Hello Lunch Break. Doing a little internal noodling over lunch today. Thinking about two creators that got my attention in the past week. They've been taking up real estate in my brain. Both for different reasons and yet both proving to be memorable. Go check them out and I'll dive into why I loved them a little more below.

Atiya Walcott @atiyawalcottfits Valeria Ramirez @thevaleriaramirez

Alright. Clock's ticking. Back to work.

THE GAME CHANGED

Semrush tracked 1,094 topic categories in ChatGPT every month from January through June, covering more than 50,000 brands. They wanted to know whether anyone actually owns a topic, or whether brands just drift in and out of AI answers.

Only 15.2% of those categories have a clear owner. Another 31.2% have a front runner who hasn't locked it in. And 53.7% are wide open, with nobody showing up in even three of the five.

So roughly 85% of categories have no owner yet. That’s a window for you.

The counterintuitive part: the biggest topics are the emptiest. The half of categories with the most AI search demand had an owner only 11.3% of the time. The topics fewer people asked about, 19%. And the in demand half carries 98% of the search volume in the sample.

Now here's the part that surprised me. Semrush compared every category owner against its runner up on the three metrics you would expect to settle the answer. Branded search volume. Domain authority. Organic traffic. None of them settled it.

Start with organic traffic. The category owner had more of it only 48.4% of the time, which means the runner up had the bigger Google footprint in most of these matchups and lost the category anyway. Domain authority was barely better at 52.5%. Branded search volume was the strongest of the three and it still only put the owner ahead 55.7% of the time.

All three are basically a coin flip.

If you have spent years building SEO strength, none of that is wasted. It helps you get into the answer. It just does not decide who gets named, and the engines are making that call on something else.

The question you must ask yourself is not how much more you can publish. It is which two or three topics you want to be the answer to, and whether you can go deep enough on them to show up on every version of the question instead of one.

Read it: semrush.com/blog/chatgpt-topic-authority-study

Big note here: this is ChatGPT only, US only, and it studies national brand categories, not local businesses. Your bakery is not competing with payroll software. But the mechanics underneath are the same in your market, and the Cited pick below is what it looks like in local.

THE WINDOW IS NOW

Growth Advisor Kevin Indig ran the analysis behind that data and his take is the window of opportunity for anyone reading this. 

Once a brand owns a category, it keeps it. Clear owners held first place in 90.4% of month over month comparisons. The leader did change hands, 1,950 times out of 5,470 comparisons, but almost entirely in categories where the lead was thin.

A brand can be growing and still get passed by someone growing faster.

Which means the 85% number of unclaimed has a shelf life. Every month those categories sit unclaimed is a month where the cost of picking one is as low as it will ever be. Indig's read on it is that the window is open and will not stay open. And, I wholeheartedly agree.

The strategy is not more content. It's narrower content. Pick two or three topics where you already have some signal, real expertise, and something to sell, then go deep enough that you show up on every version of the question instead of one.

Read it: growth-memo.com/p/does-topical-authority-matter-in

YOUR COMPETITORS ARE ASLEEP

If you could put a stake in the ground on one topic in AI platforms, what would it be? 

Keep that topic in mind as you study freelance content creator Atiya Walcott. She is running a masterclass on the tactical approach needed to become the answer and break through the noise. She's doing it on Instagram, not in AI, but the approach is identical.

She's consistent. Most of her reels open against the same sage green wall with the same line: "Hi, I'm Atiya Walcott, and I'm incredibly fashionable." Her audience knows the format before the video starts. The lesson here is your entity signals have to be consistent. AI engines need the same thing from you, described the same way, everywhere you exist online. Not just your website.

She numbers her videos. She's telling you there's more here. Go back, or stay for the next one. That's depth inside one topic instead of one good post about it, and depth inside a topic is precisely what the study says separates an owner from a runner up.

She's memorable. She has style, she's selling style, and one glance at her feed tells you she's a trendsetter. She isn't doing what everyone else is doing. She has a distinctive point of view in the most crowded channel there is, and you land on her page and stay longer than you meant to.

Anyone can repackage what's trending. Very few bring a real take, actual expertise, or hop in a lane nobody else is standing in. AI wants specificity for the same reason people do. There's no reason to name you as the only answer if you sound like everyone else.

Valeria Ramirez, also a content creator, earns my brain space differently. She's meeting her audience in the exact moment we're living in. If you're reading this newsletter because you're curious about AI visibility and this video doesn't make you laugh at how true it is, we're in different universes. Claude Claude Claude. 

WHAT’S THE PROMPT

The study defines an owner as a brand that shows up in four of five questions a buyer asks about a topic: definition, comparison, alternatives, use case, buying question.

So run your own five. This takes about ten minutes.

Run the topic ownership check →

Fill in your business, your city, and the one topic you want to be known for. It writes the five questions, answers all five, and tells you how many named you.

Four or five, you own it. Defend it. One or two, you got lucky on a question, and there's a competitor showing up in the other four who you should go look at.

CITED

AI says: Without Limits

One of my self-care activities is running. Years ago I decided to run my first marathon. I had originally entered the NYC Marathon but if you remember Hurricane Sandy you'll know that didn't end up happening, so I instead registered for Miami's Marathon two months later. My training prep did not account for the difference in running a marathon in November in NYC versus Miami in January. It was hot. I wasn't prepared and I died. You don't know what you don't know. If I were to do it again, I'd find a trainer.

So this week I asked the engines two versions of the same question and watched what changed.

Query one: "personal trainer in wilmington"

Ten different businesses named across the three answers. Matt Johnson, Matt Skelly, Real Results, Wilmington Strength, Women In Strength, NeuStrength, Morgann Swan, Rise Fitness, O2, Crunch. Good businesses with real reviews and 5.0 ratings.

Without Limits is not mentioned.

Query two: "personal trainer in wilmington that can help me train for a marathon"

Without Limits is number one. ChatGPT calls it best overall for marathon training. Gemini leads with it. Perplexity leads with it. 

Same city. Same category. One phrase of specificity and the entire answer changes.

Without Limits didn't win the biggest query in its market. It owns the query where somebody has already decided what they want and is looking for who does it. That's the query that pays.

The trap here is assuming the big query is the valuable one. It's the one with the most volume. It's also the one where you're the eighth name in a list of ten.

You already show up somewhere. The question worth ten minutes this week is whether you show up on the question a customer asks right before they buy.

See you next Thursday.

- Anna

Want to know where you actually stand in AI search? The AI Visibility Audit tells you exactly what the engines say about your business and what to fix.

THE POLL