YouTube citations in Google AI Overviews surge 300%

2024-10-18 00:00:08

YouTube citations grew in Google AI Overviews (AIO) by 310% since August and 200% since September, according to new data from enterprise SEO platform BrightEdge.

Why we care. First, this seems to be a clear case of self-preferencing, with Google increasing the visibility of YouTube, a property it owns. Though, at this point, this feels like a case of dog bites man. We know Google is doing this. In fact, one proposed remedy following a judge’s ruling that Google has an illegal monopoly is a potential breakup.

Second, it signals that video content is especially important for AIO. That’s because, through Google’s Gemini multimodal model, content created in spoken form (even if there is no text) can be cited in an AI-generated answer.

By the numbers. BrightEdge also shared some additional Google AIO trends around shopping and ecommerce. Of note:

For shopping keywords, the overlap of organic search ranking and AIO citations dropped to 7%, down from 12.4%. Overall, however, “the percentage of overall keywords ranked in the top 10 increased from 21.6% in July to 24.5% in September,” BrightEdge reported.
Ecommerce AIO showed on 7.63% of queries, down from 12.04%.
Unordered collapsed lists for shopping queries increased to 15.9%, up from 1.3%.
Shopping query volatility decreased to 26%, down from 37%.
Ecommerce AIO height increased by 40.4% – to 914 pixels from 651 pixels.

What it means. According to BrightEdge, these changes indicate that:

For ecommerce queries, Google’s AI Overviews seem to focus on more supplemental information.
The holiday shopping season is coming, so increased stabilization makes sense and could make your optimization efforts more consistent.
Visual content and video content will likely be super important.
Focusing on “classic SEO” will be important for this upcoming holiday season.

The report. BrightEdge is sharing these insights in its updated Ultimate Guide to Google AI Overviews.