A recent study found that AI answers contain ~12 links on average, but many of them point to Google’s own services, especially Google Maps business profiles.
Some interesting takeaways:
• Only ~14% of links overlap with the top 10 organic search results
• Sources change frequently, even for the same query
• Common citations include Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, Indeed, and Amazon
The big implication: ranking #1 in traditional search doesn’t guarantee visibility in AI answers.
SEO is quickly shifting from ranking pages to being selected as a trusted source by AI systems.
