Only 1 in 10 AI citations match the exact URLs in Google’s top 10 organic results. Even when compared at the domain level, just 1 in 5 citations come from the same websites that appear in the top 10 for that query. When overlap happens, it’s concentrated near the top, but still far from guaranteed.
As Tom Capper explains:
“AI Mode is branching out to a broader set of queries and topics rather than just the exact one you typed in… It makes these sort of ‘fan-out’ queries and aggregates results.”
In simple terms, AI Mode runs multiple related searches behind the scenes (e.g., variations, subtopics, adjacent intents). It then aggregates citations from those related queries, not just from the top results of the original query.
Implications for AI SEO strategy
Low overlap is a reflection of how AI Mode is designed
While strict overlap is only 12%, it’s not a flaw. Instead, it’s evidence that AI Mode is:
- Drawing from a wider knowledge set
- Favoring authority across related topics
- Surfacing sources that serve the full context
Ranking in the top 10 helps, but requires broad keyword coverage to guarantee citations
In this dataset, a higher Google rank clearly increases the odds of being cited in AI Mode, but even the #1 result is only cited some of the time.
For most queries, while there is some shared sourcing between AI Mode and organic results, the citation list is mostly broader than the SERP because AI Mode uses a wider set of queries.
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