By Matt G. Southern
Publication Date: 2026-03-02 21:36:00
Ranking in Google’s top 10 is a weaker indicator of being cited in AI reviews than it was last year, according to updated Ahrefs analysis.
The study examined 863,000 keywords and 4 million AI summary URLs. It turned out that 38% of the pages cited also appeared in the top 10 results for the same search query. In the previous version of this study from Ahrefs in July, that number was 76%.
The remaining citations are almost evenly distributed between results that appear in positions 11–100 (31.2%) and from position 100 (31.0%).
What the data shows
Ahrefs conducted two versions of the analysis. The first counted all types of results on the page, including ads, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, and video packages. The second only dealt with standard organic entries.
The results were similar. When filtered by organic results only, 37% of the cited pages ranked in the top 10 and 36% were outside the top 100. The slightly higher proportion of non-ranking pages in the purely organic test suggests that some AIO citations are coming…
