---
title: "Do AI Overviews cite the pages that rank? 4,051 citations"
description: "Only 28.7% of 4,051 AI Overview citations are page-one Google results. A page-one result’s citation rate falls from 49.5% at position 1 to 15.5% at 9."
canonical: "https://underneath.agency/research/ai-overview-citations-study"
published: 2026-09-26
updated: 2026-10-08
publisher: "Underneath (https://underneath.agency/agent)"
entity: "https://underneath.agency/.well-known/entity.json"
---
Research · AI search

# Do AI Overviews cite the pages that rank? 4,051 citations

Ranking on Google and being cited in the AI Overview above the results are two different outcomes, and this study measures the gap between them. We collected every source cited in 481 US AI Overviews on 26 September 2026, 4,051 citations in all, and compared each one with the organic results on the same page. Organic ranking turned out to be neither irrelevant nor sufficient: a page-one result is far more likely to be cited the higher it ranks, yet most citations come from pages that do not rank on page one at all.

## The short version

1. 28.7% of AI Overview citations were page-one organic results for the same search (95% interval 26.8% to 30.7%). Leaving out Google’s own pages, which can never be organic results, the share is 33.6%.
2. Position matters steadily. The first organic result was cited in 49.5% of AI Overviews, the third in 33.5%, the sixth in 23.2% and the ninth in 15.5%. Each step down the page cuts the odds of being cited by about 17.9%.
3. 78.8% of AI Overviews cited at least one page-one result, but 21.2% cited none, and 15.8% cited nothing that appeared anywhere on the results page, not even in a video or forum box.
4. Of the citations that were not page-one results, the largest group, 38.5% of all citations, came from sites with no page-one organic result for the search.
5. YouTube was cited in 64.2% of AI Overviews. Only 12.5% of its 638 citations were page-one organic results; 60.7% did not appear anywhere on the results page.

## What this study measures, and what it does not

An AI Overview goes through several stages before a source reaches the reader: Google decides to show one, retrieves candidate pages, picks some to cite, and writes an answer that draws more or less on each. From outside, only some of these stages can be seen.

| Stage | Measured here? | Result |
|---|---|---|
| AI Overview shown | Yes | 486 of 800 searches (60.8%) |
| Organic ranking | Yes, page one | 4,016 organic results on 481 pages |
| Candidates retrieved | No | Not visible from outside |
| Source cited | Yes | 4,051 citations |
| Share of the answer from each source | No | Not measured |

So this is a study of how one observable outcome, organic ranking, relates to another, citation. It does not show how Google retrieves or chooses sources, and it does not show that ranking higher causes a page to be cited. Pages that rank well may simply share whatever else the AI Overview looks for.

## Finding 1: most citations are not page-one results

| Measure | Result | 95% interval |
|---|---|---|
| Exact URL is a page-one organic result | 28.7% | 26.8% to 30.7% |
| Same page with a looser URL match | 30.9% | 28.8% to 33.1% |
| URL appears anywhere on the results page | 35.7% | 33.4% to 38.0% |
| Domain has a page-one organic result | 43.0% | |
| Median citations per AI Overview | 8 | |

The looser match treats URLs that differ only by query string, letter case, mobile or AMP versions, or an index or .html ending as the same page. It adds 2.2 points. Counting links that appear in video carousels, image boxes and other results-page features adds 4.8 more. Intervals are clustered by AI Overview, because the 8 or so citations in one AI Overview are not independent of each other.

## Finding 2: the higher a page ranks, the more often it is cited

The version 1.0 page counted cited URLs at each position. That undercounts lower positions, because most results pages do not have ten organic results: the median page had 9, and only 14 of 481 (2.9%) had 10. The rate below divides by the pages that had a result at each position.

| Position | Pages with it | Cited | Rate | 95% interval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 481 | 238 | 49.5% | 45.0% to 53.9% |
| 2 | 481 | 179 | 37.2% | 33.0% to 41.6% |
| 3 | 481 | 161 | 33.5% | 29.4% to 37.8% |
| 4 | 481 | 137 | 28.5% | 24.6% to 32.7% |
| 5 | 480 | 122 | 25.4% | 21.7% to 29.5% |
| 6 | 475 | 110 | 23.2% | 19.6% to 27.2% |
| 7 | 448 | 99 | 22.1% | 18.5% to 26.2% |
| 8 | 404 | 75 | 18.6% | 15.1% to 22.6% |
| 9 | 271 | 42 | 15.5% | 11.7% to 20.3% |
| 10 | 14 | 1 | 7.1% | 1.3% to 31.5% |

By band, 40.1% of results in positions 1 to 3 were cited, 25.7% in positions 4 to 6 and 19.1% in positions 7 to 10. Overall, 1,164 of the 4,016 page-one organic results (29.0%) were cited.

