# AI Overview Sources: Only 31% of the Pages Google Links Rank in Its Top 10 > In a sample of 4,931 Google AI Overview links, only 31% ranked in Google's top 10 for the same question, and 44% weren't in the first 100. Published October 15, 2026 by Josh. Canonical: https://bydefault.so/blog/ai-overview-sources To see if Google AI Overviews are based on Google's search results, we checked a sample of 4,931 links in AI Overviews against Google's regular search results. Only 31% of the links in Google's AI Overviews showed up in Google's top 10 rankings, and 25% showed up between positions 11 and 100. 44% of the links didn't even show up in the top 100 rankings in Google. ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-Avgw3HmV9seTK7MhPK1eN.png) Google rankings do seem to matter, with position 1 showing up in Google AI Overviews 34% of the time, and position 8 to 10 showing up 18% of the time. But the links in Google AI Overviews do change over time. When we asked the same question about 7 hours later, only 31% of the links in the later AI Overview were in the earlier AI Overview. ## How does Google pick the sources for an AI Overview? The sources cited in Google's AI Overviews are from Google's normal search index. This is done by what's called ["query fan-out"](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features): Several related queries are run in subtopics, and the results from those queries are then cited in the Overview. Any page that is indexed and can be used for a snippet in Google Search is eligible to be used as a source. ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-hVntwespCmTRNY1EOi8Iq.png) *Google's guide to AI features in Search, on query fan-out* According to Google, there are [no extra technical requirements](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) for being cited, and no special optimization techniques are needed. This means standard SEO techniques apply, such as allowing Google to crawl the page, having the important content in text form, linking to the page from other pages on your site, and making sure [structured data matches the visible text](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) on the page. As of January 2026, AI Overviews are powered by [Gemini 3](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-ai-overviews-updates/). The fan-out process is important for rankings. A page does not need to rank for the query that the user entered. Instead, it can rank for one of the related queries that Google also runs, which are not displayed to the user. We analyzed how many of the cited pages are ranking for the user's query. ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/drawing-NNC9OSLxilqJWZ0sDxbMt.png) ## How many AI Overview sources rank in Google's top 10? 31% of the pages linked in Google AI Overviews are also ranking in Google's top 10 search results for the given question (12% are ranking in the top 3 results), and 69% are ranking below the top 10 or not at all. Here is the full breakdown of links in Google AI Overviews by position of the linked page in Google's search results: ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-k1WLe-ahKu2-W3UOjI84X.png) 79% of Google AI Overviews are still linking to at least one page from Google's top 10 search results for the given question. On average, each Google AI Overview has 7.8 links in it, so each page from Google's top 10 search results linked in Google AI Overviews typically appears alongside about five other links from Google's search results beyond the top 10 or from elsewhere on the web. Note that our study of links in Google AI Overviews based on questions people ask AI assistants shows a lower percentage of links from Google's top 10 search results for the given question (31%) compared to [the study of 863,000 keywords](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-citations-top-10/) (38%). This is likely because our study is based on questions people ask AI assistants, and we find that long questions often result in Google AI Overviews linking to fewer pages from Google's top 10 search results for that question (24% of the links in Google AI Overviews based on questions of 10 or more words were also ranking in Google's top 10 search results for that question, while 31% to 33% of the links in Google AI Overviews based on shorter questions were ranking in Google's top 10 search results for that question). ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-wqg31tMHN6PlpeH7v0ukH.png) ## Does ranking first get you cited? Even ranking first only gets a page linked a third of the time. The page in position 1 is included in the links on 34% of AI Overviews, and this drops every few positions, to 18% for positions 8 to 10 and 10% for positions 11 to 20. The link rate for each position is as follows: ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-LUPXuj7hwpqfSVDeDDh2H.png) This holds over the course of a month, too. We matched the past 30 days of AI Overviews for each page to its ranking position today. On average, pages in the top 3 today are linked on 23% of days, while pages ranking lower than 10 (or not ranking at all) are linked on 13% of days. ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-kW1ldZEoX51eMqJbqci-V.png) Thus, on average, a top-3 page is almost twice as likely to be linked as a page ranking outside the top 10. However, because there are so many more pages outside the top 10, these pages account for most of the links. ## Links to pages that don't rank 44% of links in Google’s AI Overviews point to pages that don’t even appear in the first 100 results for the question. A quarter of those come from sites that have some other page ranking in the top 10 for the question. Another 16% come from sites that have some other page ranking between 11 and 100: ![](https://cdn.bydefault.so/image-KIYh5y3suLLrzvQ7st0uW.png) The remaining 58% come from sites that don’t have any page in the top 100 results for the typed question. Google must have sourced these pages somewhere else, because they didn’t come from the results for the typed question. YouTube has the most links to pages outside the first 100. YouTube videos make up 13% of all AI Overview links, and 72% of those videos aren't in the normal results for the question. Reddit comes next, then a long tail of other sites. These are the sites with the most links to pages outside the first 100: | Site | Share of links to pages outside the first 100 | | -------- | --------------------------------------------- | | YouTube | 21% | | Reddit | 5% | | Medium | 1.4% | | Facebook | 1.2% | | LinkedIn | 0.8% | | GitHub | 0.7% | Now, some of these pages are appearing on the results page but in another box. For 38% of the YouTube videos linked from outside the first 100 results, the same video was available in the Google video box for the same question. For all pages linked from outside the first 100 results, only 9% were present in a video box, a forum, or a People Also Ask box. ## AI Overview links change within hours Since we run daily fetches of all the questions we track in the morning, we compared each of those AI Overviews against our own subsequent fetch of the same question about 7 hours later. Only 31% of the links in that subsequent fetch were also present in the morning AI Overview. Over 30 days the AI Overviews for a single question contained links to roughly 50 different pages, with links to about 7 pages present in each AI Overview. This is similar to our findings comparing assistants: [75% of the pages Google AI Overviews list are new from one day to the next](https://www.bydefault.so/blog/how-does-ai-search-work). Even today’s #1 results appeared in links at least once in the past 30 days for only half of the questions. This suggests that a single AI Overview’s list of links for a given question is not a good indication of whether a particular page will be linked in the Overview; instead, we need to focus on how often a page is linked over many days. ## How to rank in Google AI Overviews To be included in the Google AI Overviews results, a page must rank for the question or for any of the related searches Google issues behind it. Five things seemed to help with that in our data: 1. **Be top 10 on the question.** 79% of the AI Overviews link to at least one of the top 10 pages on the question, and the top page is linked to 34% of the time. This is done through Google’s [usual SEO basics](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features). 2. **Answer the related questions.** 44% of the links in Google’s AI Overviews point to pages that are not in the first 100 search results, and for longer questions even fewer of the top 10 pages are included. Having a page for each related question, like pricing, a comparison or a setup guide for your product, increases your chances of getting included in Google’s AI Overviews results. 3. **Include your other pages in the AI Overviews.** A quarter of the links to non-ranking pages are on websites that already rank on the question with a different page. So make sure Google finds those pages, by [including links to those pages in the page that ranks](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable#internal-links). 4. **Make a video on YouTube.** 13% of the links in Google’s AI Overviews results point to YouTube videos, and most of those don’t show up in the normal search results. 5. **Monitor AI Overviews over weeks.** Links change in hours, so look at the share of days a page is included, rather than monitoring the links for a single day. [ByDefault](https://www.bydefault.so/) runs each of your tracked questions in Google AI Overviews every day and stores the pages included in each Overview. ## How we measured The Google results we analyzed were scraped for this article and the AI Overviews were pulled from ByDefault’s daily runs, which answer questions from buyers on AI assistants in English, in the United States. * **Questions**: Questions buyers ask AI assistants, tracked in ByDefault, searched as typed. * **Scrape date**: October 14, 2026. Each question was scraped once, using the DataForSEO SERP API, which returns both the AI Overview and Google’s first 100 results on that question in a single call. 7% of the questions showed no AI Overview or an AI Overview without links, and those were dropped. * **Match criteria**: A link in an AI Overview counts as ranking if its URL matches the URL of a normal result, once both URLs are stripped of “[www.”](http://www.xn--ivg/), any part of the URL following “#”, any tracking parameters and a trailing slash. If a page only appears in a video, forum, or “People Also Ask” box, it does not count as ranking. * **First 100 results**: Ads and other boxes take some of the 100 results, so the median question had 73 normal results. * **Missing pages**: For 18% of the questions, some of the 10 results pages did not load. Dropping those questions changes the top-10 share from 30.5% to 29.9%, so those questions were kept. * **30-day history**: 4,849 AI Overviews from daily runs between September 15 and October 14, 2026, matched to the rank of the page on October 14. 30-day numbers only use questions with at least 10 days of AI Overviews. ## Search This site has a search endpoint: https://context7.com/api/v2/ask?siteKey=ask_3c1f722df822a632904738c4&query=. It returns documentation that answers the question, with a source link for each part. No API key is needed. If nothing matches, it says so.