “query fan-out”, where the system performs multiple related searches to gather information covering different aspects of the original question.
This has significant implications for SEO.
Your content first needs to be discoverable.
Then it needs to be relevant.
Then it needs to be considered useful enough to retrieve.
And ultimately, it needs to provide information worth incorporating or citing within the generated response.
That creates several different layers of AI search optimisation.
Do Backlinks Directly Make You Rank in AI Search?
This is where things become more complicated.
There is currently no evidence that all major AI platforms operate a simple system where:
More backlinks = more AI citations.
AI search platforms have different retrieval systems, models, indexes and methods for selecting sources.
It would therefore be misleading to claim that obtaining 100 backlinks will automatically make your company appear more frequently in ChatGPT.
However, that doesn't mean backlinks are irrelevant.
Far from it.
The relationship between backlinks and AI visibility is more likely to be both direct and indirect depending on the platform involved.
Consider what a good backlink can achieve.
It can help search engines discover pages.
It can improve traditional organic search visibility.
It can establish contextual relationships between websites and topics.
It can create third-party references to a company.
It can place brands within relevant editorial content.
It can generate referral traffic.
And importantly, link building often creates something much broader than a backlink.
It creates mentions of your brand across the web.
That wider footprint is potentially extremely valuable in an AI-driven search environment.
Google AI Search Makes the Connection Particularly Interesting
Google provides one of the clearest examples of why traditional SEO and AI search shouldn't be treated as completely separate disciplines.
Google states that SEO remains relevant to generative AI search because features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode are rooted in its existing Search ranking and quality systems.
Google also explicitly states that it uses links as a signal when determining the relevance of webpages and to discover new pages.
Put those two pieces together and the connection becomes clear.
Backlinks remain part of Google's broader search ecosystem, while Google's AI experiences rely upon that search ecosystem to retrieve relevant information.
That doesn't mean a backlink guarantees inclusion in an AI Overview.
It means the SEO foundations that help make a website authoritative, discoverable and competitive in traditional search can also contribute to its ability to appear within Google's generative search experiences.
Google specifically recommends continuing to focus on established SEO practices rather than chasing supposed GEO hacks.
What About ChatGPT?
ChatGPT Search operates differently from Google, but websites can still be discovered and cited.
OpenAI states that any public website can potentially appear in ChatGPT search.
Website owners should ensure that OAI-SearchBot isn't blocked if they want their content to be discovered and surfaced within ChatGPT search summaries and citations.
Again, this doesn't mean OpenAI has said backlinks are a direct ChatGPT ranking factor.
It hasn't.
But thinking exclusively about direct ranking factors misses the bigger opportunity.
Suppose you operate a specialist cybersecurity company.
Your company website contains detailed information about cybersecurity, but almost nobody else on the web mentions your company.
Now compare that with another cybersecurity business.
That business has been:
quoted in technology publications,
included within cybersecurity comparison articles,
referenced by journalists,
mentioned by industry organisations,
linked to from relevant technology websites,
featured within expert roundups,
and cited as the source of original cybersecurity research.
The second company has a substantially larger independent footprint across the web.
There are simply more sources connecting that business with cybersecurity.
This is where link building starts becoming much more interesting for AI search.
Link Building Is Becoming Authority Building
The term “link building” can sometimes create the wrong impression.
Old-fashioned link building was frequently treated as a numbers game.
Find websites.
Check their authority metric.
Acquire backlinks.
Repeat.
AI search gives businesses another reason to move away from this mentality.
The objective shouldn't simply be accumulating hyperlinks.
The objective should be establishing authority across the web.
A strong modern link building campaign can create a network of independent references connecting a company with its specialist subject.
Imagine a mortgage broker that consistently receives coverage from:
property publications,
personal finance websites,
regional newspapers,
mortgage industry publications,
financial journalists,
house-buying websites,
and national news organisations.
Those placements may produce valuable backlinks.
But they also do something else.
They create hundreds of contextual relationships between the company and mortgages, property and personal finance.
That wider authority footprint is increasingly important when people are discovering brands through AI-generated answers.