A logistic model of whether each organic result was cited, with position, industry and the number of citations in the AI Overview, and standard errors clustered by AI Overview, gives an odds ratio of 0.821 per position (95% interval 0.798 to 0.845). Its average predicted citation rate is 44.4% at position 1, 35.2% at position 3, 27.0% at position 5 and 17.2% at position 8. The decline is gradual, with no cliff after the top three.

## Finding 3: where the other citations come from

Every citation falls in exactly one of these classes, checked in this order.

| Class | Citations | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Exact page-one organic URL | 1,164 | 28.7% |
| Same page, looser URL match | 89 | 2.2% |
| Elsewhere on the results page | 193 | 4.8% |
| Google’s own pages | 589 | 14.5% |
| Other page on a page-one domain | 455 | 11.2% |
| Domain not on page one | 1,561 | 38.5% |

Of the 193 links found elsewhere on the results page, 155 were in the video carousel. Google’s own pages (shopping and local listings on google.com) cannot be organic results, so they are a separate class; 589 of the 602 google.com citations fall into it.

YouTube shows the gap between ranking and citation most clearly. Of its 638 citations, 80 (12.5%) were page-one organic results, 251 (39.3%) appeared somewhere on the results page, mostly in the video carousel, and 60.7% did not appear on the page at all.

## Finding 4: which domains and source types are cited

| Domain | AI Overviews citing it | Share of 481 |
|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | 309 | 64.2% |
| google.com (Google’s own pages) | 122 | 25.4% |
| reddit.com | 87 | 18.1% |
| nerdwallet.com | 48 | 10.0% |
| libertymutual.com | 36 | 7.5% |
| facebook.com | 34 | 7.1% |
| allstate.com | 33 | 6.9% |
| wikipedia.org | 33 | 6.9% |
| zapier.com | 32 | 6.7% |
| thezebra.com | 29 | 6.0% |
| hubspot.com | 29 | 6.0% |
| salesforce.com | 28 | 5.8% |

YouTube accounted for 638 citations, 15.7% of all 4,051. In some categories, brands’ own sites are among the most-cited sources: salesforce.com, hubspot.com, zapier.com and zoho.com in software; libertymutual.com, allstate.com and progressive.com in insurance.

| Source type | Share of citations |
|---|---|
| Other websites (brands, publishers, blogs) | 57.8% |
| Forums, social and video platforms | 20.0% |
| Google’s own pages | 14.9% |
| Review sites and directories | 2.3% |
| Marketplaces and retailers | 1.7% |
| Government | 1.3% |
| Education | 1.1% |
| Wikipedia | 0.9% |

## Finding 5: industries differ in how far the AI Overview reaches

| Industry | AIOs | Citations | On page one | 95% interval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Healthcare and dental | 42 | 358 | 38.0% | 31.0% to 45.2% |
| Finance and insurance | 88 | 644 | 34.8% | 30.0% to 39.6% |
| Legal and professional | 39 | 318 | 33.0% | 25.8% to 41.3% |
| Franchises | 35 | 309 | 32.7% | 25.6% to 40.8% |
| Hospitality and travel | 61 | 447 | 30.9% | 24.4% to 37.7% |
| Home and local services | 53 | 464 | 24.4% | 18.9% to 30.6% |
| B2B software | 96 | 870 | 23.9% | 20.1% to 27.9% |
| Retail and ecommerce | 67 | 641 | 21.7% | 17.2% to 26.3% |

“On page one” is the share of citations that are exact page-one organic URLs. Healthcare and finance searches lean more on pages that already rank than retail and software searches, and their intervals do not overlap. Most neighboring industries’ intervals do overlap, so smaller gaps should not be read as real differences. Google’s own pages make up 32.9% of retail citations and 25.6% of home-services citations but 0.9% in software, which explains part of the gap.

