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AI Research is in demand.
According to Google Trends data, the number of people looking for “AI Research” has exploded over the last four years:
People are looking to understand AI.
People are looking to get scientific insights.
People are looking to elevate their current thoughts.
And the smartest companies in the field are publishing what the people want.
Google has launched an entire website dedicated to Breakthrough AI research:
As you navigate through their site you have the chance to learn about both Google Research and Deepmind.
On the Google Deepmind site, you will find a plethora of recent publications (over 183 at the time of this writing) in an experience that showcases the titles of the research and the academics & researchers behind them:
The journals are categorized by type covering theories like Algorithms, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, Machine Perception, Natural Language Perception, Machine Intelligence and more. Here’s a snapshot of the layout:
Now you might be wondering:
What does all this have to do with marketing and SEO?
Well… Let me share with you another fascinating reality:
The research and stories published under Google’s Deepmind umbrella alone has generated over 37,000 backlinks. Here’s a snapshot of some of the links they’ve received from different domains due to their commitment to publishing academic papers and journals directly on their site:
Six URLs have over 500 referring domains with one of them having over 2,000.
The publications include:
- NVIDIA
- Financial times
- Microsoft
- Time
- Fortune
- Universities around the world
And that’s why we’re here today…
We’re going to talk about how publishing research can translate into ROI and why startups (and the big brands) should continue to invest in research (not just for the greater good of the industry and humanity) but also for the SEO & marketing impact. Let’s dive in…
AI Research: The Speed Of Change
It’s rare that the world gets to see a truly disruptive technology develop in front of their eyes in real time — but that’s what we have with AI.
We’re all getting to experience breakthroughs that experts are putting on par with the Manhattan Project and cracking the genome.
For many, it’s probably already fallen into the background (it has for myself, more than a few times). But when you stop to think about the amount of time, money, and resources going into the incremental advancements, the small hops and the large bounds forward, it really is amazing.
It seems like just a few months ago, OpenAI’s ChatGPT first went viral. And yet:
GPT-3 is now ChatGPT o1.
Claude is now Sonnet 3.5
Bard is now Gemini.
Not to mention the countless open-source models that are also pushing the industry forward. And it’s that concept — open source — that I want to talk about today. Because the research that is being done to fuel the AI arms race is becoming an incredibly important resource in and of itself.
The AI Research Landscape: How Leading Companies Stack Up
According to Stanford’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, the total number of published articles tripled from 2010 to 2022, exploding from 88,000 to 240,000. Countless hours of research were necessary to bring the predictive and generative AI models we use today to life.
Not surprisingly, the usual Big Tech suspects — Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple — were heavily involved. In fact, a group of Google employees worked on the infamous Attention is all you need study outlining the transformer technology that forms the foundation of LLMs.
Since then, AI-vy leaguers have become one of the most important, sought-after talent pools in the world, with the Big Tech companies and AI startups scrambling to keep the best and brightest.
Why? Because better minds mean better breakthroughs and better products.
That’s why it’s so important to look at the research coming from these companies. The company with the best research is also likely to be the company that produces the most useful tool.
With that in mind, we took a look at the body of research that five of the leaders in AI have listed on their websites: Microsoft, Meta, GoogleDeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
At first, it seems like Microsoft is running away with the race and leaving everyone else in the dust (considering its close ties to OpenAI, that may actually be true). They have more published AI research than the other four companies combined just in 2024 alone.
But quantity is only one side of the story.
What about the quality of the research?
And the impact on the industry?
It’s the same reason why Ross is always talking about content distribution. It’s great to publish all that content, but what’s the point if you aren’t getting it out there for people to read?
It just so happens that we’re not the only ones asking these questions. The 2023 study Who is leading in AI? found that, while Microsoft led the way in terms of total publications, it was actually OpenAI that led the way in terms of the number of citations per year per author and Google who led the way in terms of innovations that have been adopted into LLMs.
So, the race is a lot closer than it seems when you look at the quality of research and how it actually impacts the industry. That’s especially true considering companies like Anthropic have come on strong in the last few years, pioneering spaces like AI safety and alignment (not to mention my favorite model LLM, shout out Claude).
Taking our lens towards the marketing and product growth landscape, there’s actually another metric that you can use to see how impactful the AI research from these companies is:
Backlinks.
The measure of authority in research is citations — for the rest of the web, it’s how many websites co-sign your work by linking to it.
Let’s take a closer look at the type of authority these companies are building in the public eye.
