Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews can produce solutions with related that means whereas citing completely different sources, in keeping with new information from Ahrefs.

The report, published on the Ahrefs blog, analyzed September 2025 U.S. information from Ahrefs’ Model Radar software and in contrast AI Mode and AI Overview responses for a similar queries.

The authors checked out 730,000 question pairs for content material similarity and 540,000 question pairs for quotation and URL evaluation.

What The Examine Discovered

Ahrefs experiences that AI Mode and AI Overviews cited the identical URLs solely 13% of the time. When evaluating solely the highest three citations in every response, overlap elevated to 16%.

The language within the responses additionally various. Ahrefs experiences 16% overlap in distinctive phrases and states that AI Mode and AI Overviews share the very same first sentence solely 2.5% of the time.

Ahrefs reported sturdy semantic alignment, with a mean semantic similarity rating of 86%, and 89% of response pairs scoring above 0.8 on a scale the place 1.0 signifies equivalent that means.

Despina Gavoyannis, Senior search engine marketing Specialist at Ahrefs, writes:

“Put merely: 9 out of 10 instances, AI Mode and AI Overview agreed on what to say. They only stated it otherwise and cited completely different sources.”

Totally different Supply Preferences

Ahrefs experiences variations through which web sites and content material sorts every function tends to quote.

For instance, Wikipedia seems in 28.9% of AI Mode citations in comparison with 18.1% in AI Overviews. The information additionally finds that AI Mode cited Quora 3.5x extra usually and cited well being websites at roughly double the speed of AI Overviews.

AI Overviews, in contrast, leaned extra closely on video content material. YouTube was probably the most often cited supply for AI Overviews, whereas Reddit was cited at related charges in each AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Ahrefs additionally experiences that AI Overviews cited movies and core pages (comparable to homepages) almost twice as usually as AI Mode. On the similar time, each options confirmed a robust choice for article-format pages total.

Entity And Model Mentions

Ahrefs discovered AI Mode responses had been about 4 instances longer than AI Overviews on common and included extra entities.

Within the dataset, AI Mode averaged 3.3 entity mentions per response in comparison with 1.3 for AI Overviews. Roughly 61% of the time, AI Mode included all entities talked about within the AI Overview response after which added further entities.

Many responses didn’t embrace manufacturers or entities. Ahrefs experiences that 59.41% of AI Overview responses and 34.66% of AI Mode responses contained no mentions of individuals or manufacturers, which the authors affiliate with informational queries through which named entities should not usually a part of the reply.

Quotation Gaps

The information finds that AI Mode was extra more likely to embrace citations than AI Overviews.

Solely 3% of AI Mode responses lacked sources, in comparison with 11% of AI Overviews. Ahrefs experiences that lacking citations usually happen in circumstances comparable to calculations, delicate queries, assist middle redirects, or unsupported languages.

Why This Issues

This report means that AI Mode and AI Overviews can differ within the sources they credit score, even after they attain related conclusions for a similar question.

For monitoring functions, this may have an effect on the way you interpret “visibility” throughout experiences. A quotation (or a point out) in AI Overviews doesn’t essentially indicate you’ll be cited in AI Mode for a similar question, and AI Mode’s longer responses might embrace further entities and opponents in comparison with the shorter AI Overview format.

Google’s documentation states that each AI Overviews and AI Mode might use “question fan-out,” which points a number of associated searches throughout subtopics and information sources whereas a response is being generated.

Google additionally notes that AI Mode and AI Overviews might use completely different fashions and methods, so the responses and hyperlinks they show will differ.

Wanting Forward

Ahrefs notes this evaluation compares single generations of AI Mode and AI Overview responses. In related research, Ahrefs reported that 45.5% of AI Overview citations change when AI Overviews replace, suggesting that overlap can seem completely different throughout repeated runs.

Even with that caveat, the low overlap noticed on this dataset signifies that AI Mode and AI Overviews often choose completely different URLs as supporting sources for a similar question.

Featured Picture: hafakot/Shutterstock


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