AI Visibility Report · UVA Today

UVA Today Ranks Second of Six University Newsrooms for AI Citations
Four Steps to Be Named in More of Those Answers

Of six university newsrooms compared, UVA Today ranks second in AI answers citing its reporting, behind Berkeley News. Those 2,698 answers drew on 1,428 UVA Today stories across four answer engines and named UVA Today in 19 of them, or 7 per 1,000. This report shows where UVA Today leads and four steps: two to help answer engines name UVA Today, and two to build on the formats they already use most.

Period: Semrush September 2026 monthly snapshot Source: Semrush AI Visibility, U.S., all models Scope: news.virginia.edu

At a glance

Cited means an AI answer used a UVA Today story as a source. Named means the answer also mentioned UVA Today by name.

01Citations

2nd of 6

for AI answers citing each newsroom

Berkeley3,087

UVA Today2,698

Duke2,139

Vanderbilt1,704

UT1,576

Michigan962

RecommendationTrack how often answers name UVA Today.

02Naming

7 per 1,000

citing answers that also name UVA Today

Michigan14.6

Berkeley12.3

UT8.9

Duke7.5

UVA Today7.0

Vanderbilt7.0

RecommendationAdd publication details to article pages and create an About page.

03Explainers

32%

of UVA Today’s citations come from explainers

UVA Today32%

Michigan12%

Duke9%

Berkeley9%

UT8%

Vanderbilt4%

RecommendationKeep a standing slot for evergreen explainers.

04Research

of UVA Today’s citations come from research stories

Michigan18%

Berkeley14%

UT13%

Vanderbilt6%

UVA Today5%

Duke3%

RecommendationPair major research stories with a companion Q&A.

UVA Today’s reporting is cited across 1,428 stories and four answer engines

Answer engines cited UVA Today stories in 2,698 answers in the September snapshot. Only Berkeley News, at 3,087, was cited in more.

Those answers drew on 1,428 different UVA Today stories, the second-widest range in the set after Duke Today. UVA Today is cited on all four answer engines in Semrush’s report: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini.

UVA Today also ranks second for how often it is named, with 19 answers. The chart compares both.

Answers citing each newsroom, and answers naming it September 2026 snapshot. Further right means cited in more answers. Higher means named in more answers.

Newsroom comparison, September 2026 snapshot
Newsroom	Answers citing	Stories cited	Answers naming	Named per 1,000
Berkeley News	3,087	1,035	38	12.3
UVA Today	2,698	1,428	19	7.0
Duke Today	2,139	1,552	16	7.5
Vanderbilt News	1,704	1,048	12	7.0
UT News	1,576	699	14	8.9
Michigan News	962	474	14	14.6

Peers show the naming rate can roughly double

UVA Today is named in 7 of every 1,000 answers that cite it. Berkeley News is named in 12 and Michigan News in 15.

Duke Today, Vanderbilt News and UT News sit between 7 and 9, close to UVA Today, so low naming rates are common across this set. At Berkeley’s rate, UVA Today’s current citations would produce about 33 named answers instead of 19.

This data does not show what drives naming. Michigan News, named most often, has no structured data on its most-cited story. One gap is something University Communications can close directly, though. The structured data on UVA Today articles names the headline and writer, but not the publication. Berkeley News names its site in the same data.

Closing that gap takes one template update, so we recommend making the change now and comparing the naming rate against today’s baseline in a later snapshot.

What to do

Add publication details to each article’s structured data

One update to the news.virginia.edu article template covers every story. The structured data should state:

That UVA Today, the news publication of the University of Virginia, published the story
The writer, as a named person
The date the story was published and the date it was last updated

Separately, news.virginia.edu/about currently opens the Contact Us page. A short About page should open with a sentence such as: “UVA Today is the official news publication of the University of Virginia, produced by University Communications.”

For the site’s developers: in the NewsArticle markup, replace creator with an author Person, replace dateCreated with datePublished and dateModified, and add a publisher naming UVA Today as part of the University of Virginia. Change the homepage type from NewsArticle to WebSite.

What each article’s structured data tells answer engines
Detail	UVA Today	Berkeley News	Michigan News
Headline	Stated	Stated	Not stated
Writer	Name only	Named person, linked to an author page	Not stated
Site or publication name	Not stated	Site named “Berkeley News”	Not stated
Publisher of the article	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Dates	Creation date only	Published and last updated	Not stated

Checked in September 2026 on two UVA Today stories, which matched, and on the most-cited story at Berkeley News and Michigan News. Every site names itself on the visible page. This table covers only the structured data.

Explainers are UVA Today’s strongest format

Question-led explainers and Q&As earn 32 percent of UVA Today’s citations. The next highest newsroom is Michigan News, at 12 percent.

