For two decades, SEO had a simple scoreboard: your position in the search results. Rank first, collect the clicks. That equation is breaking down. Google still handles most searches, yet a page in position one now loses more than half of its expected clicks when an AI Overview appears above it. And the pages AI systems quote are no longer necessarily the pages that rank at the top.
This article brings together the most recent studies, several from the past twelve months, and shows what they mean in practice. The short version: rankings remain the entry ticket, but being cited in AI answers is increasingly where visibility is won or lost.
The findings at a glance
- Google still handled 73.7% of US desktop searches in late 2025, while all AI tools combined accounted for 3.2%.
- An AI Overview now correlates with 58% fewer clicks for the top-ranking page.
- Only 38% of pages cited in AI Overviews also rank in the top 10, down from 76% in mid-2025.
- Cited text clusters at the top of pages and under headings phrased as questions.
- Brands that are mentioned on many platforms, YouTube above all, show the strongest link with AI visibility.
1. Rankings still matter, but they no longer guarantee the click
Start with what has not changed. Google remains the main arena for search. A SparkToro and Datos analysis of 41 major websites found that Google handled 73.7% of US desktop searches in Q4 2025, while all AI tools combined accounted for 3.2%. Abandoning classic SEO would be premature. At the same time, a separate report covered by Search Engine Land in January 2026 found that Google searches per US user fell by nearly 20% year over year. Even a stable platform can deliver fewer searches per person.
What has changed is what happens after the query. In February 2026, Ahrefs re-ran its click-through study on 300,000 keywords with data from December 2025, comparing keywords that show an AI Overview with informational keywords that do not. The average click-through rate for position one on keywords with an AI Overview was 1.6%. In December 2023, before the feature existed, it had been 7.3%. After adjusting for the general decline in click-through rates on informational keywords, Ahrefs concluded that an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page. In its first analysis, eight months earlier, the figure was 34.5%. Put differently: for every 100 clicks a top-ranking page could historically earn, Google now keeps 58.
The effect is not limited to position one. In the same data, position two lost about half of its clicks, and even position ten lost nearly a fifth.
The takeaway is straightforward: a top ranking is still necessary, but it is no longer sufficient. Visibility now also depends on whether the answer layer above the results mentions you. That is why teams that work with an experienced GEO agency now track how often their brand is cited in AI answers next to their classic rankings, instead of looking at positions alone.
2. The shift is not hitting every industry equally
Averages hide a lot. An SE Ranking study of 100,000 German keywords shows how uneven the picture is. AI Overviews cluster around informational questions and barely touch commercial queries:
| Industry (Germany) | Keywords with an AI Overview |
| Health | 82.3% |
| Travel | 3.2% |
| Food & drink | 2.9% |
| E-commerce & retail | 2.0% |
Source: SE Ranking analysis of 100,000 German keywords, 2025.
In health, more than four out of five keywords trigger an AI Overview, almost three times the overall average in the study. In e-commerce, it is roughly one in fifty. The reason is the type of question. Someone asking about symptoms or treatment options wants an explanation, and an AI summary can deliver one. Someone searching for a product wants to compare prices, availability and reviews, which a summary cannot fully replace.
For businesses, two questions follow from this. First, do your customers mostly search for answers or for providers? A physiotherapy practice that ranks for symptom questions is exposed in a way an online shop is not. Second, how often does an AI Overview actually appear for the queries that matter to you? The figures above are an early snapshot and the shares have kept shifting since, so it is worth checking your own keywords instead of relying on industry averages. A keyword’s search volume says little about its traffic when an AI answer sits above the results.
3. What gets cited: answers up front, built around questions
If rankings no longer predict clicks, do they at least predict citations? Less and less. In mid-2025, Ahrefs found that 76% of pages cited in AI Overviews also ranked in Google’s top 10. An updated analysis in early 2026, covering 863,000 keywords and 4 million AI Overview URLs, put that share at 38%. BrightEdge, using a different method, measured roughly 17%. The numbers differ, but the direction is the same: a growing share of cited pages sit outside the top 10.
So what do cited pages have in common? Kevin Indig’s Growth Memo, published in February 2026, analysed millions of ChatGPT responses and isolated 18,012 verified citations to see where AI systems pull their material from. Search Engine Land’s coverage of the study highlights a clear pattern:
- 44.2% of citations came from the first 30% of a page’s content, 31.1% from the middle and 24.7% from the final third.
- Cited text was twice as likely to contain a question mark, and 78.4% of the citations tied to questions came from headings.
