Search is changing. More and more people are skipping the traditional list of blue links and asking AI assistants like ChatGPT to simply tell them who to hire. For personal injury firms, that raises an urgent question: does the SEO work that wins on Google carry over to AI search?
Despite this shift, little is understood about what determines which companies appear in ChatGPT's search results, and what businesses should do to "rank" in AI-driven search queries.
To answer this question, Lexigate analyzed 10 extremely competitive keywords in the personal injury industry to look for the correlation between the top 3 Google search results and the top 3 results in ChatGPT search.
This is easier said than done. Unlike Google search, ChatGPT has no established keyword research tools. And, as we'll see in a moment, the results ChatGPT displays for the same query are highly volatile at any given moment.
To overcome this obstacle, we paid ten individual freelancers to perform the same set of ten queries in ChatGPT and record what they were shown. We then compared these results to the top Google listings for the same queries using Semrush.
Law firms appearing as Google's #1 organic search result appeared as one of ChatGPT's top 3 results 13% of the time, followed by 9% and 8% for Google's #2 and #3 listings, respectively. In short, having a top-ranked website in Google does indeed seem to boost your chances of appearing for the same query in ChatGPT.
This is good news for firms investing in traditional, organic SEO. These results imply that ChatGPT uses similar ranking factors to Google, and that improving your standing in Google will have spillover benefits in the form of additional traffic from ChatGPT.
Asking ChatGPT the same question ten times and taking the top 3 results each time produced between 12 and 17 unique listings. This was, on the whole, quite consistent across the ten queries we tested, with no meaningful outliers.
On Google, rankings tend to be more consistent over short periods of time, and the top few organic results get the vast majority of the clicks. ChatGPT, however, rotates between a greater number of results, giving much greater exposure to listings that are "lower down." For each query, we analyzed which firm appeared most frequently across our repeated searches. The most consistently successful firm appeared in the top 3 ChatGPT results for its target query roughly 23% of the time.
Even the very top performer did not appear in ChatGPT's top three results for about 77% of searches, a dramatically different approach than Google's.
Google has historically attempted to consistently present what its algorithms determine to be the "best" result. In contrast, ChatGPT effectively has a "pool" of potential results and selects from them with far more variability, in part because of how large language models work and benefit from allowing for variability.
Marketers must continue adapting their strategies as search engines, including large language models, evolve. Here are five aspects we suggest focusing on:
The correlation between Google's top-ranking pages and ChatGPT's top results suggests that improving your Google rankings will also enhance visibility in ChatGPT. Keep investing in traditional SEO, such as optimizing for keywords, building high-quality backlinks, and producing valuable content.
Unlike Google, ChatGPT rotates results frequently, giving more exposure to a broader range of companies. Firms that don't rank at the very top on Google can still gain visibility. Focus on consistently creating relevant, high-quality content to increase your chances of appearing in ChatGPT's "pool" of results.
The variability of ChatGPT results requires marketers to adapt. Regularly testing how your brand appears in ChatGPT queries can reveal patterns and opportunities. Experiment with queries and refine your approach based on ChatGPT's tendency to serve diverse results.
Focus on engaging formats such as infographics, case studies, interactive tools, and expert-driven insights. These increase shareability and credibility, enhance user experience, and improve your chances of being referenced in AI-generated responses.
AI-powered tools prioritize conversational, intent-driven queries over traditional keyword-based rankings. Restructure content to align with natural-language patterns, and add schema markup, FAQs, and more context around real user questions.
Let's talk about turning organic visibility, from Google rankings to AI answers, into more signed cases for your firm.
