If you still think “AI visibility” is one metric, a new Semrush study on manufacturing and industrial search should reset your dashboard.
The headline finding: the brands AI talks about and the sites AI links to are almost entirely different groups. Of the top 15 domains on each list, only two — Vevor and Grainger — show up on both.
AI Overviews are eating the industrial SERP
Across a set of 458 manufacturing and industrial keywords, Semrush found AI Overviews appeared on 57% of tracked search volume in July 2026, up from 38% in January — a 19-point jump in seven months.
And this isn’t just “what is a transformer” territory. Overviews showed up on narrow product queries like “pneumatic cylinder” and part numbers such as “csla2gf”, plus branded searches like “National Instruments”.
Translation for anyone selling considered, technical products: the answer box is now standing in front of your product pages, even for bottom-funnel intent.
But the AI traffic isn’t there yet
Here’s the counterweight. Clickstream data showed AI Mode and AI assistants combined sent just 0.48% of all sessions to manufacturing sites. Direct and organic search still account for close to 80%.
The interesting movement is underneath: direct traffic share is growing while organic search is declining. Same demand, different route.
Semrush ties this to survey data from 600+ B2B professionals showing buyers already use AI to shortlist vendors on purchases over $1,000 — then follow up with a Google search or a direct visit to a brand the AI named. Gaetano DiNardi’s term for that untrackable gap, quoted in the study, is the “dark SEO funnel”.
So if your GA4 report shows nothing from ChatGPT, that’s not proof the channel is dead. Watch branded search and direct instead.
Mentions follow authority. Citations don’t.
The top-mentioned brands were 3M, John Deere and Boeing — legacy names with broad product lines and decades of trust, most founded a century before OpenAI existed. Their Authority Scores were consistently strong.
The top-cited domains were a grab bag: directories, distributors, marketplaces, reference sites. Authority Score was all over the map. The single most-cited source, engineerfix.com, scores just 17. Meanwhile made-in-china.com scored 77 — higher than any of the top-mentioned brands.
The practical read: the work that builds domain authority likely helps you get mentioned. Getting cited is a different game.
ChatGPT and Google are not reading the same internet
Engineerfix is the clearest example. It dominates ChatGPT citations but doesn’t crack the top-cited list on Gemini, AI Mode or AI Overviews at all.
Why? It ranks for only ~3,700 Google keywords with barely any estimated Google traffic — yet pulls close to 300K monthly organic visits. Over 68% comes from DuckDuckGo, Bing and Yahoo. Google is under 2%.
If you’re auditing AI visibility using Google rankings alone, you’re missing the surface that feeds OpenAI.
Citations only convert when there’s a next step
Being cited doesn’t equal traffic. Engineerfix leads on citations but gets a fraction of the AI-referred visits that lower-ranked domains pull. Grainger, made-in-china.com and rsc.org see far more.
The pattern is about intent-to-action:
- Marketplace and distributor citations convert — Grainger’s top AI-traffic page is a Motorola two-way radio product page. There’s an order to place.
- Original research converts — rsc.org gets cited on periodic-table element pages, but earns clicks on peer-reviewed papers about PFAS chemistry and biodegradable coatings. AI can’t replicate that depth.
- Generic reference content doesn’t — if the AI answer fully summarises your page, nobody clicks through.
Your action plan
Three moves from the study, in order of leverage:
- Build topical authority and brand reputation the old-fashioned way — that’s what drives mentions.
- Find the domains AI cites most in your niche (distributors, directories, vertical marketplaces) and get placement or partnerships there.
- Publish content AI can’t compress: proprietary data, spec-level detail, original research, real product pages.
It’s early. But the SEO fundamentals you already own are the foundation of whatever comes next.
Source: Semrush Blog
