The biggest shift is happening in SEO right now
The deeper explanation about credibility, EEAT, and why AI Overviews pull from outside the top 10.
Key Findings
- Previously: 76% of AI Overview citations came from pages ranking in the top 10
- Now: only ~38% come from top 10 results
- The rest come from:
- Positions 11–100: ~31%
- Beyond position 100: ~31%
Another study shows the overlap may be even smaller — around 17%.
AI Overviews are growing quickly
- AI Overviews now appear on ~48% of queries
- Some industries see them 80%+ of the time:
-
- Education
- Healthcare
- Restaurants
- B2B tech
Why citations are diverging from rankings
Google now uses a process called query fan-out.
Instead of pulling from the single SERP, Google:
- Breaks the query into many sub-questions
- Runs multiple internal searches
- Pulls sources from pages that appear most frequently across those results.
So AI Overviews are building answers from multiple SERPs, not just the one you see.
2. Your Question:
If AI Overviews cite pages outside the top 10… are they still credible?
Short answer:
Yes — but credibility is being evaluated differently than traditional ranking signals.
The top 10 results are not always the “most credible.”
They are the best optimized pages for ranking algorithms.
Those two things are no longer identical.
3. Why the Top 10 ≠ Always the Most Credible
Traditional SEO rankings are influenced by many signals:
- backlinks
- domain authority
- internal linking
- site structure
- page speed
- CTR signals
- content optimization
A page can rank high because it’s well optimized, not necessarily because it’s the best factual source.
Example:
A medical study might be the most authoritative source, but it may rank poorly because:
- it’s behind a paywall
- poorly optimized
- no backlinks
- bad UX
But AI systems can still identify and extract that information.
4. What AI Systems Actually Evaluate
AI systems like Google’s Gemini look more at information quality signals than classic ranking signals.
They evaluate things like:
Entity authority
Is the site associated with known experts or institutions?
Example:
- universities
- research journals
- government sites
Passage relevance
AI doesn’t evaluate the whole page ranking.
It evaluates individual passages.
So a page ranking #72 might contain the best paragraph answering the question.
Cross-source verification
AI systems compare information across many sources.
If multiple sources say the same thing, the system increases confidence.
This is similar to how research papers cite multiple references.
Knowledge graph alignment
AI systems check if the information aligns with known entities and facts in Google’s knowledge graph.
5. The Real Reason This Is Happening
This shift is happening because AI search is answering questions, not ranking pages.
Traditional search: Query → list of websites
AI search: Query → synthesized answer → cited sources
So Google now asks: “Which sources help build the best answer?”
Not: “Which page ranks #1?”
6. The Big SEO Implication (This Is Huge)
This article confirms something many SEOs suspected:
Ranking is no longer the same as visibility.
You can:
- rank #1 and not get cited
- rank #50 and get cited in AI answers
That’s the core of: AEO / GEO / LLMO
Answer Engine Optimization.
7. What Actually Gets Cited in AI Overviews
Based on multiple studies, AI Overviews prefer pages that have:
Clear answers
- definitions
- explanations
- summaries
Structured content
- lists
- headings
- FAQ format
Strong entity associations
- known brands
- recognized experts
- trusted domains
Original information
- research
- data
- unique insights
8. The New SEO Reality
The goal is no longer just:
“Rank on page 1.”
It’s now:
“Become a source AI trusts when generating answers.”
Those are two different optimization problems.
9. The Take Away?
Honestly, this article confirms something we’ve been doing correctly all along at We Do SEO
Our approach focuses on:
- structured FAQs
- topical clusters
- entity signals
- authority pages
- schema
- expert positioning
That structure is exactly what AI systems prefer.
You’ve essentially been building AI-readable SEO before most agencies realized that mattered.
In one sentence:
Top 10 rankings measure SEO competitiveness, while AI citations measure information usefulness — and those are increasingly different signals.