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 engines like google 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 prime 10 is a weaker predictor of being cited in AI Overviews than it was seven months in the past, in line with an up to date Ahrefs evaluation of 863,000 key phrases and 4 million AI Overview URLs.
Key Details: Beforehand, Ahrefs discovered 76% of cited pages additionally ranked within the prime 10 for a similar question. That quantity is now 38%. The remaining citations are break up virtually 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 totally different methodologies and datasets.
Why This Issues
Seven months in the past, rating within the prime 10 and getting cited in AI Overviews have been largely the identical purpose. Now, roughly two out of three AI Overview citations come from pages that don’t rank within the prime 10 natural outcomes for a similar question.
Ahrefs attributes a part of the hole to improved parsing, which means the 2 datasets aren’t instantly comparable. However Ahrefs additionally factors to Google’s question fan-out course of, the place a single search will get break 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 extra timing context.
YouTube is essentially the most cited area in AI Overviews general and has grown 34% over the previous six months, in line with Ahrefs’ Model Radar knowledge. SE Rating and Ahrefs’ personal AI Mode research from December each confirmed the identical sample.
What Individuals Are Saying
Louise Linehan, content material marketer at Ahrefs and creator of the research, summarized the core discovering in a LinkedIn put up:
“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 Prime-Rating Pages Drop Sharply
AI Overviews Now Set off On Almost Half Of All Searches
BrightEdge analysis reveals AI Overviews grew 58% year-over-year and now seem on roughly 48% of all tracked queries.
Key Details: 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, which means natural rankings stay the complete 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 the way you propose 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% prime 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 regular desktop display screen. Even when your question house nonetheless triggers basic outcomes, the visible actual property has modified.
What Individuals Are Saying
Grant Bartel, senior search engine marketing supervisor at Walker Sands, wrote in a LinkedIn put up:
“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 Throughout 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 now not useful.
Key Details: The eliminated part suggested builders to check websites with JavaScript turned off and consider them in text-only browsers like Lynx. Google’s changelog entry stated the knowledge was “old-fashioned” and that JavaScript content material is now not “making it more durable for Google Search.” Google additionally stated most assistive applied sciences now work with JavaScript. Google has up to date this web page a number of instances since late 2025.
Why This Issues
Testing with JavaScript disabled was a regular advice for years, and Google’s personal docs have been the quotation backing it up. That quotation now 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 current replace to this web page has changed a broad warning with particular implementation steerage. 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 deal with JavaScript-rendered content material in another way.
Learn our full protection: Google Removes JavaScript search engine marketing Warning, Says It’s Outdated
Bing Rewrites Webmaster Pointers To Cowl Copilot And AI Solutions
Microsoft rewrote the Bing Webmaster Pointers from scratch, extending protection past conventional search to incorporate how content material seems in Copilot’s AI-generated solutions and grounding outcomes.
Key Details: 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” turned “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 at all times imply visibility has dropped.
Why This Issues
The directive-by-directive breakdown provides you documented controls for managing how content material seems in Copilot solutions. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode comply with the identical preview controls utilized in Search, however hasn’t revealed something at this degree 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 matches 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 aspect.
Bing additionally codified immediate injection as a brand new abuse class. Microsoft revealed analysis in February documenting 31 firms that hid immediate injections inside “Summarize with AI” buttons geared toward biasing AI suggestions.
Learn our full protection: Bing Provides GEO To Official Pointers, 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 totally different conversations.
Ahrefs reveals the highest 10 quotation overlap falling from 76% to 38% in seven months. BrightEdge places it at 17% utilizing a unique dataset.
AI Overviews now seem on almost half of all tracked queries, which 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 steerage. 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 info and instruments for understanding AI search have gotten extra particular, whereas the connection between conventional search engine marketing and AI visibility is changing into much less predictable.
Extra Sources:
Featured Picture: Cheer-J-ane/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
