Dive Brief:
- Over 40% of brand citations in organic search results do not appear in artificial intelligence overviews for the same query and 28% of brands cited by AI do not appear in organic results, according to research by LQ Digital shared with Marketing Dive.
- YouTube videos are 4.3 times more likely to appear in AI overviews compared to search results, suggesting that marketers should invest in content on the platform to help AI visibility, per the report. Reddit is 3.9 times more likely to be cited in organic.
- How a query is worded impacts how brands are represented in overviews. When it comes to evaluation and how-to questions, brands are more likely to show up in organic search. Category queries are more likely to produce brand results, at a rate of 63.9% in AI overviews and 55.7% in organic search.
Dive Insight:
AI search presents unique challenges for marketers. While 53% of consumers do not have confidence in AI-search results, a rapid decline in organic traffic is also underway. As a result, marketers are being forced to prioritize AI visibility in order to reach consumers, although many are still trying to figure out exactly what steps lead to AI visibility.
What is cited in AI overviews can be completely different than what appears in organic search results. Broadly, 46% of AI overview citations do not appear in organic results for the same query, while 54% of organic search result citations do not appear in AI overview citations, per the report.
Brands aren't the only ones appearing differently in search results. Publishers are cited in AI overviews for evaluation queries at 40.5% compared to 27.7% in organic search. Results for how-to questions cite publishers 7.6% of the time in AI overviews and 4.8% of the time in organic search. Publishers are cited more in organic search results for category questions at a rate of 13% and 6.6% for AI search.
AI overview results cite social media and video at a higher rate for how-to queries, at a rate of 15.6% versus 9% for organic search.
“Same Query, Different Winners” evaluated over 8,000 citations and more than 700 responses from organic and AI overview search.
Search advertising has long been a major component of the advertising landscape. However, as companies such as Google increasingly focus on AI search, brands are faced with a steep learning curve and not a lot of options. In May, Google rolled out improvements to its AI search ads, including ads around conversational search.