Brand Mentions Could Matter Alongside Links
This leads to another important development.
SEOs should increasingly think about mentions as well as backlinks.
Imagine your business appears within a highly authoritative industry publication.
Scenario one contains a followed backlink.
Scenario two contains a nofollow backlink.
Scenario three contains your company name but no hyperlink.
From a traditional link-building perspective, these placements may have different SEO value.
From a broader AI visibility perspective, however, all three create information about your brand on a third-party website.
The article may establish:
who your company is,
what industry you operate in,
what services you provide,
where you operate,
what your specialists know,
and what subjects you're associated with.
This is why the boundaries between SEO, link building, digital PR and brand marketing are beginning to blur.
The backlink still matters.
But the context surrounding that backlink matters too.
Third-Party Coverage May Be Particularly Important
One of the most interesting areas of emerging AI search research concerns earned media.
A 2025 research paper examining generative search across different verticals found a strong tendency towards third-party earned media within AI search compared with brand-owned and social content. The researchers argued that brands seeking AI visibility should pay particular attention to authoritative third-party coverage.
This makes intuitive sense.
Suppose somebody asks:
“What are the best accounting software platforms for small UK businesses?”
Every accounting software company will naturally claim that its own product is excellent.
Independent comparison sites, technology publications, accountants and business publications provide another perspective.
This means being mentioned on other websites could become just as strategically important as optimising your own.
This is exactly where digital PR and high-quality link building intersect with Generative Engine Optimisation.
AI Search Is About Citations as Well as Rankings
Traditional SEO provides us with familiar metrics.
Keyword rankings.
Organic traffic.
Clicks.
Impressions.
Conversions.
AI search introduces another increasingly important metric:
Citations.
Instead of asking:
“What position do we rank?”
Businesses can begin asking:
“How often does AI cite us as a source?”
Microsoft has already moved strongly in this direction.
Bing Webmaster Tools introduced AI Performance reporting in 2026, allowing website owners to understand how their content is cited across AI-generated experiences including Microsoft Copilot and Bing.
Microsoft subsequently expanded this with metrics including Citation Share, showing the proportion of citations a website receives for particular grounding queries.
This provides an early indication of how SEO reporting could evolve.
Traditional rankings aren't disappearing.
But AI citations, mentions and recommendation frequency are becoming additional visibility metrics.
Links Can Help Content Become Discoverable
One of the oldest purposes of links is discovery.
Search engines crawl links between webpages to discover new content.
Google explicitly states that links help it find pages to crawl.
AI search still relies heavily on information retrieval.
If content cannot be discovered, crawled or indexed, its chances of appearing within search-generated answers are naturally limited.
Google requires pages to be indexed and eligible for normal Search snippets before they can appear as supporting links within AI Overviews or AI Mode.
OpenAI similarly advises website owners not to block OAI-SearchBot if they want content discoverable within ChatGPT search.
Link building can therefore contribute to the overall discoverability of content while strengthening its position within the wider web.
Relevance Matters More Than Simply Getting Links
If you're building links with AI search visibility in mind, relevance should become one of your most important considerations.
Imagine two backlink opportunities for a golf equipment retailer.
Website A has a very high third-party authority metric but predominantly covers cryptocurrency.
Website B has slightly lower metrics but publishes extensively about golf equipment, golf courses, professional tournaments and golf instruction.
Website B potentially provides much more useful context.
Why?
Because the entire environment surrounding the link reinforces what the business is about.
This is important for traditional SEO and increasingly logical for AI search.
The goal isn't simply to tell the internet:
“This website is popular.”
You also want to establish:
“This website is authoritative about this particular subject.”
Topical Authority Is Becoming More Important
This is why topical authority should form part of any modern link-building strategy.
If your business sells running equipment, you ideally want your brand appearing throughout the running ecosystem.
That might include:
running magazines,
fitness websites,
marathon websites,
sports publications,
running clubs,
health publications,
shoe reviews,
training resources,
and relevant news publications.
The same principle applies to almost every industry.
A casino comparison website would benefit from relevant gambling, entertainment and sports betting publications.
A financial technology company would benefit from finance, technology, investment and business publications.
