As AI driven discovery reshapes how consumers evaluate brands, visibility inside generative search results is quickly becoming a defining factor in digital marketing success. Semrush has announced the launch of the AI Visibility Awards, a new recognition program designed to honor brands that consistently earn trust and visibility across leading AI search experiences. The announcement signals a growing shift in the MarTech ecosystem toward measuring success beyond traditional rankings and into AI generated answers.
Semrush, a publicly traded online visibility management SaaS platform, introduced the AI Visibility Awards to recognize brands that appear most often and most credibly within AI powered search environments. As consumers increasingly rely on AI for product research, financial decisions, travel planning, and everyday problem solving, the brands surfaced in those answers are gaining a powerful advantage. However, the company noted that mastering AI search visibility remains challenging, with only forty five percent of marketers globally reporting confidence in their ability to apply AI successfully.
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The AI Visibility Awards aim to spotlight brands that have moved early to experiment, innovate, and adapt their strategies for generative search. Powered by the Semrush Enterprise AI Visibility Index, the program translates one of the industry’s most comprehensive AI search datasets into a benchmark for leadership and performance. Rather than relying on submissions or judging panels, the Awards are based entirely on real user behavior and large language model responses.
“This year marks a turning point in how brands earn visibility,” said Andrew Warden, CMO at Semrush. “The Semrush AI Visibility Awards celebrate the marketing teams who have worked tirelessly to crack the new code of search and earn trust inside AI-generated answers. This isn’t through submissions or panels, but through real user behavior. We’re proud to recognize the marketers driving this shift and shaping the way discovery now works.”
Semrush reported that a majority of the inaugural winners are existing customers, reinforcing a broader trend that brands investing in advanced visibility intelligence are progressing faster in AI search environments. The Awards evaluate performance across multiple industries including Business and Professional Services, Consumer Electronics, Digital Technology and Software, and Fashion and Apparel, reflecting how AI search dynamics vary by category.
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The underlying AI Visibility Index analyzes responses from more than two thousand five hundred real prompts across platforms such as ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Using data collected between August and December 2025, Semrush assessed brand presence based on share of voice, sentiment signals, and the diversity of authoritative sources cited. This approach allowed the company to identify leadership, momentum, and emerging challengers within AI driven discovery.
Beyond individual recognition, the AI Visibility Awards reveal how competition is evolving in generative search. Established leaders tend to show stability in AI share of voice, while niche focused brands can achieve outsized visibility through concentrated relevance. At the same time, newer entrants are finding opportunities to break through by aligning closely with user intent and innovation.
For marketers, the launch of the AI Visibility Awards underscores a critical shift in how success is measured in the age of AI search. As discovery continues to move toward generative answers, understanding and optimizing for AI visibility is becoming essential.
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