Making a Global Antivirus Brand the #1 Cited Name in ChatGPT

The client is a global consumer cybersecurity brand whose antivirus and identity protection suite covers millions of households. By early 2025, it faced a familiar challenge: the antivirus market had become saturated with competitors investing heavily in SEO and paid search. The brand ranked well on Google, but its presence in AI-generated results across ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, and Gemini was limited.

Those AI engines were reshaping how consumers discover and compare security software, and traditional SEO strategies weren't enough to influence them. In Q2 2025, the brand partnered with us to build visibility inside AI engines, where users increasingly get their product recommendations and comparisons.

We designed a Reddit-driven visibility campaign aimed at influencing both human readers and AI systems. The core idea: Reddit threads that rank organically in Google and get cited in AI responses act as persistent brand signals that keep working long after they're posted.

Discussions targeted high-intent keywords: "best antivirus for Mac," "best identity theft protection," "best internet security for families," and were published in authentic, topic-relevant communities like r/MacOS, r/computers, and r/antivirus. Every post was written in a natural, user-to-user tone to maintain authenticity and Reddit compliance, with performance tracked across Reddit analytics and Ahrefs AI citation data throughout.

Between May and June 2025, we created ten Reddit discussion threads across major tech and security communities. Each post targeted a specific search-driven question, from Mac security and identity theft protection to family internet security, optimized for long-tail visibility in both Reddit search and Google indexing.

The threads kept compounding long after posting: by September, three months after the last post went live, the campaign was still adding 77,400 new views in a single month, a 25% month-over-month growth rate.

On reach, the campaign generated 401,400 total Reddit views within four months from just ten posts, with 77,400 new views in September alone, a 25% month-over-month growth rate that continued well after posting ended.

On AI citations, Reddit-sourced citations recommending the brand in ChatGPT grew from zero in May to over 250 by August as the threads were indexed. Brand impressions through those citations surpassed 500,000 across July and August.

On category visibility, The brand's mentions in Google's AI Overview more than tripled between late April and late September, and its ChatGPT share of voice in the antivirus category rose from 6% to 17%, with monthly mentions scaling from 33 in May to over 300 by August.

Reddit citations recommending the brand in ChatGPT grew from zero in May and June to over 250 by August as the posts gained traction and were indexed into AI results, with brand impressions through those citations passing 500,000 over the same window. September showed a moderate slowdown, underlining why consistent posting sustains AI exposure over longer campaigns.

The headline outcome is share of voice. The brand's ChatGPT share of voice in the antivirus category rose from 6% in May to 17% by September, a 183% increase, while Google AI Overview mentions tripled over the same period. The client became the most referenced antivirus brand across both AI and social discovery ecosystems.

In the antivirus category, Reddit is now the #1 cited domain in ChatGPT queries, outpacing major tech publishers like TechRadar and Tom's Guide. That aligns with broader industry data: Semrush found Reddit accounts for over 40% of all citations in AI-generated responses, and Reddit now appears in 97% of Google "best product" searches.