A travel company would benefit from travel publications, destination websites and lifestyle media.
Relevance helps reinforce the relationship between your brand and the subjects you want to own.
Digital PR Could Be One of the Strongest AI Search Strategies
Digital PR becomes particularly interesting when viewed through an AI search lens.
Traditional digital PR usually aims to generate:
media coverage,
backlinks,
brand awareness,
referral traffic,
and improved organic visibility.
Now we can add another potential benefit:
AI visibility.
Imagine an insurance company analyses five years of vehicle theft data and creates a study revealing the UK locations with the highest rates of car theft.
Journalists cover the research.
Local newspapers reference it.
Automotive websites discuss it.
Insurance publications link to it.
National media outlets quote the findings.
The company has now created an extensive footprint around subjects including:
car theft,
vehicle security,
insurance,
crime statistics,
and automotive risk.
This is significantly more powerful than placing a random guest post simply because a website has a high authority score.
The campaign has created genuine information that other websites want to reference.
That is the direction link building should increasingly move towards.
Original Research Gives AI Something to Cite
If you want AI systems to cite your website, give them information worth citing.
This sounds obvious, but it's something many SEO strategies overlook.
Hundreds of websites publish articles titled:
“10 Benefits of Link Building.”
Most contain essentially the same information.
There is little reason for an AI system to specifically require the 247th version of that article.
Now imagine Press Parrot analysed 100,000 backlink placements and published:
“The 2027 Link Building Report.”
The report might reveal:
average guest post prices by industry,
average website authority,
average publisher response rates,
which industries charge the most,
how prices have changed,
average turnaround times,
the percentage of publishers accepting commercial content,
and differences between UK and US publishers.
That is unique information.
Other websites can cite it.
Journalists can reference it.
SEOs can discuss it.
AI platforms can potentially use it when answering questions.
This is where content marketing, digital PR and AI search optimisation become extremely powerful together.
Make Your Content Easy to Cite
Being authoritative isn't enough.
Your information also needs to be easy to extract and understand.
Recent research into citation behaviour across AI systems found topical relevance to be one of the strongest factors influencing which retrieved source was cited first. The same research found benefits from factors such as freshness, completeness and trust signals, although effects varied.
Another 2026 study examining AI citations found that pages with strong citation influence tended to be structured, semantically aligned with the query and rich in extractable evidence such as definitions, numerical facts, comparisons and procedural information.
There is an important practical lesson here.
Don't bury useful information.
If you have statistics, display them clearly.
If you're answering a question, provide a direct answer.
If you're comparing products, consider a clear comparison table.
If you're publishing research, explain the methodology.
If you're providing instructions, structure them logically.
If you're defining something, provide a concise definition.
Write for humans first, but make your information straightforward to understand.
Build Links to Your Most Valuable Resources
Another mistake businesses make is sending almost every backlink to their homepage.
Your homepage matters, but it isn't necessarily your most useful AI citation target.
Build links to valuable resources too.
For example:
original research,
industry reports,
statistics pages,
calculators,
tools,
databases,
detailed guides,
surveys,
comparison pages,
and expert resources.
If you've invested significant time producing the best resource in your industry but nobody knows it exists, strategic link building and digital PR can help it gain visibility.
Link Building Can Strengthen Traditional Rankings and AI Visibility Together
Businesses don't need to choose between SEO and GEO.
In many cases, the strategies complement one another.
A relevant editorial backlink can contribute to traditional organic performance.
The article containing that backlink creates another third-party reference to your brand.
The publisher may itself appear in AI search.
Your improved organic rankings may increase the likelihood of your content being discovered.
The referral traffic may generate additional brand searches.
Journalists may discover your research.
Other websites may subsequently reference it.
The result is a flywheel.
Better content generates coverage.
Coverage generates links.
Links improve discoverability and authority.
Greater visibility creates additional mentions.
Those mentions expand your footprint across the web.
AI search adds another potential discovery channel to that ecosystem.
What Types of Links Are Best for AI Search?
There is no universal “AI backlink”.
You don't need to start purchasing a special category of links labelled “GEO links”.
