This week's GEO coverage was research-heavy rather than launch-heavy, and the findings point the same way: being visible in AI answers is becoming a different discipline from ranking.
What happened
- AI Overview citations diverge from rankings. An Ahrefs analysis cited in recent coverage found only 37.9% of AI Overview citation URLs sat in Google's top 10 results (Analytics Insight).
- Overlap with Google varies sharply by engine. One study of 15,000 prompts reportedly found only 12% average overlap between ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot citations and Google's top 10, with Perplexity closer to 29% (Analytics Insight).
- Query fan-out is a key mechanism. AI Overviews break queries into related subquestions and cite pages answering those, even when the page doesn't rank for the original query (Analytics Insight).
- GEO is being framed as answer visibility. A new explainer defines it as shaping content and accessibility so ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and AI Overviews can retrieve, cite or mention your site (PPC Land).
- Indexing still underpins everything. Google AI Overviews rely on Google's index, Copilot on Bing's, and ChatGPT Search on OpenAI's crawler plus third-party providers (Anymorph).
What it means for you
Don't treat a strong Google position as proof you're visible to AI. Check whether the questions your buyers actually ask are answered on your pages, with original data and a documented method, since that is what the guidance this week keeps rewarding. Make sure the pages you want cited are indexable by the crawlers behind each engine, not just Google. And monitor citations engine by engine: Perplexity, ChatGPT and AI Overviews are pulling from different places, so one strategy won't cover them all. If you want to see where you currently stand, that's exactly what a Citeify audit measures.