A UVA Today explainer is cited in an average of 4.0 answers, against 2.3 for a typical UVA Today story. Five of the eight most-cited explainers are posed as a reader’s question, and the most-cited names a UVA School of Nursing professor in its first paragraph.

The format is an established part of UVA Today’s editorial approach, and it accounts for the largest share of the site’s citations.

4.0

Average answers citing a UVA Today explainer

2.3

Average answers citing a typical UVA Today story

183

Answers citing the top explainer, Should you feed a cold and starve a fever?

Most-cited UVA Today explainers

183Should you feed a cold and starve a fever? 68More ‘Disease’ Than ‘Dracula’: How the Vampire Myth Was Born 45Q&A: Why does time go by so fast, and how can we slow it down? 22What 9/11 Changed: Reflecting on the Cultural Legacy of the Attacks, 20 Years On 21Did You Know? 10 Facts About the Declaration of Independence 20Q&A: How Soon Will You Feel the Impact of the Port Workers’ Strike? 20Q&A: Should you trust trending peptide injections? 18Q&A: Can you wear sunscreen and still get enough vitamin D?

Research coverage has the most room to grow

Research stories earn 5 percent of UVA Today’s citations. At UT News, Berkeley News and Michigan News, the figure ranges from 13 to 18 percent.

A UVA Today research story is cited in an average of 1.7 answers, against 4.0 for an explainer. Health stories, many of them written as explainers, average 4.4.

The chart shows the mix at each newsroom.

Share of each newsroom’s citations from explainers and from research stories September 2026 snapshot. Green is explainers. Purple is research.

Share of each newsroom’s citations by story type, September 2026 snapshot
Newsroom	Explainers	Research	Health	History and culture	University life
UVA Today	32.1%	5.4%	19.9%	13.6%	13.6%
Berkeley News	8.5%	14.1%	4.1%	8.2%	6.6%
Michigan News	12.3%	17.6%	14.2%	5.9%	3.5%
Duke Today	9.4%	3.0%	6.1%	4.3%	8.6%
UT News	7.6%	13.2%	6.5%	5.8%	14.3%
Vanderbilt News	3.9%	6.2%	10.0%	6.3%	15.2%

Action plan

Four steps, each with a clear marker of progress

Step	Owner	Effort	What good looks like
1Add publication details to article structured data	University Communications	One template update	Every article’s structured data names UVA Today as publisher, the writer as a person, and the published and updated dates.
2Turn the Contact Us page into an About page	University Communications	Low	news.virginia.edu/about opens with a sentence describing UVA Today as the University of Virginia’s news publication.
3Keep building the explainer library	UVA Today editors	Ongoing	Explainers keep their 32 percent share of citations or grow it, and the most-cited are reviewed each semester.
4Pair research stories with a Q&A	UVA Today editors	Per story	Each major research story this semester has a companion Q&A, cited at close to the explainer average of 4.0.
How to track progress	University Communications	Any later snapshot	Named answers per 1,000 citing answers, compared with today’s baseline of 7.

Report glossary

Answer engine: An AI tool that answers a question directly, such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI Overviews.
Citation: The answer used a UVA Today story as one of its sources.
Named answer: The answer names UVA Today in the text the reader sees. An answer can cite a story without naming the publication.
Named per 1,000: Named answers for every 1,000 answers that cite a newsroom. UVA Today’s is 7.
Structured data: A machine-readable summary a page provides for search and answer engines, separate from what readers see.
Snapshot: Semrush’s measurement for a single month. This report uses September 2026.

Method

How this was measured

Source and period. Semrush AI Visibility, U.S., all models. Figures are Semrush’s September 2026 monthly snapshot. Semrush’s trend view covers April through September 2026.
Scope. news.virginia.edu, compared with news.berkeley.edu, today.duke.edu, news.umich.edu, news.utexas.edu and news.vanderbilt.edu.
UNC. UNC’s The Well (unc.edu/thewell) was reviewed and left out. Its stories are published outside the section Semrush measured, so only two landing pages registered, and most matching answers referred to an unrelated facility at another university that shares the name.
Answer engines. Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini.
Citing and naming. Semrush counts an answer as citing a newsroom when it uses one of the newsroom’s pages as a source, and as naming it when the newsroom appears in the answer text. One answer can cite more than one story.
Named counts. Named answers are small numbers, 12 to 38 per newsroom, so month-to-month changes of a few answers are normal. The trend is best read over several snapshots.
Story types. Classified from each cited story’s web address. “University life” covers stories about each university’s students, events and community. A story can belong to more than one type, and the shares are approximate.
Structured data. Checked in September 2026 on two UVA Today stories and on the most-cited story at Berkeley News and Michigan News.
Monthly audience. Semrush also reports a “Monthly Audience” figure. It estimates the total search audience of the topics where a site appears, not the site’s own readership, and is not used in this report.