Getting included in a “best [X]” listicle has become table stakes for AI search. But inclusion alone doesn’t decide whether ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overview will actually name you. We wanted to measure how much your position in the list matters.
We analyzed 12,564 listicles cited by AI and measured how often a listed brand was named, based on its slot in the article, across ChatGPT and Google AI Overview.
The drop-off by position is steep
A brand at #1 is named 86% of the time in ChatGPT and 77% in Google AI Overview. By #4 that’s 61% and 53%. In the 10–14 range it falls to about 22% and 21%, and past #15 to roughly 10–12%. Being #2 in a list and being #8 in the same list are very different outcomes.
Is it just that stronger brands rank higher?
A fair objection: maybe bigger brands simply land in higher slots, and position is incidental. So we held the brand constant and compared the same brand across different listicles, scoring each slot against that brand’s own average mention rate.
For one and the same brand, the top slot ran about +17 points above its own baseline, while the #15+ range sat about −20 points below it. Position moved the outcome even holding the brand constant. The effect held after removing self-published lists, and appeared across roughly 75% of brands in the dataset.
Both position and brand strength matter
The brands named most often tend to have both a strong slot and existing brand authority. Position is a real, measurable factor, and it is distinct from brand authority — both move how often AI names a brand.
📊 12,564 AI-cited listicles · ChatGPT + Google AI Overview · named-rate by position · within-brand comparison against each brand’s own average · self-published lists excluded · effect present across ~75% of brands.
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