## How this compares with other studies

| Source | Sample and date | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| This study | 4,051 citations, 481 US AI Overviews, September 2026 | 28.7% of cited URLs are page-one results |
| Ahrefs | 863K keyword results pages, March 2026 | 37.9% of cited URLs appear in the first 10 result blocks (about 76% in July 2025) |
| BrightEdge | 9 industries, September 2025 | Overlap with organic rankings grew from 32.3% to 54.5% |
| seoClarity | US keywords, 2025 | 97% of AI Overviews cite at least one source from the top 20 |

The trend is disputed: Ahrefs reports the top-10 share falling from about 76% to 37.9% between July 2025 and March 2026, while BrightEdge reported overlap rising through 2025. Our 28.7% is closer to the Ahrefs direction. Figures also differ because some count citations and others count AI Overviews, and because “top 10” means page-one organic results in our study (a median of 9) but ten result blocks, including features, in others. For most-cited domains, Ahrefs (September 2026) also puts YouTube first and Reddit second among the top cited sources, and Pew Research found Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit made up 15% of AI summary sources in March 2025.

Sources: [Ahrefs, top-10 citations](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-citations-top-10/); [BrightEdge](https://www.brightedge.com/resources/weekly-ai-search-insights/rank-overlap-after-16-months-of-aio); [seoClarity](https://www.seoclarity.net/research/ai-overviews-impact); [Ahrefs, most-cited domains](https://ahrefs.com/blog/most-cited-domains-ai-overviews/); [Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/).

## What this means

The measured results are in the findings above. What follows separates them from our reading of them.

| Observed | Plausible reading | Not shown by this study |
|---|---|---|
| Citation rate falls steadily with organic position | Ranking and citation draw on overlapping signals | That ranking higher causes a citation |
| 38.5% of citations come from sites with no page-one result | The AI Overview also draws on pages that answer sub-questions of the search | Which pages Google retrieved but did not cite |
| YouTube is cited in 64.2% of AI Overviews, mostly from outside the results page | Video is a large, separate source pool for AI Overviews | That publishing videos would get a brand cited |
| Brands such as insurers and software firms are cited from their own sites | A clear factual page on your own site can be a candidate citation | That such a page raises traffic or sales |

- **Ranking helps, but it is not the whole job.** Half of AI Overviews cite the first result, and the rate keeps falling down the page, yet seven in ten citations are not page-one results.
- **Measure citation separately from ranking.** A rank report cannot tell you whether you are cited; track the AI Overview itself for the searches that matter.
- **Treat any single figure with care.** This is one day and one results page per search.

## Open questions

The limits of this study are also the next questions to test.

- **How stable are citations?** We collected once. Our planned week-over-week re-collection of the same 800 searches will measure how many cited sources persist.
- **What explains citation beyond rank?** Page content, freshness and source type may account for part of the 38.5% cited from off page one; our [cited pages study](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-overview-cited-pages-study) looks at what cited pages have in common.
- **Does citation mean influence?** A cited page may supply one fact or most of the answer. Measuring how much of the answer each source supplies is a separate study.
- **Do the same patterns hold in other engines?** Our [AI Mode comparison](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-mode-vs-ai-overviews-study) and [AI citations and Google rankings study](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-citations-google-rankings-study) test this for AI Mode and chat assistants.

## Methodology

- **Keywords and results pages:** the 800-keyword US sample of our [AI Overview frequency study](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-overviews-frequency-study) (DataForSEO SERP API; Google.com, United States, English, desktop, 26 September 2026). 486 pages showed an AI Overview and 481 of those cited at least one source.
- **Citations:** all URLs in each AI Overview’s reference list, per-paragraph references and inline links, normalized (tracking parameters, fragments and “www.” removed, trailing slash dropped) and de-duplicated within each AI Overview.
- **Ranking match:** normalized citation URL equal to a normalized page-one organic URL. The looser match also ignores the query string, letter case, mobile and AMP versions, and index or .html endings. Domain match is on the registrable domain.
- **Citation rate by position:** cited organic results at a position divided by results pages that had an organic result at that position, with Wilson intervals.
- **Intervals and model:** citation-level shares use a bootstrap over AI Overviews (2,000 resamples). The position model is a logistic regression with position, industry and number of citations, standard errors clustered by AI Overview.
- **Source types:** a fixed domain list (published in the methodology file): forums, social and video platforms; review sites and directories; marketplaces; government (.gov and national equivalents); education (.edu and national equivalents); Wikipedia; Google’s own pages; everything else.
- **Version 1.1 (28 September 2026):** same collection, no new data. Adds the stage framing, the citation rate by position, the looser match, the single class list, clustered intervals, the position model and the observed versus interpretation table, after an external methodological audit.
- **Update schedule:** monthly, same keywords.

