Skip to content
PractitionerLily Ray, 2026

70% of the time, when a brand's own listicle is cited in a Google AI Overview, the brand is left out and the listicle is used to recommend a competitor instead

Citation & visibility tracking

Outcome when listicle was citedNumber of listiclesShare of listicles (%)
Brand left out, and its listicle was used to recommend a competitor12970%
Brand left out, and the listicle wasn't cited next to any brand's recommendation2111%
Brand recommended, but its listicle was used to recommend a competitor84%
Brand recommended, and its listicle backed both the brand and competitors127%
Brand recommended, and its listicle backed only the brand itself63%
Brand recommended, and the listicle wasn't cited next to any brand's recommendation84%

Outcomes when brands' own listicles are cited by Google AI Overviews (184 listicles)

Reader Note:
The table behind this holds six outcomes, and the fuller reading is harsher than 70%: the brand is left out of the recommendation in 150 of the 184 listicles, or 81%, and recommended in only 34 — and even among those 34, its own listicle was used to back a competitor in 8 cases. The 70% is the single largest outcome on its own: brand left out and the listicle used to recommend a competitor, 129 listicles. All of it is B2B software queries, and what counts as the brand being left out is the author's own reading of each AI Overview.
Evidence:
Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:
Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:
Not disclosed

Good for

Getting a rough orientation, and deciding what to check yourself.

Not for

  • Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
  • This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
  • This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
  • The source never says how this number was measured.
  • The source never says how big its sample was or what went into it.

Go deeper on this topic

Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

Fixing your influencer marketing campaign: How to get into the top 10% of advertisers
Citation & visibility trackingTrend

Only about 17% of AI Overview citations also rank in the organic top 10, while just over half are somewhere in the top 100.

Vendor report

BrightEdge, 12 Feb 2026

Only about 17% of AI Overview citations also rank in the organic top 10, while just over half are somewhere in the top 100.

Coming soon

This feature isn’t available yet.