Instead, focus on the characteristics of genuinely useful placements.
A strong link-building opportunity will typically have several of the following characteristics:
Relevance to your business or subject.
A genuine audience.
Original editorial content.
Organic search visibility.
Topical authority.
Clear editorial standards.
Real authors or contributors.
Relevant surrounding content.
Natural contextual placement.
Traffic from the countries important to your business.
A credible history as a publication or website.
These qualities were valuable before AI search existed.
AI search simply gives businesses another reason to prioritise them.
Are High DR Links Enough?
No.
Metrics such as Domain Rating, Domain Authority and Authority Score can be useful for quickly evaluating websites.
But they shouldn't become the entire link-building strategy.
Third-party SEO metrics aren't direct measurements of how ChatGPT, Google AI Mode or another AI system evaluates a website.
A DR 80 website isn't automatically an excellent AI visibility opportunity.
Likewise, a DR 35 specialist publication isn't automatically a poor one.
Consider relevance, audience, content quality, visibility and editorial context alongside authority metrics.
A niche website that is genuinely recognised within your industry may be extremely valuable even if its headline SEO metric isn't enormous.
What About Nofollow Links?
Nofollow links shouldn't automatically be dismissed when thinking about wider visibility.
Traditional SEO practitioners often focus heavily on whether links are followed.
That's understandable when PageRank transfer is one of the primary objectives.
But a nofollow link on a major publication can still:
generate referral traffic,
create brand exposure,
associate your company with a subject,
lead to secondary coverage,
help journalists discover you,
and create another independent reference to your brand.
AI search should encourage marketers to evaluate placements more holistically.
The question becomes less:
“Is this followed?”
And more:
“Does appearing here strengthen our presence within this industry?”
What About Unlinked Brand Mentions?
The same principle applies to unlinked mentions.
If your company is consistently referenced across authoritative websites within your industry, that creates a substantial body of third-party information about your business.
This doesn't mean an unlinked mention should automatically be treated as equivalent to a backlink for traditional SEO.
It shouldn't.
But AI search expands the definition of online visibility.
Being discussed can have value independently of receiving PageRank.
The ideal strategy is therefore not backlinks versus mentions.
It's building a combination of authoritative links, citations, references, media coverage and brand mentions.
Can You Buy Links to Rank in ChatGPT?
Be extremely cautious about anyone guaranteeing this.
There is currently no legitimate formula such as:
“Buy ten DR 70 links and rank number one in ChatGPT.”
AI responses can vary depending on:
the prompt,
the model,
the platform,
the user's location,
freshness,
available sources,
query wording,
search retrieval,
and numerous other factors.
There isn't necessarily even a permanent “number one position” to rank for.
A better strategy is to increase the probability that your business becomes discoverable, credible and relevant across the web.
Link building can be one component of achieving that.
How to Build Links for AI Search
A sensible AI-focused link-building strategy should combine several disciplines.
Start by identifying the topics where you want your company to become authoritative.
Then determine which websites, publishers, journalists and communities influence those topics.
Create resources worth referencing.
Build relationships with relevant publishers.
Earn editorial coverage.
Contribute genuine expertise.
Produce original data.
Secure contextual links.
Generate brand mentions.
Strengthen your own topical content.
Ensure important pages are crawlable.
And monitor where your brand appears within AI-generated responses.
The objective isn't manipulating an LLM.
It's making your company genuinely difficult to ignore within its industry.
How to Measure AI Search Visibility
AI search measurement is still developing rapidly.
However, there are already several useful approaches.
Track referral traffic from AI platforms in your analytics.
Monitor your brand name alongside important commercial prompts.
Record whether your company is:
mentioned,
recommended,
linked,
or cited.
Monitor the URLs being selected.
Compare your visibility with competitors.
Track changes over time rather than relying on one-off tests.
Bing Webmaster Tools now provides AI citation reporting directly, making it possible to understand which pages receive citations and how visibility changes across Microsoft's AI experiences.
Google is similarly expanding reporting around its generative AI search experiences.
AI visibility will almost certainly become a more standard part of SEO reporting.