## Limitations

- Associations, not causes; retrieval and reranking are not visible from outside.
- One results page per keyword on one day, so run-to-run and week-to-week variation is not measured.
- Page-one organic results only; some cited pages will rank on page two or lower.
- We measure whether a source is cited, not how much of the answer it supplies or whether the answer represents it correctly.
- Source types come from a fixed list; small forums and review sites not on the list are counted as other websites.

## Data and downloads

- Every citation with its match class and organic position (version 1.1): [s5_v11_citations.csv](https://underneath.agency/research-data/ai-overview-citations-study/s5_v11_citations.csv)
- Every citation with its domain and source type (version 1.0): [s5_ai_overview_citations.csv](https://underneath.agency/research-data/ai-overview-citations-study/s5_ai_overview_citations.csv) and [JSON](https://underneath.agency/research-data/ai-overview-citations-study/s5_ai_overview_citations.json)
- Every statistic on this page: [stats.json](https://underneath.agency/research-data/ai-overview-citations-study/stats.json)
- Machine-readable methodology: [methodology.json](https://underneath.agency/research-data/ai-overview-citations-study/methodology.json)
- Chart: [citation rate by organic position](https://underneath.agency/research-data/ai-overview-citations-study/citation-rate-by-organic-position.svg)

The data is free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0).

To cite: Underneath. (2026). *Do AI Overviews cite the pages that rank? 4,051 citations* (Version 1.1). Underneath Research. https://underneath.agency/research/ai-overview-citations-study

## Frequently asked questions

### Do you need to rank on page one to be cited in an AI Overview?

No. In our sample 71.3% of AI Overview citations were not page-one organic results for the same search. Ranking still helps: the first result was cited in 49.5% of AI Overviews and the ninth in 15.5%.

### Does ranking higher get you cited?

Higher-ranked pages are cited more often, but this study shows an association, not a cause. Pages that rank well may share the other qualities the AI Overview selects for.

### What website is cited most in Google AI Overviews?

YouTube. It was cited in 64.2% of the 481 AI Overviews we collected, and accounted for 15.7% of all citations, most of them videos that did not appear on the results page.

### How often does Reddit appear in AI Overviews?

Reddit was cited in 18.1% of AI Overviews in our September 2026 US sample, the third most frequent domain after YouTube and Google’s own pages.

### How many sources does an AI Overview cite?

A median of 8 sources per AI Overview in our sample.

## Related research

- [How often do AI Overviews appear?](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-overviews-frequency-study)
- [AI Mode vs AI Overviews: how different are the sources?](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-mode-vs-ai-overviews-study)
- [What pages cited by AI Overviews have in common](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-overview-cited-pages-study)
- [How many “best of” lists cited by AI rank their own brand first?](https://underneath.agency/research/self-promoting-best-lists-study)

## Related guides

- [If we rank on Google, will we show up in AI Overviews?](https://underneath.agency/resources/does-ranking-on-google-get-you-into-ai-overviews)
- [Is traditional SEO still important for visibility in AI search?](https://underneath.agency/resources/is-seo-still-important-for-ai-search)
- [If AI Overviews cite my site, does that make up for lost clicks?](https://underneath.agency/resources/ai-overview-citations-vs-lost-clicks)
- [Which types of websites do AI search engines rely on most?](https://underneath.agency/resources/which-websites-do-ai-search-engines-cite)
- [How can an insurance carrier or agency win more quotes when shoppers ask AI?](https://underneath.agency/resources/insurance-companies-customers-ai-search)

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