- Cited passages favoured direct definitions, a balanced tone and concrete names of people, companies and products over vague, general statements.
The headings finding deserves attention. AI systems appear to treat a question-style heading like a prompt and the paragraph below it like the answer. A heading such as “How much does a root canal cost?” followed by a clear, direct answer is easier to quote than a heading like “Our approach to treatment” followed by a general introduction.
Within paragraphs, 53% of citations came from the middle rather than the opening sentence, so AI systems do read the full text. The lesson is not to cram everything into the first line of each paragraph. It is to put the main answer early on the page, to phrase headings the way customers actually ask, and to answer each one directly underneath.
One caution: the study covers ChatGPT only, and results will likely vary by industry and type of prompt. It is a strong signal, not a rule.
4. Who gets cited: brands that show up beyond their own website
Page structure helps explain which page gets cited. Brand presence helps explain which company does. Ahrefs analysed 75,000 brands and compared their off-site footprint with their mentions in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews. In the update published in December 2025, YouTube mentions showed the strongest correlation with AI visibility, at roughly 0.74, the highest of all factors tested. Branded web mentions followed with 0.66 to 0.71, while the number of pages a site publishes showed only a weak relationship.
The citation data points in the same direction. In Ahrefs’ study of 863,000 keywords, YouTube accounted for nearly 6% of all AI Overview citations, and for more than 18% of the citations that came from pages outside the top 100 organic results. In other words, a video can be cited even when no page of the brand ranks for the query.
Ahrefs itself points out that correlation does not prove causation, and larger brands naturally collect more mentions everywhere. Still, the pattern fits what other citation studies show: AI systems tend to surface brands that are talked about in many places, not only on their own domain. Community and video platforms carry what a company website cannot produce on its own, namely first-hand experience and independent voices.
For a local service provider or a mid-sized company, this does not mean building a presence everywhere. It means being named where the audience already looks: in trade publications, regional media, expert interviews, videos and communities. A well-structured website is the foundation, but it cannot replace being discussed elsewhere.
5. Reading the numbers with care
Studies in this field move fast, and they do not always agree. Three points are worth keeping in mind before drawing conclusions.
First, the studies measure different things. The gap between Ahrefs (38%) and BrightEdge (17%) on how many cited pages rank in the top 10 comes from different keyword samples and methods. Treat each figure as a direction, not an exact value.
Second, most findings are correlations. Pages with certain features get cited more often, but that does not prove the features cause the citations. This applies to the brand mention data as much as to the content structure data.
Third, AI search is still small compared with Google. A 3.2% share of desktop searches is no reason to ignore it, but it is also no reason to abandon what works in classic search. The sensible reading is that AI visibility is an additional layer to measure and build, not a replacement for rankings.
6. From tracking rankings to tracking citations: a 90-day plan
The studies point to the same shift in practice. A realistic first quarter could look like this:
- Weeks 1 to 2: set a baseline. Pick 20 to 30 questions your customers actually ask. Check in ChatGPT, AI Mode and Google whether your brand is cited, and who appears instead. Write down which pages or platforms the answers draw on. This list shows you where the gaps are.
- Weeks 2 to 6: refresh instead of produce. Update your ten most important pages. Move the core answer into the first third, replace vague introductions with a direct definition or finding, and name concrete people, companies and products instead of generic phrases. Updating existing pages is usually faster than writing new ones, and it builds on rankings you already have.
- Turn headings into real questions. Phrase subheadings the way customers ask them, and answer each one directly underneath in a few sentences before going deeper. Take the wording from real sources: customer emails, sales calls and the questions from step 1.
- Weeks 4 to 12: build presence beyond your site. Choose two or three platforms your audience trusts, such as industry publications, YouTube or expert communities, and contribute there regularly. A short explainer video or an expert comment in a trade publication is a realistic starting point.
- Change your reporting. Track rankings next to AI Overview presence, citation share and brand mentions, so you see early where visibility is moving. Repeat the baseline from step 1 every quarter, since the picture changes quickly.
Conclusion
The data from the past year tells one story. A page in position one can lose more than half its clicks, cited pages increasingly come from outside the top 10, and both page structure and brand presence show clear links with citation. None of this makes SEO obsolete. It widens it. Teams that measure rankings and citations side by side will notice earlier where visibility is shifting, and since the studies keep moving, the measurements are worth repeating. Rankings get you into the game, citations decide who is quoted.
The post From Rankings to Citations: What Recent Studies Show About SEO in the AI Era appeared first on Visualmodo.
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