How Ranking in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are Different | 1.2 AEO Course by Ahrefs

Hey, it's Samo and welcome to the second lesson which is on the differences between AI search platforms. Now, in the last lesson, I covered how AI search engines find and site content. But here's what I didn't tell you. They don't all do it the same way. And this matters a lot more than most people realize. Because if you're treating AI search as one thing and optimizing for it the same way across the board, you're likely leaving visibility on the table. So, in this lesson, I'm going to break down the major AI search platforms like Google's AI overviews, Google's AI mode, Chat GPT, and Perplexity, and show you the data on just how different optimization for these platforms are. Let me start with a stat that might surprise you. We looked at the top 50 most cited domains across Google AI overviews, Chat GBT, and Perplexity. And out of those 50, only seven appeared on all three platforms. That's only a 14% overlap. Think about that for a second. If you're only optimizing for one platform, you're potentially invisible on the others. And it gets even more interesting when you look at what each platform actually prefers. Google AI overviews favor authoritative established sites. Think health, finance, encyclopedic content, and Google owned properties like YouTube. In fact, YouTube accounts for about 5.6% of all AI overview citations. And just look at how fast they're adding YouTube videos to their AI overviews. And obviously, Reddit's big here, too. Chat GBT leans heavily toward publishers and media. For example, authoritative sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, Amazon, Forbes, Business Insider, and Wired are some of the most cited domains here. In fact, the median domain rating of Chat GBT's top sighted pages is 90. So, it's pulling from high authority publishers, and that's partly because of licensing deals OpenAI has with some of these outlets. Perplexity is actually the most aligned with traditional Google search. About 28.6% of Perplexity citations come from pages that rank in Google's top 10. Compare that to Chat GBT, which only overlaps with Google's top 10 about 8 to 10% of the time. So, if you're already ranking well in Google, perplexity is probably where you'll see the most immediate AI visibility. And then there's Google's AI mode. Now, you might assume that since AI mode and AI overviews are both Google products, they'd site similar sources. Well, they don't. The citation overlap between AI overviews and AI mode is only 13.7% despite the fact that their answers are 86% semantically similar, meaning they're saying similar things but pulling from completely different sources. AIM mode's top-sighted domain is YouTube by a wide margin, followed by Google and Wikipedia. We also found that it cites Quora 3.5 times more than AI overviews and pulls from social platforms like Facebook and Instagram much more heavily. So the takeaway here is clear. AI search is not one thing. Each platform has its own index, its own biases, and its own preferences for what kind of sources it likes to site. So which platform should you focus on? This is the practical question and I think it's important to be strategic here rather than trying to optimize for everything at once. There are really two things to consider. The first is market share. As of right now, Google's AI features and chat GBT account for the vast majority of AI search traffic. Proplexity is growing, but it's still a fraction of the volume. So, if you have to prioritize, Google and ChatGBT are where most of the eyeballs are, at least for now. The second thing to consider is how much overlap there is between what you're already doing in SEO and what each platform rewards. If you're already ranking well in Google, you have a natural head start with AI overviews and perplexity. So why not lean into it? 76% of AI overview citations used to come from pages already in Google's top 10. And I say used to because that number has dropped. A more recent study shows it's now closer to 38% which is still a lot. AI overviews are increasingly pulling from pages outside the top 10, including YouTube and Reddit. So, the connection between Google rankings and AI citations is weakening. Chat GBT is much more interested in publisher authority and editorial content. So, if your brand gets mentioned on Forbes, in a Reddit thread, or on a niche review site, that might matter more for ChatGpt visibility than your own pages Google ranking. And here's something a lot of people miss. Many of the tops domains in AI search don't get any traditional search traffic at all. AI visibility is its own game. Now, if you want to see the top domains for a specific platform, you can check that in HR brand radar. Just run a blank search and go to the cited domains report. Then you can filter using your desired AI platform. What you'll typically see is that the websites citing your brand are different on each platform. A domain that shows up heavily in AI overviews might barely appear in ChatGBT and vice versa. This is why a one-sizefits-all approach to AEO doesn't work. Now, the good news is you don't need to build completely separate strategies for each platform. A lot of the fundamentals, creating quality content, earning mentions, building topical authority help across the board. But knowing where each platform pulls from helps you prioritize your efforts. For example, if chat GBT is a big traffic driver for your niche, you'd want to focus on getting mentioned on high DR editorial sites and publishers. If AI overviews matter more, YouTube and Reddit should be on your radar. We'll get into these specific strategies in modules 2 and three. But for now, the key thing to understand is that each platform is its own ecosystem with its own rules. Now, before we actually start optimizing for AI search, there's something else you need to understand. What does winning an AI search even look like? Because it's not just about getting a link or a mention. So, in the next lesson, I'm going to break down the different types of AI visibility and why some of them might be more valuable to you than others. See you in the next lesson.