AIO Citations Diverge From Rankings, Bing Rewrites Rules – SEO Pulse

Welcome to search engine marketing Pulse: this week’s updates have an effect on how AI Overviews choose sources, how far AI search has expanded throughout industries, and what two search engines like google and yahoo now say about optimizing for AI.

Right here’s what issues for you and your work.

AI Overview Citations From Prime-Rating Pages Drop To 38%

Rating in Google’s high 10 is a weaker predictor of being cited in AI Overviews than it was seven months in the past, in response to an updated Ahrefs analysis of 863,000 key phrases and 4 million AI Overview URLs.

Key Info: Beforehand, Ahrefs discovered 76% of cited pages additionally ranked within the high 10 for a similar question. That quantity is now 38%. The remaining citations are cut up nearly evenly between positions 11 via 100 (31.2%) and pages past place 100 (31.0%). A separate BrightEdge evaluation from February put the highest 10 overlap even decrease at about 17%, although the 2 research use completely different methodologies and datasets.

Why This Issues

Seven months in the past, rating within the high 10 and getting cited in AI Overviews have been largely the identical aim. Now, roughly two out of three AI Overview citations come from pages that don’t rank within the high 10 natural outcomes for a similar question.

Ahrefs attributes a part of the hole to improved parsing, that means the 2 datasets aren’t immediately comparable. However Ahrefs additionally factors to Google’s query fan-out process, the place a single search will get cut up into a number of sub-queries, with citations drawn from pages that seem most frequently throughout these outcomes. Google upgraded AI Overviews to Gemini 3 globally in January, which Ahrefs notes as further timing context.

YouTube is essentially the most cited area in AI Overviews total and has grown 34% over the previous six months, in response to Ahrefs’ Model Radar knowledge. SE Rating and Ahrefs’ own AI Mode study from December each confirmed the identical sample.

What Folks Are Saying

Louise Linehan, content material marketer at Ahrefs and creator of the research, summarized the core discovering in a LinkedIn post:

“Google is citing far fewer pages straight from the unique SERP: ~76% in July 2025 vs. ~38% as we speak.”

Learn our full protection: Google AI Overview Citations From Top-Ranking Pages Drop Sharply

AI Overviews Now Set off On Practically Half Of All Searches

BrightEdge analysis exhibits AI Overviews grew 58% year-over-year and now seem on roughly 48% of all tracked queries.

Key Info: Training queries went from triggering AI Overviews 18% of the time to 83%. B2B expertise grew from 36% to 82%. Eating places went from 10% to 78%. Healthcare, already excessive at 72%, edged as much as 88%. Regardless of these numbers, basic search outcomes nonetheless seem for 52% of all queries, that means natural rankings stay the whole expertise for many searches.

Why This Issues

The 52% of queries nonetheless with none AI Overview could matter greater than the 58% development fee for a way you intend your time. Training, B2B expertise, healthcare, and restaurant queries at the moment are dominated by AI Overviews. Verticals with decrease AI Overview frequency nonetheless rely totally on natural rankings.

BrightEdge additionally reported about 17% high 10 quotation overlap, in keeping with the Ahrefs knowledge above. Roger Montti famous in his protection that AI Overviews now devour greater than 1,200 pixels on common, pushing the primary natural consequence under the fold on a normal desktop display. Even when your question area nonetheless triggers basic outcomes, the visible actual property has modified.

What Folks Are Saying

Grant Bartel, senior search engine marketing supervisor at Walker Sands, wrote in a LinkedIn post:

“You’re not simply competing for blue hyperlinks anymore. You’re competing to be cited, summarized, and surfaced contained in the AI Overview.”

Learn our full protection: Google AI Overviews Surges Across 9 Industries

Google Removes JavaScript Accessibility Steerage, Calls It Outdated

Google eliminated its “Design for accessibility” part from its JavaScript search engine marketing fundamentals documentation, saying the recommendation was not useful.

Key Info: The eliminated part suggested builders to check websites with JavaScript turned off and examine them in text-only browsers like Lynx. Google’s changelog entry mentioned the data was “outdated” and that JavaScript content material is not “making it tougher for Google Search.” Google additionally mentioned most assistive applied sciences now work with JavaScript. Google has up to date this web page a number of occasions since late 2025.

Why This Issues

Testing with JavaScript disabled was a normal suggestion for years, and Google’s personal docs have been the quotation backing it up. That quotation not exists.

The identical web page nonetheless describes a further rendering step for JavaScript content material earlier than indexing, and nonetheless says server-side rendering is quicker for customers and crawlers. However every latest replace to this web page has changed a broad warning with particular implementation steering. Google added canonical URL recommendation in December and clarified noindex conduct for JavaScript pages across the similar time.

One caveat: This is applicable to Googlebot. Different crawlers, together with these utilized by AI platforms, should still deal with JavaScript-rendered content material in a different way.

Learn our full protection: Google Removes JavaScript SEO Warning, Says It’s Outdated

Bing Rewrites Webmaster Tips To Cowl Copilot And AI Solutions

Microsoft rewrote the Bing Webmaster Tips from scratch, extending protection past conventional search to incorporate how content material seems in Copilot’s AI-generated solutions and grounding outcomes.

Key Info: The rewrite spells out how every meta directive impacts AI experiences. Bing’s pointers say NOARCHIVE prevents content material from being utilized in Copilot responses and grounding outcomes. The abuse sections have been renamed and expanded. “Key phrase Stuffing” grew to become “Key phrase Stuffing and Artificially Engineered Language,” and a brand new “Immediate Injection and AI Manipulation” part covers makes an attempt to intrude with Bing’s language fashions.

Bing additionally softened its stance on AI-generated content material and famous {that a} decline in clicks doesn’t all the time imply visibility has dropped.

Why This Issues

The directive-by-directive breakdown offers you documented controls for managing how content material seems in Copilot solutions. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode observe the identical preview controls utilized in Search, however hasn’t printed something at this stage of element.

NOARCHIVE is one instance. Bing’s pointers say that the tag prevents content material from being utilized in Copilot responses and grounding outcomes, which works past cached web page entry. Mixed with the AI Efficiency dashboard Bing launched two weeks in the past, you now have each the controls and the measurement for managing AI search visibility on Bing’s facet.

Bing additionally codified immediate injection as a brand new abuse class. Microsoft printed analysis in February documenting 31 corporations that hid immediate injections inside “Summarize with AI” buttons aimed toward biasing AI suggestions.

Learn our full protection: Bing Adds GEO To Official Guidelines, Expands AI Abuse Definitions

Theme Of The Week: The Hole Between Rankings And AI Visibility Is Getting Wider, And Extra Measurable

What works for conventional natural rankings and what works for AI search visibility have gotten two completely different conversations.

Ahrefs exhibits the highest 10 quotation overlap falling from 76% to 38% in seven months. BrightEdge places it at 17% utilizing a distinct dataset.

AI Overviews now seem on almost half of all tracked queries, that means the hole impacts a rising share of search site visitors. Google’s JavaScript search engine marketing documentation has steadily trimmed older warnings and changed them with extra particular implementation steering. And Bing is supplying you with each the directive controls and the quotation knowledge to handle visibility in AI solutions, whereas Google’s tooling for AI-specific measurement stays restricted.

The information and instruments for understanding AI search have gotten extra particular, whereas the connection between conventional search engine marketing and AI visibility is turning into much less predictable.

Extra Sources:

Featured Picture: Cheer-J-ane/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal