Reasons Behind The Results: AI Overviews Relying Less On Search Engine Results (New Report)

Last July, Ahrefs studied the search results from both traditional and AI models, finding that more than three-quarters (76%) of the citations in nearly 2 million AI Overviews were pulled from pages that ranked in the top 10, showing a “major crossover” between search rankings and citations.

Less than a year later, now with 4 million Overviews and more than 863,000 keyword SERPs as part of Ahrefs’ research, that percentage has fallen to 38%, indicating that Google “is selecting far fewer pages straight from the original SERP.”

(Source: Ahrefs)

“That suggests AI Overviews are relying less on the direct search results and more on the sources showing up in fan out query SERPs,” write the Ahrefs authors. “Google has confirmed that its system performs a ‘Query fan-out’ whenever a user searches and AI is triggered. This is when the initial query is split into multiple related sub-queries. The pages that appear most often within those sub-query SERPs then get cited in the AI Overview.”

Ahrefs’ research found that YouTube URLs made up a “meaningful slice” of AI Overview citations, including 18.2% of cited pages that didn’t rank for that keyword in Google top 100 results.

“YouTube is the most cited domain in AI Overviews today, and has grown 34% over the last six months,” write the authors. “Some of our other studies reinforce the importance of YouTube for AI visibility. For example, our research of 75K brands revealed that mentions on YouTube — in video titles, transcripts, and descriptions — are the strongest correlating factor with AI Overview visibility.”