Behind the Research — Where Leading AI Companies Are Building Authority
As one of the most popular debuts of a software product of all time, it’s easy to assume that all of these companies are chasing the ChatGPT trajectory and that OpenAI would continue to focus on building its lead. But when we take a step back to look at the AI research focus behind Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, we get a more comprehensive picture.
Microsoft Research Publications
What’s interesting is that they’re not just focused on making AI smarter—they’re actually trying to make it work better with humans.
You know those AI copilots that are popping up everywhere? That’s Microsoft’s thing.
They’re betting big on the idea that AI works best when it’s helping doctors diagnose patients or helping teachers create better lesson plans, not trying to replace them.
And while everyone’s talking about AI chatbots, Microsoft is focusing on how AI can tackle some pretty heavy scientific problems. They’re letting AI loose on everything from understanding how proteins fold to figuring out new physics theories.
Backlink Leader (Last 5 Years):
- AI4Science to empower the fifth paradigm of scientific discovery: 22,052 backlinks
Google Research Publications
Like Microsoft, Google’s AI research is focused on using AI to solve complex challenges and advancing technologies that have a broad societal impact.
Domains like health science, quantum computing, and the next generation of LLMs.
The company’s commitment to responsible AI ensures that their innovations positively impact users while addressing global challenges. Through Google Research and DeepMind, they continue to shape the future of AI by fostering collaboration and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
Backlink Leader (Last 5 Years):
- Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning: 2,326 backlinks
OpenAI Research Publications
If there’s one company that’s been setting the pace in the AI race, it’s OpenAI. They burst onto the scene with ChatGPT, but that was just the beginning. They want to build an artificial general intelligence that can think at a human level — but without the sci-fi nightmare scenarios.
They’re taking a full-spectrum approach to research: language models that can actually understand what you want them to do, DALL·E turning imagination into images, and Whisper handling speech like it’s second nature. Their latest venture, Sora, is pushing into AI video generation, showing they’re not slowing down anytime soon.
Backlink Leader (Last 5 Years):
- GPT-4 Technical Report: 137,460 backlinks
Meta Research Publications
Meta might be best known for Facebook, but their AI research team (FAIR) has actually been in the game for over a decade. While everyone else is chasing chatbots, they’re tackling some pretty interesting challenges that most people aren’t talking about.
Take their work on SAM 2, which is basically teaching AI to understand what it’s looking at in images with incredible precision. Or Video Seal, which is trying to solve the whole “Is this video real?” problem that keeps everyone up at night. They’ve even built something called DIGIT that lets robots actually feel what they’re touching — talk about future tech. Their latest project, MovieGen, is jumping into the AI video generation race.
Backlink Leader (Last 5 Years):
Anthropic Research Publications
Anthropic’s approach to AI is a bit different from the pack. While everyone else seems to be racing to build bigger and flashier models, Anthropic is focused on a deceptively simple question: How can we make AI that actually does what users want it to do?
The Anthropic research team is digging into some pretty fascinating areas — trying to understand what’s actually happening inside these AI models, and making sure AI stays helpful rather than going off the rails. It’s not just theoretical either — they’re developing real tools to measure AI capabilities and spot potential problems before they happen.
What makes them interesting is their systematic approach. They’re big on finding actual patterns in how AI scales and behaves, rather than just hoping for the best. Their research papers tackle everything from how AI models “think” to how they might try to trick us — real “trust but verify” stuff. And unlike some companies keeping their cards close to their chest, they’re pretty open about sharing what they learn.
Backlink Leader (Last 5 Years):
- Alignment faking in large language models: 12,747 backlinks
Original Research Builds Authority & Links
A few years ago, Foundation published research on what the most linkable assets were in Martech after trying to understand how brands could build links. The results showed that tools were the most highly linked to asset followed by definitions, stats and then research:
As you can see in both the increasing rate of demand (search queries up more than 200% since 2022 for ‘ai research’) and the total number of backlinks these brands are generating:
Publishing research is STILL a great marketing strategy.
Original research has always been a vital yet under appreciated part of the marketing toolkit. Which is why we always prioritize it at Foundation and recommend it for our clients.
It may not be as fancy as a brand overhaul or social campaign, but high-quality research is equally, if not more, important for establishing authority in an industry. ESPECIALLY…
If you’re an Generative AI startup looking to do marketing and SEO.
The data is in…
Research is what both marketers want and journalists.
So go create it and distribute it like wildfire.
